Windows XP Costs 5x More to Manage Than Windows 7

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Microsoft is switching its tactics in an effort to get businesses to make a switch over to Windows 7 from the aging Windows XP. Instead of pressing the issue of security (which they are still pushing), the company is now targeting the bottom line of a business still running 11 year old software.

The magic milestone is after the three-year mark, when "costs begin to accelerate" because of additional IT and help desk time, and increased user downtime due to more security woes and time spent rebooting, said IDC.
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Make a more solid version of windows and people will switch. Vista didn't help the XP crowd. Windows 7 did. POS Windows 8 will not help the XP nor the Windows 7 crowd.

Good job microsoft
 
Oh hey MICROSOFT is the one saying how much more it would cost to support. That's like letting the oil industry dictate efficiency standards for cars.
 
The report talks about costs after 4-5 years going up, that was probably hardware. The next paragraph they start by saying the OS has a part in that increase but never really say how much.
 
Ignoring the uniformed hate, the reality is they are correct. While the actual number could be arguable depending on the company environment. The reality is it is more resource consuming to maintain XP as opposed to 7. I now operate a 100% XP free environment which breaks down to about 95% win 7 and a handful of Vista machines that should be aging out EOY. The amount of work I invest into maintaining the individual machines has dropped drastically and it isn't due to hardware. The large majority of the machines are on the same hardware it was just a software upgrade.

Granted this can't apply to all environments. There are some that it is going to take quite a bit of third party vendor changes to even consider it and obviously that can't be helped.
 
Why not Zoidberg, I mean Linux over Windows?
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/05/26/0016235/ask-slashdot-why-not-linux-for-security

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Dekoth-E- said:
Ignoring the uniformed hate, the reality is they are correct. While the actual number could be arguable depending on the company environment. The reality is it is more resource consuming to maintain XP as opposed to 7. I now operate a 100% XP free environment which breaks down to about 95% win 7 and a handful of Vista machines that should be aging out EOY. The amount of work I invest into maintaining the individual machines has dropped drastically and it isn't due to hardware. The large majority of the machines are on the same hardware it was just a software upgrade.

Granted this can't apply to all environments. There are some that it is going to take quite a bit of third party vendor changes to even consider it and obviously that can't be helped.
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Ok but how does it cost more to maintain? Nobody explains this. I certainly don't see how it could cost 5X as much.
 
Ashbringer said:
Ok but how does it cost more to maintain? Nobody explains this. I certainly don't see how it could cost 5X as much.
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I said the amount is arguable.

How does it cost more?

1) It time invested in dealing with security compromised machines
2) IT time invested in reloading machines due to the plethora of reasons XP decides to just quit working.
3) Work productivity lost while a machine is down.

Those being the big three things that come to mind. Dealing with broken XP machines is one of the biggest unnecessary timesinks for most It departments. There are far better uses of our time.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I said the amount is arguable.

How does it cost more?

1) It time invested in dealing with security compromised machines
2) IT time invested in reloading machines due to the plethora of reasons XP decides to just quit working.
3) Work productivity lost while a machine is down.

Those being the big three things that come to mind. Dealing with broken XP machines is one of the biggest unnecessary timesinks for most It departments. There are far better uses of our time.
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You are correct. However, for the vast majority of businesses doing cost/benefit analysis (whether formal or back of napkin), it is STILL cheaper to remain with XP. Microsoft can do what they like but, there will ALWAYS be a longer lag in business adoption of new OS' than what Microsoft would like.
 
Magnus said:
You are correct. However, for the vast majority of businesses doing cost/benefit analysis (whether formal or back of napkin), it is STILL cheaper to remain with XP. Microsoft can do what they like but, there will ALWAYS be a longer lag in business adoption of new OS' than what Microsoft would like.
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Oh I know, though I am skeptical about it being the "vast" majority of businesses still. XP installs are pretty steadily declining.:)
 
IT skyrocketed in business general usage during the many years of Windows XP. Many shops were built up around it. Moving away is painful for a few reasons:

1. Apps. There are many, many (infinite?) number of apps out there, and many are going to not necessarily work on Vista+. Many of these apps were written by contractors or people no longer around. Reworking internal business stuff to accomodate a new OS is painful, to say the least. (This is arguable that inertia can work both ways, and having an agile IT long-term is nicely oiled...)

2. Users and IT support have gotten really good at managing things like XP. Learning a new OS is actually tough and takes effort. IT is one of those areas where you can work 20 years and never be able to let up on the learning, unlike many traditional fields. We nearly start over during times like this.

