I was on a panel a few weeks ago with Rob Enderle a few weeks back and he was asked by an international journalist what he expected in terms of financial news in the next few months. He made a very interesting point that, being an Apple fanboy, I ignored at the time. He said that Windows 7 would drive a whole new wave of hardware buying and inflate (in a good way) IT spending.
I filed this tidbit away next to my thoughts of maybe one day buying a Zune, but then I cracked open the HP Envy 13 and thought back on my own recent experience with Windows 7— and what he’s saying makes sense.
A few calls later and I found that a number of IT guys I know are genuinely excited about installing Windows 7 in their shops, guys for whom Vista didn’t even register. We’re about see an IT renaissance, and it will be driven by Microsoft.
Remember: Apple may change the way we think, but Microsoft changes the way we spend. Windows 7 is a solid operating system with lots of great IT-oriented features, including an XP emulation mode, an imperative for skittish IT guys. It also runs fairly well on smaller notebooks (although Envy wasn’t technically a netbook, at least by HP’s emphatic definition, it’s still thin and light) and it has most of Vista’s eye-candy with none of the distrust most users had when they saw Vista’s eye-candy when it first came out.
Harbinger of things to come.
There are three forces at work here. First, there is the IT shop. They haven’t upgraded their machines since XP. XP was, at best, 2001 technology and by 2006 over 400 million desktops running the OS. Assuming that even half of those were paid XP seats at major corporations, and you understand that this monster would not just roll over and die. It costs money to upgrade — money companies did not have in late 2007 through all of 2008. Now, with a bit of a loosening in the credit markets, IT departments are going to be upgrading en masse, causing a surge in PC sales and sales of attendant products like drives, memory, and monitors.
Second, consumers are just about done with netbooks. This is an unpopular opinion, I know, but as evidenced by the Envy, the underpowered netbook will be replaced by a more powerful, slightly more expensive mid-tier model that will appeal to everyone, businesses included. Instead of a 15-inch Dell monster, road warriors will carry lighter Windows 7 machines with low-voltage but highly optimized components. Netbook advocates cite cloud storage and a lightweight OS, but when Internet Explorer takes forty seconds to load GMail because you’re running a single core Atom, you’re going to have upset customers. It’s getting harder and harder to go from a peppy computer to a slow one simply because the difference in speed is so staggering. The netbook will remain but it won’t be anybody’s every day computer.
Finally, it’s time for an gamer upgrade. The holidays are upon us, there are no new consoles to buy, and a new cohort of PC gamers is appearing: kids who grew up on powerful consoles like the XBox 360 and the PS2/PS3 family, kids who started gaming perhaps at age 10 and are now 16 or so, who are looking for a bit more power. Windows 7 will give them that slight perceived boost and, since it will come with new machines, it will increase the install base by accretion.
As much as we slobber all over Apple, Microsoft makes the world go around. Google or no Google, the desktop belongs to Redmond and Windows 7 is one of the building blocks of a strong future economy. Here’s hoping they can maintain their Office hegemony but even if they don’t, there’s always Google Wave.
Good direct stuff! I’m a cloud fan and now a netbook fan, but have the top-end HP with solid state hard drive…. nothing boots slowly.
I’m wondering if Windows 7 will run on my netbook or if I’ll have to replace it.
As you pointed out there is a widening fork in the road: gamers, who need on-board memory and crunching capacity (statistics show these are 30-Something overwieght males) and icloud users than need thin client everything. I do have itunes on board, and wish they would get this application thinner.
Keep up the good work!
“How Microsoft will lift us out of the IT-spending dumps”….
First of all we are in this computing history dragging behind by the never ending of IT-spending cycle mainly because of MS business model….(dump your working system and hardware with the new OS and the like products – hidden MS motto)… which will triggers a lot of changes, upgrades, re-writing existing working and worthy systems…
We are in a confused state of IT computing because of the biggest software company in the world created a paradigm of reseting everything back to where it was two to fours years ago, just for the sake of their greed. We should never followed this path from the very beginning in the first place.
To really answer your misleading question (title of the post) MS has to get into a paradigm shift where they deliver products that will be ‘TRUE’ backward compatible and let companies/people continue focusing their energy/effort into their core business not IT change or all this kind of non-sense stuff that is seriously dangerous in real advancement…..
look the advancement we have reached in the OS discipline? (any real substantial change in the last 10 or 20 years … look just MS’s OS security)
I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate on my Asus 1000HE and it runs like a champ. I did upgrade to the 2GB of ram, but it runs just like you’d expect any normal computer to. I even get Aero effects!
