Operating Systems
IT's 'love affair' with Windows XP ending
Windows XP users finally ready to move on
By Gregg Keizer | Computerworld US | Published 16:00, 06 April 10
Businesses are finally prying their hands from Microsoft 's Windows XP as they warm to Windows 7 .
"Over the years, IT has had a real love affair with XP," said Diane Hagglund, an analyst at Dimensional Research, which surveyed 923 IT professionals about their Windows operating system adoption plans in January. "It was just a great OS. It just worked for them. But that feeling is going away."
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In the new study, 40% of the respondents said that they're worried about the hassles of maintaining the nearly nine-year-old Windows XP as it gets increasingly outdated -- up from 28% in an April 2009 Dimensional survey.
Meanwhile, 60% of the respondents said they're worried about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7, but that figure is down from 72% last year.
"IT is still more worried about Windows 7 than XP, but the trend is favouring Windows 7," the study said.
Confidence in Windows 7 has climbed since it shipped. Last April, 67% of those polled said they had concerns about Windows 7, which had not yet been released; this year, only 56% said they did.
"The difference was the release of the operating system, the biggest part of that from hands-on experience," Hagglund said, explaining why some in IT have changed their minds about Windows 7. "They're trying it at home, many of them, long before it comes to them professionally, so they know what it's like."
This story was originally published in Computerworld.com.