3. Licensing/software assurance models from Microsoft are growing tiresome, especially if a shop went 3+ years without a real upgrade, effectively wasting the whole license cost and administrative work. (This is more than just Windows, but any Microsoft product that suffered that fate, SQL, Office, etc.)

And blah blah blah. It also doesn't help that consumerization/BYOD has sprung up to compete with the cost outlay, and so on.

TLDR: It's not a surprise that business IT is behind adoption. There are more costs than just up-front hardware and recurring licensing costs from Microsoft and a few points of productivity loss from moving someone's cheese that has used XP for 10 years.
 
Its funny so many people are saying windows 7 reduces their IT workload when in fact its done the opposite for us. Our windows XP machines are secure, people know how to use them, and much easier to fix when there is problems.

The only reason i would say XP creates more downtime is because its running on 7 year old machines that have faulty motherboards, memory, or hard drives. not because its software.

Windows 7 frustrates our end users and has had plenty of printing problems.
 
LonerVamp said:
IT skyrocketed in business general usage during the many years of Windows XP. Many shops were built up around it. Moving away is painful for a few reasons:

1. Apps. There are many, many (infinite?) number of apps out there, and many are going to not necessarily work on Vista+. Many of these apps were written by contractors or people no longer around. Reworking internal business stuff to accomodate a new OS is painful, to say the least. (This is arguable that inertia can work both ways, and having an agile IT long-term is nicely oiled...)

2. Users and IT support have gotten really good at managing things like XP. Learning a new OS is actually tough and takes effort. IT is one of those areas where you can work 20 years and never be able to let up on the learning, unlike many traditional fields. We nearly start over during times like this.

3. Licensing/software assurance models from Microsoft are growing tiresome, especially if a shop went 3+ years without a real upgrade, effectively wasting the whole license cost and administrative work. (This is more than just Windows, but any Microsoft product that suffered that fate, SQL, Office, etc.)

And blah blah blah. It also doesn't help that consumerization/BYOD has sprung up to compete with the cost outlay, and so on.

TLDR: It's not a surprise that business IT is behind adoption. There are more costs than just up-front hardware and recurring licensing costs from Microsoft and a few points of productivity loss from moving someone's cheese that has used XP for 10 years.
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I agree with this a thousand time over! Even at the little firm I work for, upgrading to a new OS would render the existing accounting unusable and due to the large number of version changes. Moreover, after buying a new license to replace what should be otherwise fully functional software I would not be able to import all the old data. So in addition to my regular workload I would need to re-input all the business checking and trust account checking going back into the 1990's! Thank you, but I think I will keep that computer running XP.
 
For the IT shops still crying about moving to Windows 7: go ahead and stay with your shitty XP installs. Just don't expect the rest of the world to remain in the boondocks with you. I remember the same crying over moving away from NT.
 
techtips said:
Make a more solid version of windows and people will switch. Vista didn't help the XP crowd. Windows 7 did. POS Windows 8 will not help the XP nor the Windows 7 crowd.

Good job microsoft
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How about you stop being an asshole and wait for the OS to come out before making your uneducated opinions.
 
swatX said:
How about you stop being an asshole and wait for the OS to come out before making your uneducated opinions.
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How about you stop taking it to heart, asshole. I worked for HP when vista came out and dealt with the problems. Windows 8 will be similar IMO jackass

But this isn't a "Windows 8 hate or love thread* so gtfo you rat bastard
 
KENNYB said:
For the IT shops still crying about moving to Windows 7: go ahead and stay with your shitty XP installs. Just don't expect the rest of the world to remain in the boondocks with you. I remember the same crying over moving away from NT.
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+1 to this.
It's time to get away from XP.

If one's company is using software that is proprietary with XP, I would say it's time to either upgrade or get into a new business.
Come on, it's been 11 years. :rolleyes:
 
I can understand why people would be unwilling to change without great consideration first. Talking to the IT guys at work it's mind boggling the amount of money that has been spent upgrading software that didn't need upgrading and changing from one program or system to another that had perceived advantages (often resulting in losing features that people still needed because the guys in charge of making the decisions didn't actually understand the consequences).
 
I've been adhering to the "if it ain't broke don't fix it, but if it is - just replace it" mantra.

Moved a bunch of old celeron XP boxes to the recycle bin doing this. It just takes some time to get them all.
 
Red Falcon said:
+1 to this.
It's time to get away from XP.

If one's company is using software that is proprietary with XP, I would say it's time to either upgrade or get into a new business.
Come on, it's been 11 years. :rolleyes:
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Unfortunately the ones using proprietary software that only runs on XP are often there because the software manufacturer doesn't want to provide an upgrade. I have an IT friend that still operates a few Win 9x boxes with ISA slots because the drivers can't be upgraded. The machinery that these boxes operate is too costly to upgrade (CNC types) and so you get by with what you have. Granted these machines are not normally connected to the internet and are intended for highly specialized tasks, but they are still out there.
 
