Windows XP costs businesses five times more than Windows 7

JMH

JMH

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While many of us are thinking about the eventual shift to Windows 8, Microsoft is still trying to convince a number of businesses that moving from XP to Windows 7 is the right decision. To help get its point across, the company sponsored a white paper by analyst firm IDC that looks at the costs associated with the two different operating systems — and it turns out the using XP can be quite a bit more expensive for medium-to-large organizations. According to IDC — which interviewed nine different companies as part of the study — the IT and "end user labor" costs associated with XP can be up to five times more compared to using Windows 7.
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http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/26/3045210/microsoft-windows-xp-high-operating-costs

Further reading...
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29883
 
I support a business that has 39 desktops and ~12 laptops. We're still overwhelmingly XP, because I chose to avoid the Vista upgrade path. I actually have some 5 and 6 year old PCs that I rarely have to touch, and the biggest reason I have an issue with them is that the hardware is old. While I much prefer Windows 7, it wasn't economically feasible to replace them all at once. We buy about 10 PCs a year, which either go to replacing old ones, or being used by new employees, as we've had a fair amount of growth. As an IT manager, I'm not spending much time on the old ones, but I do know that the employees have lost a lot of time, simply due to slowness, a combination of older hardware and a slower OS (not to mention Office 2007 didn't handle large .pst files well at all). There might be fewer companies on XP right now if Vista had been a more viable upgrade path, though. I avoided it altogether, and I know I'm not alone in that.
 
It is hard enough for an enterprise level company to roll out a new OS, but it is the smaller shops that have the biggest problem. In large shops they have training centers, ongoing hardware upgrades, and new user orientation. If you have 100 seats it is infinitely more difficult. It is like trying to teach the whole family another language all at once.
 
My wife has 5 workstations and a file server running XP.
The proprietary client application doesn't work well with Vista/7 so I elected to stay with XP (it's based on Database II)

The software company sold out to another company - and it's proprietary client application requires a hardware upgrade for the file server (about $1000) and a huge increase in the monthly support fees. So we stay with XP until the business is able to afford the increases.

I'm cheap labor so the in-house IT costs aren't significant (but my fringe benefits are great! :0)
 
Tech support Pro +? I dont have anything bad to say about XP. The worst that can be said is it is dated.
 
My newest PCs in the office are Win7 64 bit, and yes, they're fast. Give people a large or dual monitor setup, and they're in heaven. I have had some minor issues with legacy equipment, however, such as Dymo labelmakers. We have a couple in our office, and they're still quite functional, but older models aren't compatible with Win7, and Dymo has no intention of fixing that issue. I have 2 that are becoming obsolete as I upgrade, and I find that frustrating. The good thing is that we also just migrated to a new system that combines project management, quoting, ordering, and invoicing in one system, including the ability to drag email attachments and other documents into it. This has negated the need to keep project files, which has negated the need to print labels for the files. The system being replaced doesn't run all that well on Win7 either, so the migration came at a good time.

I will say that from a support standpoint, setting up a new Win7 on the network is much faster than XP, so deployment is easier. Since I'm a department of one, that works in my favor.
 
I'm surprised that the new PCs go to new employees instead of long-term employees claiming them.

Budget constraints really make it difficult for a small organization -- even departments in large corporations that are allotted a hardware budget. Even with proof of energy savings, I couldn't convince our management to replace the old CRTs with new energy-efficient monitors.
 
I'm surprised that the new PCs go to new employees instead of long-term employees claiming them.
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The majority of the employees rarely have anything older than 3 years. The only people who have older ones than that are outside salespeople, who were using them with Remote Web Workplace to access some LOB applications. They're all going to be migrated to laptops in the near future (most of them have laptops already anyway). If I know I'm going to replacing a 3 year old computer at the end of the year, why make more work for myself by giving it to someone else for maybe 6 or 9 months, and then upgrading them? Each year, the inside people with the oldest computers get new ones.
 
My wife told me not to spend money on LCD's since we already had a lot of CRT's.
But being married to the boss does have it's advantages - so I ignored her! :0)

Bought the LCD's as they came on sale and saved a bundle - and the company managed to pay me for them too!
 
sari said:
The majority of the employees rarely have anything older than 3 years. The only people who have older ones than that are outside salespeople, who were using them with Remote Web Workplace to access some LOB applications. They're all going to be migrated to laptops in the near future (most of them have laptops already anyway). If I know I'm going to replacing a 3 year old computer at the end of the year, why make more work for myself by giving it to someone else for maybe 6 or 9 months, and then upgrading them? Each year, the inside people with the oldest computers get new ones.
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That's a different situation than we had and certainly makes sense. Someone left and there was a free-for-all with scavengers making a claim on what was left behind.
 
I use Windows 7 for all my operations, mostly all my funds are getting driven into hardware purchases rather than OS maintenance. Windows 8 isn't suited for the business world. I plan on using Windows 7 for many more years to come! Especially since Windows 8 is not compatiable with many rendering engines at all.

One example was The Sims 3 which I use more for designing homes and working on their functionality rather than actually playing the game itself but the game's engine dropped textures and just right out failed to remain graphically stable.
 
(at the original article) lol!
ludicrous! xp costs 0 to keep going
- there's nothing else to do
- everything already works correctly on it.

it is the win 7 machines that cost 5x to operate
- some programs do not run correctly or at all
- i.e. 9 prints blank pages (ms kb 973479) for all users until i fix it
- most printer drivers don't work - must be replaced with the hp universal driver
- help files won't display - work around required
- users have to learn a new os
- personally, i love 7, but wake up, currently, it's expensive to implement.

ms is smoking paiute again, and they think you are too.
just because they want to sell us win 8, they foist this marketing crap on us!

ps
i have 100 xp machines and 30 win 7 machines

temmu is available to write factual articles for your publication.
 
Agreed, everything on Windows XP may still work, particularly with legacy software. The problem is that they are old machines with old hardware and slower processors.

From a personal standpoint, all I had to do was connect my oldish printer and I was provided a link to the vendor site for an update. It worked perfectly -- and no update was needed due to printing blank pages. Then again, I understand that you are talking about a business environment rather than a home computer user.

I hope that the company where you work is in a position to purchase the Windows 7 licenses for those 100 XP machines before sales is cut off even if there will be a delay purchasing the hardware.
 
my point is that ms fud is so much crap.

slow xp machines? b.s.! they are plenty fast for their intended use.
if not, they get a new win 7 machine.

and there begins the expense of win 7 - the cost of the machine, os, and getting all the apps, etc, to work.

no! win 7 is expensive!
win xp costs us nothing.
 
Ah they extended it, I didn't know. Still, Windows 7 is a lot more accessible and only took me about a week maximum to get fully used to the switch after a decade of XP. I constantly find new and better functionality. The only real cost is that of non-legacy hardware.
 
Cayden said:
Support for XP is ending soon, there are no excuses, move to 7.
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That's a rather simplistic view in a business environment, as already noted. For the people in my office who have been upgraded, it's been a big asset to productivity. However, we can't buy 35 new computers at once, and a 4 year old system is not going to support Windows 7, especially as I'm using the 64 bit version as I upgrade.
 
Training is also very costly, although as more home computer users leave Windows XP behind, it helps reduce the costs for businesses. There are, however, many people who are not advanced users and intentionally stay with the same OS at home as they have at work, due to the comfort zone.
 

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