Windows 7 licensing situation a "disaster" for businesses?

Doom and gloom warnings about a new Microsoft operating system from some corners sure aren't anything new, but it looks like a particular licensing issue with Windows 7 could well cause some serious headaches for businesses transitioning from Windows XP. As InfoWorld reports, as things stand now, businesses that buy PCs before April 23, 2010 with Windows 7 preinstalled will have the option to downgrade them to Windows XP, which will let them upgrade to Windows 7 whenever they're finally ready to make the transition. Businesses that buy Windows 7-loaded PCs on or after April 23rd, however, will only have the option to downgrade to Windows Vista which, as Gartner analyst Michael Silver notes, is obviously of little help to XP-based organizations. Of course, Windows 7 does have its much talked about XP Mode, but Silver says that won't help many businesses since their IT departments would still be faced with the added workload resulting from managing a whole new OS. There are, however, a few workarounds, like Microsoft's Software Assurance Program, but those all involve an added cost, added work, or both.

[Kento @ Jun 18th 2009 2:40AM]

SO, XP still the best OS for business

[DR House @ Jun 18th 2009 2:50AM]

Its not, its just those small companies is too lazy to update there software/hardware and run cheap computers that barley even work to begin with

[Shinigami @ Jun 18th 2009 3:00AM]

Small companies using XP, running machines that barely run and having problems being unable to downgrade to XP?
Since when governmental structures = small companies?

[Mark Anderson @ Jun 18th 2009 3:04AM]

For maybe another year.

Upgrade path will be XP -> Vista -> W7. Vista's been out for two years and is stable, W7 is unproven as a corporate platform. Kind of a no brainer.

Of course, the usual muppets who know nothing about corporate business will trot out drivel about Vista and then, two years down the line, trot out that W7 is a failure because it hasn't secure 50% of the market. Fortunately nobody in the industry cares what they think.

[mike @ Jun 18th 2009 5:20AM]

also known as "the reason they're using junky PC's with Xp in the first place"

come on, Windows marketshare includes friggin Cash Registers at Walmart, you think any of these people give a rats ass that Windows 7 has Aero Peek? A wannabe OS X dock? Pshh.

Windows for Client side business (the cheaper the better, pirated is best)
Mac for Home (with Bootcamp if you need Windows for work stuff)
Linux for Servers

Needless to say, in 2009, we don't have to play games on the COMPUTER anymore... we have a ton of alternatives. Females.

[darkmax @ Jun 18th 2009 3:10AM]

nay not the companies, its their tech dept that are lazy. After feeding all these years for nothing or minimal work, you expect them to get back into gear for complete overhaul?... yeah right. they'll likely crash your server first.

[Giroro @ Jun 18th 2009 4:07AM]

Where's my Windows 2000 downgrade option? DAMN YOU MICROSOFT FOR DISCONTINUING AN ANCIENT OS!!!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!

[Tristan King @ Jun 18th 2009 4:48AM]

Actually, the biggest cost for the whole exercise is usually training and compatibility testing. The licenses cost nothing in comparison to this. Every time an os is upgraded, helpdesk work usually triples or more for a while.

[Mark Anderson @ Jun 18th 2009 7:06AM]

For the hard of learning in this thread I'd just like to point out that we only updated to XP in 2005/6. Like XP to Vista will be it was a kernel transition (NT to XP) which is actually easier to do than you think - although you have to be careful.

Not an issue. Move on.

[iphonerulez @ Jun 18th 2009 7:28AM]

Windows XP 4ever. Windows 7 is Vista's younger brother and business will probably be shy to upgrade. Microsoft should just give Windows 7 away to get users to upgrade. Apple dropped PPC support from Snow Leopard. So what? Leopard wasn't a Vista-type disaster and neither was Tiger. I'm still running Tiger on my older G4 machines and they run perfectly. They're very stable. I think I'm more interested in stability than slight gains in speed or extra features. I'm looking to upgrade to a new Intel machine and it will run Snow Leopard. No biggie.