I used to work at a little place and the machines were so worn out; old computers, that probably needed the dust cleaned out for years.. I'm not sure why there were so slow. But that place can't afford anything as it has been on the verge of bankruptcy and in bankruptcy; a little print shop.

A lot of time wasted waiting for the computer to do simple stuff. But they can't really afford to stay in business either.

I haven't learned about the ins and outs of running businesses into the ground like that yet though. There must be some strategy to it...
 
I actually think that because of the amount of pain and effort it's going to take to get business to upgrade to Windows 7, Microsoft is never going to seriously mess with the core of "desktop" Windows again and most of the "innovation" will be in Metro. Any app designed for Vista should work in WIndows 7 and Windows 8, and likely 9 and 10 as well.
 
bbenz33 said:
Unfortunately the ones using proprietary software that only runs on XP are often there because the software manufacturer doesn't want to provide an upgrade. I have an IT friend that still operates a few Win 9x boxes with ISA slots because the drivers can't be upgraded. The machinery that these boxes operate is too costly to upgrade (CNC types) and so you get by with what you have. Granted these machines are not normally connected to the internet and are intended for highly specialized tasks, but they are still out there.
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That's a time bomb just waiting to explode. What happens when one of the computer parts fails? You can't honestly tell me you're going to go down to your local Best Buy and get some replacement parts. The amount of productivity lost when replacing that computer is so huge that if a company ignores upgrading it (at it's peril), they are in for a rude awakening in the future.
 
bbenz33 said:
Unfortunately the ones using proprietary software that only runs on XP are often there because the software manufacturer doesn't want to provide an upgrade. I have an IT friend that still operates a few Win 9x boxes with ISA slots because the drivers can't be upgraded. The machinery that these boxes operate is too costly to upgrade (CNC types) and so you get by with what you have. Granted these machines are not normally connected to the internet and are intended for highly specialized tasks, but they are still out there.
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I would ask your IT friend what he or she will do when that computer breaks down. It's going to break down eventually.
 
Don't get me wrong, I would prefer to stay current than be in the mess that people had with lingering NT or 2000 servers sitting around for legacy apps.

The problem is the value proposition to the business' bottom line. It might cost less to maintain Windows 7, but there are barriers.

- Does Windows 7 add something that business needs?

- What are the costs to upgrade? (For instance, most business *needs* to upgrade the hardware as well, which is a hard line on the budget, though curiously needs to be done anyway as systems lifetime/depreciate out...)

- Staff training/new staff.

- Will the business accept the added risks/costs of a learning curve both for administration but also users?

I'm lucky to work in a shop that will take security seriously and sunset systems when support is out, but there are plenty of places who just can't budget in a change like this and get it approved due to lack of value add and poor long-term IT planning (read: stuck with legacy apps). :(
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Ignoring the uniformed hate, the reality is they are correct. While the actual number could be arguable depending on the company environment. The reality is it is more resource consuming to maintain XP as opposed to 7. I now operate a 100% XP free environment which breaks down to about 95% win 7 and a handful of Vista machines that should be aging out EOY. The amount of work I invest into maintaining the individual machines has dropped drastically and it isn't due to hardware. The large majority of the machines are on the same hardware it was just a software upgrade.

Granted this can't apply to all environments. There are some that it is going to take quite a bit of third party vendor changes to even consider it and obviously that can't be helped.
Click to expand...

This.

A small architectural firm I take care of is now 100% XP free and when I read this it really sank in how much less they've needed me since moving to 7. Same hardware too...

Honestly it works almost too well, now they don't have to pay me because everything works. I can definitely see the cost savings.
 
Microsoft just needs to stop patching XP, 11 years is too long to continue supporting an OS. Anyone left on XP can just rot. That would make our (developers) lives much easier.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Ignoring the uniformed hate, the reality is they are correct. While the actual number could be arguable depending on the company environment. The reality is it is more resource consuming to maintain XP as opposed to 7. I now operate a 100% XP free environment which breaks down to about 95% win 7 and a handful of Vista machines that should be aging out EOY. The amount of work I invest into maintaining the individual machines has dropped drastically and it isn't due to hardware. The large majority of the machines are on the same hardware it was just a software upgrade.
Click to expand...

I'm working on geting all the systems in my office on Windows 7 by the end of the year, as I seem to have less problems (and viruses) on the Windows 7 systems. Because of some of the older hardware (single core P4 systems) I did have to start using the 32 bit version.

