Comments on: The slow road to Windows XP

New study underscores a recurring problem for Microsoft: Convincing customers to upgrade to new versions of its software.

More than just XP

People are missing the fact that any new OS rollout usually
coincides with other rollouts and expenses. It isn't just take a
CD that you're already licenses for (XP) as one poster suggested.

A rollout from 2000-XP would entail either hardware upgrades,
replacement PCs, or explaining to users why their PCs work
more slowly than they did with 2000. If you're migrating from
NT 4.0, you've got even more explaining / upgrading to do.

Then there's Office. Office XP and 2003 are dogs compared to
Office 2000 / Office 97 and offer virtually nothing that a typical
user would either be aware of or use. ** To a business, an OS is
simply a platform to run the applications you want to run,
nothing more. ** <-- that's a key point most 'techies' miss.

On top of all that, there is a learning curve for the users in both
the OS and application rollouts, and even on the hardware
rollout. All of that costs a lot of money both in capital and lost
productivity.

And as usual, the narrow focus on only one of these many
factors makes this article and most comments here meaningless.

Considering Another platform

Perhaps companies are looking to alternatives..

[Office-Lurker]

My mom has a computer

It's a P3 with some x00 Megahertz. She uses the machine for email and some letters. As long as that computer works, she just won't change anything.

The machine runs on W98. Win XP may actually crawl on that computer, but it won't run. So why install it?

Me, i've got an A64 3.8Ghz that came outta the box with WinXP installed. I liked my W2k, but now that i've paid XP and have the resources to do so, i'll just run XP with all the widgets i'll never ever need.-