Ya, I’m running it on my 1000HE with the stock 1GB of RAM(bit of a rebel, I know). It runs flawlessly.
You slobber all over apple.
What do you mean?
Windows 7 may be great, but most of us are on XP and it is going to be very expensive to move. To install W7 I need a new partition and thats a deal breaker. I don´t know where my software disks and/or licenses are and I am not going to buy them again. My setups will be lost and my drivers may not work again (I had to downgrade from Vista).
I guess I will stay with XP for a while.
My copy of W7 cost me £50 on pre-order. Hardly bank breaking.
I think he was trying to get at the fact that it’s not the cost of Windows 7 so much as the time cost. If you’ve been running great, stable, and secure with XP, that’s not suddenly going to be gone when 7 is on the shelves.
I agree on that point.
However, converting applications from XP to Vista or 7 is pretty easy for the consumer. It’s only businesses who have mission critical applications that are XP exclusive that are going to suffer.
However, they’re going to have to do it eventually so now’s a good a time as any.
Sorry. Old comments were lost. There was a quirk in the HTML.
Dang, and I posted the winning Lotto numbers for tomorrow’s drawing in my comment. :)
Naturally my dog ate them so I can’t repost.
This article makes me happy
Im very excited to see what effect Windows 7 will have on the industry.
Am I allowed to make comments about Muslims here?
Windows 7 rocks, I love Apple hardware and Mac OSX, but Apple fanbois like John Biggs seem to live in an distorted alternate reality that has nothing to do with real world perception.
Microsoft does matter and is quite good at what they do,competition is great and while I don’t find Google wave to be earth shattering, Its healthy to have choices and different point of view.
Mr Biggs view on Netbooks is also way off base, netbooks sell because there is a market for them, Apple dismissed the whole thing because the price points wouldn’t allow Apple the 35 percent and higher profit margins that they enjoy with the Mac line.
There are customers who want a notebook like machine with a keyboard that allow them to surf the web and check email at a reasonable price.
People vote with their wallets and I would say that the Netbook is here to stay.
Firstly,
Rob’s credibility is so close to zero. The man has been a surrogate mouthepeice for Microsoft for as long as I can remember. He said much the same thing when Vista came out. Rob was also the man who famously predicted that GNU/Linux would be sued into oblivion by the ill-fated SCO group (and look where that prediction went).
It’s true that a handful of people find the idea of Windows XP motivating, however in this web-driven world the base operating system makes only the slightest difference for most users.
Real growth comes when corporations decide to make the switch. The Fortune 500 company I work for only decided to upgrade to Windows XP 5 years ago, somehow I cannot quite see them being in a rush to take Windows 7.
Your company switched 5 years ago. Most large companies operate on a 3-5 year refresh cycle because of hardware/software licensing.
You’ve kind of shot down your own argument here.
Windows 7 does look pretty good and is what Vista *should* have been. However, a large percentage of my employees only need the web, email, IM client and the occasional word processing and/or spreadsheet. Ubuntu Linux has proven to be amazingly simple to install and use and comes with everything those employees need.
For many people like me, there just isn’t any need to buy a copy of Windows for everyone when Linux runs everything they need just fine. I understand the need for Windows for many games, but for run-of-the-mill business/office environments, a lot of those people could dump Windows and save themselves the money.
just a thought, if your employees only use web, email, IM, and word processing, they may have some trouble with Ubuntu file system, Pidgin, and Open office file format. In general, I think people get too used to Microsoft Office and folder structures.
I wonder if MSFT will finally return to the $30 range with the win7 success?
Not a chance. Microsoft already dominate the market so where are the growth opportunities?
You make some interesting points.. and IMO some very valid and invalid points. for one, netbooks aren’t over they’ve just started. I know a number of companies giving out netbooks now rather than full sized notebooks This a company level buying trend. Second, i think the jury is still out on windows 7. Most of the same people that hyped vista are now hyping win 7. The jury is still out until it starts going in at the corporate level and we truly findout the major issues. The other issue you really neglected was the economy. It isnt getting that much better and in most companies hardware is something that can be delayed.. until the economy jumps back…
Nope, sorry, you lose. We are in a deathspiral economy, period. The only way out is corporations forsaking profit, period, to hire on more staff and grow new business/products. That’s not going to happen, the government isn’t going to put us all back to work, and so, cutbacks will continue (including those IT dept upgrades… nextyearnextyearnextyear is here to stay), and with more people losing their job, and budgets tightening further, there won’t be any consumer-level dollars to SPEND, to help companies stay afloat.