I also found the perfomance of Windows 7 32bit & Office 2010 to be better than XP/Office 2007 on our old P4 systems. Adding a cheap 8GB USB drive (ReadyBoost) improves the speed even more, since the old IDE drives are a bit slow.
 
Teenyman45 said:
I agree with this a thousand time over! Even at the little firm I work for, upgrading to a new OS would render the existing accounting unusable and due to the large number of version changes. Moreover, after buying a new license to replace what should be otherwise fully functional software I would not be able to import all the old data. So in addition to my regular workload I would need to re-input all the business checking and trust account checking going back into the 1990's! Thank you, but I think I will keep that computer running XP.
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The company I work for has very old accounting software (mid 1990's) and it runs fine on Windows 7 32 bit.
Since there isn't any real support for the software anyways, due to how old it is, why be stuck to an outdated "supported" OS? They also only supported it on Windows Server 2000, but with several tweeks I was able to get it running on Windows 2003, and they are happy that thier reports now run 2-3 times faster.
 
dagamer34 said:
That's a time bomb just waiting to explode. What happens when one of the computer parts fails? You can't honestly tell me you're going to go down to your local Best Buy and get some replacement parts. The amount of productivity lost when replacing that computer is so huge that if a company ignores upgrading it (at it's peril), they are in for a rude awakening in the future.
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Either Ebay for parts, or keep a couple old spare computers around.

Sometimes it's just not worth upgrading when what you already have is working.

One part of the company I work for is on a downward business cycle (the other part is growing, so the company is doing good overall). This part still profitable, but every year the revenues drops.
It's not worth investing in rewriting the custom software they use or even buying a bunch of new systems.
If the company had to spend that much money, they would likely just shut the department down. I think it's better to keep the old systems running and keep the people employed :)
 
one of my clients is slowly switching to 7 as they replace computers and has been doing so for about a year now.
They currently run about 50 7 computers and 30 xp.

The support costs are exactly the same for both once we found stable printer and scanner drivers for 7.
Before that 7 was more expensive while we searched for stable drivers.
The printing subsystem and still sucks as bad in 7 as it did in xp.

I would say that 2/3 of the support calls that are not just id 10 t errors are printer related over the last year. Most of the rest are browser related issues. IE is just as bad on both platforms.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Oh I know, though I am skeptical about it being the "vast" majority of businesses still. XP installs are pretty steadily declining.:)
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New installs are declining but the businesses that already use it aren't buying more licenses and they're not installing 7. All the folks here grumbling about businesses sticking with XP need to realize that the enthusiast users who frequent these forums are in the vast minority.
 
dont forget government proprietary software that only runs on WIn XP.

the porting and testing of a win7 port is going to be astronomical.

and when it finally reaches a VERSIOn, win 7 i going out the window, thanks win8 ,ROFLMAO.
 
KENNYB said:
For the IT shops still crying about moving to Windows 7: go ahead and stay with your shitty XP installs. Just don't expect the rest of the world to remain in the boondocks with you. I remember the same crying over moving away from NT.
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I can't figure out why an XP install would be shitty, since where I work we have had XP machines that have been running trouble free for years, many of which only get rebooted if we have a power outage, maybe once a year or longer. I even have a couple NT machines that work the same way. We don't have trouble maybe because they are not running Office or a bunch of other MS software.

A reason for us not to upgrade is because our machines are attached to pieces of equipment that cost about $100k each, and the upgrade path to Win7 involves upgrading the entire equipment because those vendors have now written software for the older machines that will work with Win7. If $100k per Win7 upgrade sounds like a cheaper maintenance costs, then I would hate to see the expensive ones.
 
I'd have to say most of our trouble tickets were PEBCAKs( problem exists between chair and keyboard). Most of our users are computer illeterate. Changing the OS would probaly end up causing more issues at the user end. Even worse are the users who are the users who do know there way around a computer,lol they can mess things up good.We got rid of all the MACs in our company but in reality for users they were the easiest to use ,but for the support group they were the hardest because we are all PC people. I use win 7 at home and it took a bit of getting used to and I still run xp on my internal gaming network machines because it supports IPX and my gaming friends and I like playing some older network games that only run on IPX networks. WIN 95/98 actually worked better for this. If Win 7 supported IPX it'd be perfect for my home use. In reality I see XP hanging around the workplace for sometime to come.
 
