% of OS being used by business

Curious to what the % of OS that are being used today. The last MS was July 2010 that said 74% of businesses still using XP. Now I'm guessing thats changed since then. Does anyone have some current stats. Doing some research.

I'd be interested to see these numbers too. My company is still on XP and has no plans on upgrading in the near future. Maybe with some numbers I could get them starting to think about it.

Look at it on the bright side, at least they aren't using a 9x based OS or NT 4.0. Only really negative thing about them using XP is if they're also using IE 6.0 on it. 

Depends on the size of your company. Would you want to be in charge of an IT department that had to roll out 200,000 desktops to the newest OS, or even the newest browser

18 minutes ago, ManipUni wrote

Look at it on the bright side, at least they aren't using a 9x based OS or NT 4.0. Only really negative thing about them using XP is if they're also using IE 6.0 on it. 

My secondary school used Windows 95 on their networked 'ICT room' computers right up until the summer of 2002 - that might be forgiveable if the school was looking to get the best out of an expensive investment but the computers (about 150 in total) were actually donated by a local company in 2000.

5 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

Depends on the size of your company. Would you want to be in charge of an IT department that had to roll out 200,000 desktops to the newest OS, or even the newest browser

An organisation that large shouldn't have a centralised IT department that makes those kinds of decisions. Where's the delegation and clearly-defined boundaries between departments?

54 minutes ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

An organisation that large shouldn't have a centralised IT department that makes those kinds of decisions. Where's the delegation and clearly-defined boundaries between departments?

Busy reading the wikipedia article on 'economies of scale'.

Exactly.  Companies that big are all about having monolithic IT organizations making wide-ranging decisions that are not in the best interest of their users.  It's a mess for everybody.

I wouldn't believe any of MS's stats on OS usage very much.  I have heard MS state that the company I work for has now finally moved all of their computers to Win7.  News to me.  Almost all of the company is still on XP.  I got a new machine a day and a half ago with XP.  New workstations are being deployed with Vista.  Only a handful of low-end users are getting Win7.  Yet according to MS, we have all been assimilated.

@rodneyMc:

I don't know. But, I am guessing it is 75% officially and 95% unofficially. Meaning, a lot of private copies.

35 minutes ago, ryanb wrote

Exactly.  Companies that big are all about having monolithic IT organizations making wide-ranging decisions that are not in the best interest of their users.  It's a mess for everybody.

I wouldn't believe any of MS's stats on OS usage very much.  I have heard MS state that the company I work for has now finally moved all of their computers to Win7.  News to me.  Almost all of the company is still on XP.  I got a new machine a day and a half ago with XP.  New workstations are being deployed with Vista.  Only a handful of low-end users are getting Win7.  Yet according to MS, we have all been assimilated.

MS's stats probably come from licensing.  You can't buy XP any more, so your install of XP counts towards a Win7 license at audit time.  I'm not sure if that's legal, but I doubt MSFT cares.

2 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

*snip*

MS's stats probably come from licensing.  You can't buy XP any more, so your install of XP counts towards a Win7 license at audit time.  I'm not sure if that's legal, but I doubt MSFT cares.

Yes, I think that is exactly what is happening.  The licenses are all for 7, and if you choose to use them for an earlier version, that's your business (as long as you don't ask for support).

4 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

MS's stats probably come from licensing.  You can't buy XP any more, so your install of XP counts towards a Win7 license at audit time.  I'm not sure if that's legal, but I doubt MSFT cares.

"Downgrade rights" are perfectly legal and are in your EULA. It's why OEMs kept on offering Windows XP on laptops right up until the end of 2010 - it wasn't restricted to netbook sellers, because my high-end Sony laptop (bought in Q2 2010) came with a Windows XP installation CD (oddly enough: it didn't come with a Windows 7 installation DVD).

7 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

Depends on the size of your company. Would you want to be in charge of an IT department that had to roll out 200,000 desktops to the newest OS, or even the newest browser

If you know what you're doing, that's barely even close to difficult, though sadly rather too many IT shops make it seem insurmountable.

As usage statistics go though, Windows 7 is around 50% and I'd hazard a guess that number isn't all that different in the Enterprise market.

@rodneyMc: A lot of big customers like Leeds City  Council for example are migrating to Windows 7, and they have tens of thousands of machines. Where I work they now run both XP and Win 7. Basically, when they replace a PC or buy a new one, Windows  7 stays on it, so XP will now last as long as their current stock of machines does.

This is how most companies will operate, rather than a wholesale throw away XP machines, and buy new Win 7. It is just not financially sensible.

@vesuvius: This is what we're doing and what our customers are doing, too.  Thanks to Microsoft's strategy of backward compatibility, there's no need for expensive roll-outs across an entire operation at once.

I'm now willing my current work PC to expire so I can move from 64-bit XP to 64-bit Win7.

Herbie

This is a bit off-topic but there is evidence, that VS vNext (or VS 11) won't be able to create (native) programs that run on Windows XP SP3:

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/690617

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vcgeneral/thread/e2f43b8e-a620-4c52-878c-8b546252af45

http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2287078-allow-mfc-11-to-run-in-xp-sp3

I also think that the numbers of (business) users running Windows XP is underestimated because of the licensing. Not every company that is allowed to install Windows 7 is doing it (including the company I work at).

I really do not know what to do when VS 11 will not support Windows XP any more. Probably that prevents us from using the new C++ compiler / library features for a long time, if we want to serve our customers.

Bernd

@rab36: wow, I am genuinely surprised at that stance, even VC2008 can develop Programs for Windows 95. Well, at least it's nothing wrong with the compiler, just MFC; so isn't the workaround to get your VC projects to target previous versions of the Windows SDK?

@W3bbo: No, the bug report also indicates that the CRT doesn't work on XP, not just MFC.

This is a really stupid decision imnsho.