I’d buy this argument if it ran more along the lines of “the tech industry is about to implode, and only MS/Win 7 will be left standing on the commercial side”, and even then, it’s not entirely implausible that such dire straits would be what it takes to finally get the masses onto the OSS bandwagon.
But, er, no, IT departments are NOT about to go crazy with upgrades. Businesses have to do more with less staff – no way they’re going to take the time to “retrain” their technophonbic marketing/sales teams on a “new version of Windows”.
Govt spending is designed to arrest the spiral and they have largely been successful.
Er…what? Hmm…maybe you should stop taking your govt. issued soma, open your window, and take a look outside at the *real* world.
LOL. Way to judge things a WEE BIT EARLY. This rollercoaster hasn’t even finished it’s first dip. Hope you’re not wearing glasses when the thing turns upside-down.
This article will be more on-the-mark when XP is near ending it’s support lifecycle. Some upgrades that were pending will get a boost because of Windows 6.1 there won’t be any return to shorter OS upgrade cycles.
people are expecting Microsoft to lift us out of what exactly?
I really do not understand the real purpose of upgrade to W7 from XP. Why would any business spend millions to upgrade to W7? whats the business case for upgrade? nothing is going to break by remaining with XP. XP Support lifecycle remains. so whats the business reason to upgrade?
Even at the individual level why would anybody upgrade to W7? 90% of my home computing time is spent on the web, meaning I dont care what my system is running on as long as I have my browser. And I would assume the same for many others too except for gamers… People will have W7 when you buy new computers but those running on XP or Vista, I dont see any reason. So in this death spiral of an economy there is no good reason for businesses to dump XP and go for W7 with all those associated costs….The business spend do not justify the benefits (if any)..they will plan to upgrade in next 5yrs but not now..unless the threat of end of support becomes real, they are dont have a reason to look at W7.
XP is growing Old and is showing its age with security, maintainability, and management.
There are a lot of management things you can do in Windows 7/Vista that you couldn’t do for XP. It was time for a better OS to come out.
Also, rich applications on a desktop will always have more functionality than a browser would any day. Also support lifecycle for XP is dying down as its becoming more and more expensive to maintain it.
To answer your other question of why a company would spend millions of dollars to upgrade? Then why do companies even spend money for software that you could get for free via linux, etc. Is the same reason why companies will spend millions to buy those software. Anyways I think companies will slowly upgrade to Windows 7 as they see the business features it brings to customers. I think for consumers they made windows 7 a lot sleeker than XP.
We are upgrading about 300 computers to windows 7 at my office. And he we are also upgrading our windows server to 2008.
People count microsoft out but they really hit a home run with windows 7.
Yes, I have to agree here that Microsoft will help kickstart IT spending around 2010.
There is something known as the hardware / software curve and put simply, there is always going to be one of these two ahead of the other one at any given time. This is the engine that drives innovation forward and eventually forces IT upgrades.
As Agent Smith in the Matrix would say; “it is in-ev-it-able”. (Although Carl Sagan talks like that too, but that’s for another day).
Whenever my company upgrades anything made by Microsoft, the IT department has a field day. lol
Here we go.. John Biggs and his wigger opinion.
Seems to me that you should save your money, install Ubuntu Linux on your current laptop (or get a low price netbook/smartbook and run Ubuntu Netbook Remix or some other Linux) instead of enriching Microsoft. Haven’t you given them enough already? What did they ever do for you (besides lock you in to products like MS Office with their proprietary file formats).
Then take that money you might’ve spent on Win7 and do something *actually constructive* with your money – i.e. something that *earns money* rather than simply depreciating. Heck, go wild and actually pool the money you’ve saved with other similarly richer Linux users, and you might even be able to make the world a better place…
Just throwin’ it out there.
God I feel so bad for companies that are stuck using MS products.
I don’t, and so I never have to worry about these stupid problems.
blasphemy…. >: (
ms must not be allowed to rule the world again…
“MS must not be allowed to rule the world again.”
Maybe you want to transfer to another world? Like Planet Jupiter or something?
Let’s face it. Nobody can put down MS. Nobody. Maybe Linux. (like in the next 30-50 years. lol @ their fragmented selves) But definetly not Apple.
This article is okay except for the last paragraph where it almost sounds like the author was bought off to say those things.
