Admins Snub Windows 7, Says Survey

Despite the general hubbub surrounding Windows 7's launch (Oct 22), it seems that businesses are less than thrilled at the idea of parting with their money to upgrade to Windows 7.

According to Reuters, a survey carried out by ScriptLogic Inc. shows that 6 out of 10 businesses will pass over upgrading to Windows 7 - mostly in an attempt to save a buck and avoid any loss of productivity due to software issues. With a tightening budget and Vista's track record, this is all too expected, and will have Microsoft reworking its upgrade policy in no time.

The 20,000 admin-wide survey showed that about 60 percent of respondents would shy away from deploying Windows 7 altogether, with 34 percent promising to deploy it by the end of 2010. Only 5.4 percent of respondents planned on deploying it by years-end. The survey carries on to explain that a rather unsurprising 35 percent of admins had already skipped upgrades this year due to budget constraints.



A more marketeer-panicking 39 percent were worried their business apps wouldn't work correctly under Windows 7, something we're sure Microsoft will come back to very, very soon.

Possibly Microsoft's greatest merit has been to successfully erradicate the blemish left by Vista, but ultimately it's been focusing on drawing end-users back into the fold while neglecting to point out that 7, contrary to Vista, won't wreak havoc with your admin suites (or will it?). On the other hand, History tells us that if Microsoft was worried about it they'd have bombarded everyone with benchmarks on how productivity will skyrocket as soon as you remove upgrade the offending operating system and replace it with something that weighs less than a metric tonne Windows 7.

It does seem that Microsoft's marketing has its job cut out as, given the current state of affairs, cash-strapped businesses are disregarding the opportunity to buy news PCs now and save a wad of cash later on upgrades because most OEMs are offering free or next-to-nothing Windows 7 upgrades from Vista. Upgrading later will cost admins anywhere between $80~$100 extra per SKU, unless they get into a volume licensing deal.

You can find the full U.S. Windows 7 pricing here on the Windows Team Blog.