I believe businesses should always run stable equipment and if they don't feel a need to upgrade their hardware, then that's their choice. Windows 7 is going to have to prove itself for at least a short period of time before mass upgrading begins. I have personally never had any major problems running Windows XP as long as I had Kaspersky AV running at all times. WinXP is quick and stable on current hardware, so what's the beef.

I think businesses should at least wait another year before adopting Windows 7 so they have plenty of time to test it on various hardware configurations. There is no need to rush.

[Shotgun @ Jun 18th 2009 9:23AM]

@mike

You're my hero

Anyway... since my company entered a select agreement with MS a year ago and we bought hundreds of vista licenses with no intention of upgrading to it.. ever.. we are now looking into how much more money we will have to throw away to upgrade all our XP/Vista licenses to Win7. From what I remember the select agreement does not cover new OS licenses, only upgrades.

[OneLove @ Jun 18th 2009 11:24AM]

@iphonerulez: Windows 7 is vistas slutty little sister. She plays nice with all the boys and they cant wait for her to grow up and leave the house.

[John @ Jun 18th 2009 11:45AM]

Not to be the one raining on the Windows hating parade, but what exactly are IT professionals paid for? Of course there are headaches and roadbumps as there are with any profession, but last I checked, these guys make a decent living off of keeping infrastructures running. You can't really fault Microsoft for encouraging people to upgrade. Get your IT guys in there for a weekend when no one's working and upgrade the whole office. Problem solved.

[The Angry Intern @ Jun 18th 2009 12:14PM]

@John: the problem with doing that is on Monday when Joe and Jane user come in and go WTF? The problem is not on the backend, that won't change, it'll stay the same *nix and windows servers, it's the average user who has no idea what Windows 7 is and will be pissed that their desktop doesn't look exactly the same as it did the previous Friday and although nothing has really changed other than the look, they won't know what to do and will be calling the helpdesk all frantic that they can't find minesweeper or their IM program.

[third @ Jun 19th 2009 4:43AM]

You know, I'm getting tired to some people who're still rushing to do some last minute bash to Windows 7. It's over, people have spoken. Windows 7 IS GREAT. We are now just waiting for the general availability.

[FyreFlareon @ Jun 18th 2009 2:43AM]

There was a point before Xp, when nobody had Xp. And they had to transition to Xp. I don't see why it's so difficult now.

[Kelvinyam @ Jun 18th 2009 2:54AM]

Transition cost money. And money means a lot to organizations at this period of time. That's all. It's indeed not that difficult.

[vypergts @ Jun 18th 2009 7:51AM]

It's like the DTV transition all over again...

[JamesR @ Jun 18th 2009 9:46AM]

Because drama sells in the media.

You could pull up news articles from when XP was released and it would all sound the same. This type of stuff is going to happen, OS's will change and business needs to deal with it.

[Waveblade @ Jun 18th 2009 2:43AM]

Basically businesses will never upgrade



What else is new?

[cg0def @ Jun 18th 2009 5:14AM]

Yeah they will. Most companies that held off on vista a long overdue for hardware upgrades. And what most people are forgetting is that MS basically forces OEMs to sell the newest version of the OS i.e. Windows 7 in a couple of months. Actually the contracts between MS and OEMs are such that you are even allowed to sell computers with an older version of the OS. You can sell an older version but the customer pays for both if they choose to use the older one.

So basically even if the new version is complete shit ( which it's not this time around ) MS is assured that people will buy it and most likely use it.

[TheBDJ @ Jun 18th 2009 8:52AM]

@cg0def - Alas, many of these same companies you mention have their own licensing agreements with Microsoft and install the operating system of their choice. This is sort of volume licensing is very common and it is very rare to see a shop that relies solely on the OEM license a machine ships with.

I have worked for multiple companies of varying size and all of them used a volume licensing agreement or a Microsoft Action Pack (which is essentially volume licensing for small companies) to install the OS and tools they need. Businesses do not in reality rely on OEM installs of the OS.

[Kumar @ Jun 18th 2009 9:43AM]

Being one of those businesses you refer to:

If I upgraded to Vista, none of our 3rd party financial software would work, as it's not been released yet. Since I work at a financial institution, it would be plain silly to upgrade, as we wouldn't be able to operate.

