Two years after Vista launch, 71% of business PCs still running XP

I believe this is a case of self-confirmation bias.<p>Checking for similar articles from 2003, around 2 years after the launch of XP, I found this gem: "Windows XP, the most current version of Windows, was found on just 6.6 percent of the [business] machines" (<a href="http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39161686,00.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39161686,0...</a>).

As I'm probably overly fond of pointing out, Vista is what caused me to switch to Linux.<p>I know the businesses I work with have no interest in Vista, and probably won't switch to Windows 7, either -- at least not anytime soon.<p>I'm advising all those who can to go to thin clients. That is actually about 90% of the business users who can easily use thin clients. They're often just as fast, far more secure, and so much easier to administer.

Windows XP is actually a very good product so why switch?

We went to 'anything but Vista'. Which mostly meant a mix of XP and Xubuntu. We've probably saved between £1-2,000 per host that would've otherwise been upgraded and extended the refresh cycle by a year to accomodate Windows 7 and Core i7 when it comes out and becomes cheap enough later this year.

The lack of change does not have much to do with Vista. The main reason is that businesses are slow to make changes. Once they are comfortable they will not want to touch anything, specially if that means coming out of pocket. Now that being said, yes, Vista sucks.

I wish I had 71% of businesses running any versions of my software.

2 years?! feels like just a few months ago.

Vista Fail. I've been using XP since Jan 2004 with no issues, no re-install, still works fine. Why the hell would I upgrade to downgrade my performance. Who needs a bloated candy-colored version of Windows? A new OS should be faster, not slower. Try again, Microsoft. Until then I'll stick with XP and OSX on my Mac.

I can't believe there are companies that are such suckers that they'd be willing to pay a Vista license and then an upgrade to Windows 7. But if there are companies like that, MSFT is right to treat them as bad as they do. They fully deserve it.