Microsoft does not make the world go round, and Windows 7 is not significantly innovating verses their competitors (especially Apple). Some things are “new” for windows people, but unexciting, and TRUCKLOADS of features are straight ripoffs from mac os x, or as close as they can be without being exactly the same.
Microsoft is still a juggernaut undeniably, but who would cheer for a continued dominance in the home desktop market by them??? Are you the guy being asked to fix your family and friend’s goofed and virus laden machines? It doesn’t sound like it.
It depends on how you look at it as “ripoffs.” For consumer look-and-feel and user experience, Yes I think microsoft used a lot of what Apple used, but sometimes you cant discount the fact that they both come up with the idea at the same time. For instance, optimization for multi-core processes was something that they both could see easily and are trying to do.
I still think that windows has a lot of functionality that apple could never do because of the focus of the two companies. But then again that’s another topic.
The way it works in most big businesses:
IT is a cost centre – not a profit centre. It’s also seen as a cause of risk. Buying new systems does not raise your share-price… however using the stuff you already have might.
Companies only upgrade when they are forced into doing it. So for example if Microsoft were to say to my company that they will never again support Windows XP we might be forced into switching to Windows 7. That’s going to be a real nuisance because in order to make the switch we have to port not just the desktop OS but the 200 or so applications which can be found on the thousands of desktops.
A few of these these apps are not business critical and will probably be trashed or replaced, however others are going to be business critical and may not support the new Windows. Migration is slow and expensive. People will need to be re-trained (don’t undestimate their stupidity), and as a consequence every manager who cares about profit will resist un-necessary upgrades.
Sure there are advantages to newer software: Stuff runs faster, you can use more memory (etc), however the cost is huge and unless you can offer substantial new value most companies prefer not to switch.
Think of upgrading like repairing a smashed window: When the window is broken you have to fix it, but most people would prefer it if the window was never smashed in the first place. When Microsoft withdraws support it’s literally like throwing a brick at Windows XP: You take something perfectly fit for purpose and then you make it useless.
SF
Let’s face it. Nobody can put down MS. Nobody. Maybe Linux. (like in the next 30-50 years. lol @ their fragmented selves) But definetly not Apple.
I promise you, a world in which Apple dominated IT would be every bit as bad, possibly a great deal worse than Microsoft’s dominance. I for one fear the hyper-litigious design fetishists far more than Microsoft’s clumsy hegemony.
I’d be the last person on earth to “slobber over Apple”. I enjoyed the article.
At our company, we switch the profiles to look like Windows Classic. There is a reason for this. As much as I’d love for your article to happen, I don’t think it will happen anytime in 2009; maybe 2010, maybe.
Our default appearance setting for our WinXP boxes (which is all of them, by the way) is Windows Classic as well. If users prefer the XP appearance settings, we let them change it to that, but the Classic appearance settings are the cleanest, easiest to navigate, and least resource hogging.
Due to the fact that our company’s daily business functions rely almost completely on software packages that [i]only[/i] support Windows, MS Office, and Acrobat Adobe, we are one of those companies that Ryan Scott (commenter above) feels sorry for and I do too, quite frequently. We could save TONS of money every year if not for the need to stay with all thing MS (and Acrobat), but there seems to be no change to these dependencies in the near future – unless, of course, we decide to put all of our clients’ financial data “in the cloud”, which is about as likely as putting that data on Facebook.
The reason we’re having to seriously plan to upgrade to Win 7 is because we will almost certainly have to upgrade to Office 2007 and Windows Server 2008 (but probably not R2, especially since it won’t support Exchange 2007). We’ve delayed upgrading the OS, the version of Office, and the version of Server (some of our servers are still on Server 2000!) as long as possible, but to keep everything running as smoothly and reliably* as possible, we’ll have to upgrade nearly every single computer in the building within about a one month period. This does not sound like one iota of fun, but what must be done, must be done.
In addition, I’ve been running Win 7 at home on a desktop with rather old hardware (P4, not even Dual Core, AGP video, etc.) and have very little issue with stability and functionality. There was that one pre-RC build that wasn’t a lot of fun, but since then, it’s all been good. 8-)
[i]* Trust me when I say that using the word “reliably” above made me nearly break out in open laughter considering Microsoft’s history, but the software that runs on top of Microsoft’s software HAS TO run that way to work at all.[/i]
Completely agree with the premise of the article. Lots of corporate IT spending has been on hold in anticipation of W7.