The failure of Vista has worked out quite nicely for many businesses if you stop and think about it. In this economy, an upgrade delay meant that we didn't move to Office/Exchange 2007. So now when we go to Windows 7, we'll go with Office 2010, which may have some excellent features to cut costs for small business.

It's a nightmare for MS to miss out on a whole product cycle of revenue.

[kal326 @ Jun 18th 2009 10:37AM]

@TheBDJ
The thing about the OEM license is that it at least has to be there. No Vol License, Action Pack or otherwise, allows you to use those licenses on bare steel drive boxes. They have to have an OEM or retail licensed version of some version of Windows installed to use those licenses. We have a ton of Vista Basic licenses that we are not using because we had to have something on the box from the factory to install XP Pro through Vol License.

On another note, since most business use the Pro/Business version of Windows I see Win7 grabbing some ground just from the VirtXP license that is included along for free with Win7 Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate/etc. As long as you have business class desktops from the last 3 or so years you have hardware virtualization enabled systems. Get at least 2GB of ram and you can run Win7 and WinXP side by side for most any apps compatibility. You still have to validate the app will work in virtualized XP, but at least they you don't have to reload every single box once you can make a full transition to an updated version that works in Win 7. Just my two cents.

[Dillinger @ Jun 18th 2009 11:40AM]

You would have to be batshit insane to try and deploy either of these OS's in a serious business environment for at least another 2 years. In the industry i do IT for, Commercial Contracting and Construction, there is only 1 out of the 10 estimating programs that runs on vista and it doesn’t do it well.

Ill keep saying this until im blue in the face. They should keep XP which is pretty much a nice version of 2000, for the corporate world, and continue to support it indefinitely, which would mean writing a real 64 bit version and not a POS one.

Then they should move on with win7 as a consumer OS and not try to push this on the enterprise which wants to buy the cheapest machine running as fast as possible, with as little add ons as possible.

[Phenoum @ Jun 18th 2009 1:01PM]

@ dillinger and Kumar

umm - right click the program, properties, comatibility, windows XP mode.

aaannnndd - your BS excuse is useless....

Oh - and upgrade those shite programs that are running "only" in XP. Companies upgrade CAD, Solidworks, Maple, CS4, etc all the time. Stay in the game son - it's the cost of business.....

[Byrdman @ Jun 18th 2009 1:10PM]

@Dillinger

No, Microsoft should not keep XP around indefinitely. The software companies should start making their programs work with Vista/7. As soon as Microsoft announced Windows Vista and gave copies to developers to start working on their software, they should have started working on a Vista version of their software. Instead what they do is nothing and say that Vista is garbage.

All of the BS with people saying that Vista sucks is mostly due to lazy IT people and software Devs that wont code for it. Well no shit its gonna suck if you can't use the software you need, but don't blame Microsoft, blame the people who are coding your software and are too lazy to create a version for an OS that has been out for 2.5 years already.

[Hiro @ Jun 18th 2009 2:45AM]

So what does that mean for my company of 5000 computers all running windows 95? FREAKIN MICROSOFT OMG! HOW DARE THEY COME OUT WITH A NEW OS!

[Andrea @ Jun 18th 2009 2:59AM]

If your company is still running Windows95 on 5000 computers, I would have serious doubts about it's financial situation. Worry about your job, not the OS your computer is running.

[tcc3 @ Jun 18th 2009 9:01AM]

woosh

[Shadoblak @ Jun 18th 2009 2:46AM]

MS in a week: we changed it now stfu
Businesses: *BITCHBITCHBITCHBITCH1998BITCHBITCH*

[Rocketboy @ Jun 18th 2009 10:40AM]

Engadget - "ZMG WINDOWZ SUXXXXZZZZZ iPHONE 4 EVAR@!@!@!!!!!!@!@!1112!!2121"

[jakem @ Jun 18th 2009 2:48AM]

I can't believe this crap is doing the rounds. This is InfoWorld!! Remember their Save XP campaign? This is all just a lot of nonsense.