I keep seeing all these posts about how time consuming it is to keep XP working and how easy it is with Win7, but what are those problems? It is actually related to the OS? Honestly I have had very stable computers at work once we got into the NT core software, away from the 9x core. There are NT and 2K boxes at work that some have been running for years without a reboot and still run stable. The ones that we have to reboot are usually the ones that run Excel, which has always caused stability problems especially if you leave it open for days at a time.

The machines in the laboratory also never get updated, simply because updating some of them from XP sp2 to XP sp3 would cause the software to stop working. We can't even install that Agilent software on a sp3 machine as it will plainly give an error warning you that sp3 is installed and refuses to go any further. These machines are stable because the vendors software has been carefully tested and patched to work with one specific version/service pack of the OS, but then it is also more cost effective for them to lock it down to that version than to waste time continually trying to patch the problems the occur when the OS version changes. Staying "up to date" is fine for the office people who only use their computers to write letters, surf the web, and such, but for the machines that are handling tons of constant data acquisition 24/7/365 you just can't be constantly shutting them down for the weekly fixes. Why can't MicroSoft write an OS that is just rock solid, completely tested and bug free and doesn't need weekly fixes? If you had to take your refrigerator back to the store once a week to have it fixed you would not keep it very long, same with your car, or your house, so why are software companies not held to the same standard?
 
quimby999 said:
I'd have to say most of our trouble tickets were PEBCAKs( problem exists between chair and keyboard). Most of our users are computer illeterate. Changing the OS would probaly end up causing more issues at the user end. Even worse are the users who are the users who do know there way around a computer,lol they can mess things up good.We got rid of all the MACs in our company but in reality for users they were the easiest to use ,but for the support group they were the hardest because we are all PC people. I use win 7 at home and it took a bit of getting used to and I still run xp on my internal gaming network machines because it supports IPX and my gaming friends and I like playing some older network games that only run on IPX networks. WIN 95/98 actually worked better for this. If Win 7 supported IPX it'd be perfect for my home use. In reality I see XP hanging around the workplace for sometime to come.
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I ran into the same problem when I got my new Win7 laptop and tried to connect it to my home network or XP and Linux boxes. First it looked easy, Win7 wizard says to make a homegroup, but once you get started you find out that a homegroup only works with other Win7 computers. Then it isn't so easy to get rid of the homegroup and get into the workgroup you already have, at least it wasn't for me doing it the first time. In the past I simply set the group name and done, everything talks to everything else. If I shut down my XP box for very long now the Win7 one seems to have trouble reconnecting.

At work I also noticed that a Win2K machine almost instantly see all the other computers connected to the network, yet when you try to explore the network with a WinXP machine it can takes minutes before the network map shows up, which I believe is associated with how it handles permissions and security differently. Took me forever to even figure out how to map a network drive when I first used Win7 at work, since they moved all the menu locations for stuff like that.
 
Windows 7 was an attempt to erase the Vista fiasco. Its had to be good and not piss people off.

I'm getting pretty convinced they completely forgot any lessons learned are going to pull another Vista.with WIndows 8.

People are going to need to leave XP soon. Hardware itself with simply start to fail. So there is potential wave of upgrades to come. And getting people primed to move off XP directly to Windows 8 is a nice way help promote sales to prevent the appearance of failure. If older Windows 7 customers get a break on Windows 8 purchases, I fully expect it will apply to XP.

I think with Windows 8, if windows 7 is so wonderful as was said here, won't people cling to it like they did XP. Its maybe easier to market Windows 8 to XP users than to WIndows 7 users.
 
jpm100 said:
Windows 7 was an attempt to erase the Vista fiasco. Its had to be good and not piss people off.

I'm getting pretty convinced they completely forgot any lessons learned are going to pull another Vista.with WIndows 8.

People are going to need to leave XP soon. Hardware itself with simply start to fail. So there is potential wave of upgrades to come. And getting people primed to move off XP directly to Windows 8 is a nice way help promote sales to prevent the appearance of failure. If older Windows 7 customers get a break on Windows 8 purchases, I fully expect it will apply to XP.

I think with Windows 8, if windows 7 is so wonderful as was said here, won't people cling to it like they did XP. Its maybe easier to market Windows 8 to XP users than to WIndows 7 users.
Click to expand...

Windows 8 is about consumers. Businesses are currently in the transition to Windows 7 and were never going to move to WIndows 8, no matter how many useful features it added or even if Metro disappeared.

The reason why moving from XP to Vista or 7 is difficult is because of the number of subsystem changes in Vista to make it better, but might break apps. Microsoft isn't going to do that ever again. So if an app is designed for Vista/7, it is probably going to work in Windows 8, 9, and 10 without any problems, thus getting rid of the only reason people stick with XP now "my apps don't work".
 
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