[Beastage @ Jun 18th 2009 7:26AM]

I agree, infoworld are ridiculously anti-MS, most of their vista news were nothing but fud.

[Joseph @ Jun 18th 2009 2:49AM]

Good, sometimes businesses need to be forced to upgrade. I'm looking forward to the day that Windows XP bites the dust; as a web developer, I'd love to see IE6 a thing of the past.

[Kyle B @ Jun 18th 2009 12:06PM]

Thankfully a few people on here know what's up. Windows XP as a platform doesn't just have legacy support, it IS LEGACY. Most Windows XP users still have IE6 as their default browser, and never bothered to upgrade. Which is why the web still has something like 15-30% of the visitors to a site running IE6 (variation depends on the type of website, I'd assume Engadget's percentage is pretty low).

Windows XP had its day, it was an amazing home user upgrade from 95/98/ME, but its time has long passed, it's 2009 now, it's time to move on.

[gareth @ Jun 18th 2009 2:55AM]

Microsoft is a disaster period.

[Hiro @ Jun 18th 2009 2:58AM]

As is your comment ..

[dkrift @ Jun 18th 2009 5:04AM]

Yeah, that 90% market share is horrible.

[peshue @ Jun 18th 2009 3:09AM]

So is your punctuation.

[StephenD @ Jun 18th 2009 3:47AM]

I presume you are Welsh...

[shaunisadirty @ Jun 18th 2009 9:55AM]

Yup...which is why the vast majority of people still use Microsoft software.

[Mark Anderson @ Jun 18th 2009 2:27PM]

You're a period, disaster.

[rrmasilionis @ Jun 18th 2009 3:00AM]

"Of course, Windows 7 does have its much talked about XP Mode, but Silver says that won't help many businesses since their IT departments would still be faced with the added workload resulting from managing a whole new OS."

Ok...If you're in IT - chances are you have tried the Windows 7 beta or RC or at least looked up a lot of the new features. I'd say the majority of people in IT love computing altogether and spend a lot of time outside of work computing/working on computer related project.

If an IT department can't figure out how to manage Windows 7, then you need to find some new IT staff. Vista is not different enough from XP to bitch about. It's a performance hog...OK. Windows 7 fixes that. Businesses still relying on XP need to realize it's time to grow up. Hardware has improved significantly and any new computer runs Windows Vista just fine (Netbooks don't count...). The XP mode of Windows 7 is only good for applications that NEED XP to run...as in Microsoft has not assisted in making them compatible with Vista/7. I really doubt many organization will need this. Any popular program now pretty much has support for Vista/7. If you're using an XP dependent program...you need to bug the software developer. If other software companies can change their code to make things work for Vista/7...then so can that software company. Don't blame Microsoft because software companies are being lazy and don't want to make their products compatible. You'd be pointing the finger in the wrong direction.

[Steve @ Jun 18th 2009 5:01AM]

This is a great example of people not getting why it's so difficult to upgrade in some organisations. I work for a university and we're currently about halfway through a year-long program to roll out Office 2007 along with a new XP build. Yes, XP not Vista. Why XP? Because we've got a LOT of specalist software that doesn't work on Vista and we have to support it because a) some classes still need that software and b) PHD students typically spend up to five years on their course and you can't switch software mid-stream in case it breaks something.

We're going to start rolling out Vista sometime in 2010 because by that point it will be a proven OS and we'll have had time to test it. Bearing in mind we're already pushed to the limit in terms of supporting several thousand computers that are essentially public access machines in an environment that we simply can't lock down without crippling the ability of students to work, finding time to test Vista builds with ten or more different hardware specs and tens if not hundreds of software packages isn't particularly easy. While it would be great to shift to 7 it's simply too big a risk to do so before there's been at least a year or two of real-world use behind it.

It may only be a university but the operational procedures are the same as that behind ANY business that considers computer access business critical - treat anything new as a potential point of failure and test the crap out of it. If what you've got works only upgrade if there's a DAMN good reason for doing so. Vista never really provided that (we're only starting to move in 2010 as newer software & hardware will start to drop support for XP. That and better security) and even 7 isn't really a must have upgrade functionality wise. It's not a case of being lazy or cheap - it's a case of not changing for the sake of change and ensuring that your computer facilities offer as close to 100% uptime as possible.

[Templarian @ Jun 18th 2009 8:35AM]

@Steve, the University I work for is skipping Windows Vista and will be using Windows 7 on all their main lab machines by 2010. Your IT department sounds to be pretty bad. Although tbh, it did take till a year ago to upgrade all faculty computers to Vista, but that was because faculty only gets new computers every 4 years.

[JamesR @ Jun 18th 2009 9:55AM]

Templarian said: "Your IT department sounds to be pretty bad"

This type of attitude is everywhere in the IT business and I can't stand it. Every IT dept. is full of idiots except for the one you happen to be working for which is dealing with issues that no other dept. deals blah blah blah.

Every IT dept. deals with issues beyond their control and are typically staffed with competent people who do the best they can to work in very challenging environments.

Eh, I just wish the whole "those guys must be idiots" culture in IT would change to something more professional.

[Hiattech @ Jun 18th 2009 10:32AM]

@Steve and Templarian. Neither of you mentioned the size of said University. So it's not a fair assumption from Templarian that IT might be bad at Steves college. He does bring up a good point that the software can't just be upgraded in the middle of a program without making changes to said program, thus setting students back. A lot of College/University IT depts are understaffed. I work at a 2 yr college so we don't quite deal with as many computers as you 2 are used to. We have chosen to skip Vista as well, partially due to some people in our department refusing to let go of the bad reviews and such that Vista has. We also will be rolling out by mid 2010.

We loaded up Vista and W7 RC on seperate machines with same specs (2.6Ghz P4, 1gig ram, 40gig hdd, the average spec of the computers here), same programs etc, and they both ran just fine and and pretty much the same speed. Vista Business edition is definitely not bad. I have W7 RC at home and love it. Been kinda hard to get used to some things, but any of my really old programs that I sometimes had a difficult time even getting them to work on XP, run just fine on W7. Drop it into compatibility mode and it's been smooth sailing. I haven't had much experience with Vista compatibility mode so I can't say. I would skip Vista myself simply because W7 is much better.

I understand IT wanting to wait for it to be proven, but the excuse that people wouldn't want to upgrade due to hardware is somewhat lacking. As mentioned in the hardware specs above, W7 doesn't need really high end to work fine. I have it installed on a 4yr old laptop at home and I sometimes feel like it's faster than XP was on there. Anywho, my 2 cents.

[Hung @ Jun 18th 2009 11:16AM]

Some individuals expect to purchase something and have it working forever, relying on competent technicians to fix any problems. Much like a car. I expect a car to last 100k miles and for the mechanics to both maintain and fix the car.

However, when a business is relying on a '98 Buick as the company car, problems arise. The car will need to be taken in more often and the reliability decreases.

I understand the need for a company to withhold upgrades, but it severely impedes progress. Emory Universityhas support for XP, Vista, and OSX 10.5. Every campus computer runs either XP or OSX, as people have different needs and if they were confined to XP or OSX, then their productivity would be affected. It'd be easier for the IT dept to stick with XP or OSX, but the students would suffer. If consumer technology is advancing, why shouldn't research fields follow suit? I work in a lab as well and daily transition from XP, Vista, Mac, and even Windows 95 (we're too cheap to get a modern imager).Yes, every OS has its unique purpose, but why shouldn't we strive for better technology?

If it works, don't fix it? That's the kind of attitude that fosters stagnation. Progress is a goal, not a side-effect.

[Byrdman @ Jun 18th 2009 1:22PM]

At the University at Buffalo we have had all of our machines upgraded to Vista Enterprise, except for the art department, which is running OSX 10.5.7, for over a year now. And there are approximately 28,000 students here. Wasn't a big issue to upgrade either. I've talked to IT people here and they said it went very smooth and will probably be upgrading to 7 in a couple of years.