Are You Among the “Lucky†Ones that Can Skip Vista and Go Straight to Windows 7? Published : December 10, 2007 | Author : Windows Category : Windows XP Vista | Total Views : 7 | Unrated Print | Email to friend -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you among the "lucky" ones that can skip Windows Vista altogether and go straight to Windows 7? Well... it is largely a matter of perspective. Microsoft is making headway with Vista adoption having shipped in excess of 88 million copies of the operating system, one year after the product was released to manufacturing. By the end of 2007, Vista's uptake might just hit the 100 million sold licenses worldwide, even though the Redmond company would count the copies pushed to its channel partners. And while Vista is slowly eroding Windows XP's dominance, dislodging slices of market share every month, upgrading and migrating to the latest Windows client is still regarded as a task worthy of Sisyphus. In this context, and due to the apparent proximity of Windows 7, users and businesses have already starting looking ahead to the next iteration of the Windows platform, planning to skip Windows Vista altogether. This trend, although common to both home and corporate environments, is specific of the later. The fact of the matter is that end users can be swayed either way. In this regard, Vista Service Pack 1 will be a turning point, having the chance to represent a clean start for the operating system. At the same time, as the operating system will be the exclusive Windows client bundled with original equipment manufacturers starting in mid 2008, Vista will only go up. Still, by next year, over 75% of Windows users worldwide will still be running XP. This percentage will undoubtedly drop in the coming three years, but it still remains to be seen if Vista's growth manages to kick its predecessor from the number 1 position on the operating system market by 2010, when Windows 7 is planned. With such a large install base for Windows XP, it is also likely that support for third-party components integrated with the platform will continue throughout the operating system's life-cycle. When it comes down to home users, they could, of course, skip Vista altogether and ride XP for all it's got. This would mean that by 2010, they will be running a nine-year-old operating system. And of course, there's little guarantee that Windows 7 will drop in just three years. Small businesses with flexible IT environments are in the same situation as individual users. Not the same can be said about corporations. Ignoring Vista could, in fact, bring nothing but trouble along the way, warned Gartner research vice president Michael Silver. "Organizations' Windows Vista deployment plans generally are running late. With many Vista deployments set to begin in late 2008 or early 2009, and with Microsoft discussing the next release for late 2009, pressure will mount to skip Windows Vista entirely. We believe this is a risky proposition", Silver said in a research titled "Don't Skip Windows Vista Entirely". The main issues are lack of support from third-party software developers in the future, and potential delays affecting Windows 7. With Sinofsky at the helm of the Windows 7 development, Microsoft is aiming to give a guarantee of the delivery date. And the current pace of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 are indications that Microsoft is in full throttle when it comes to future releases under the Windows umbrella. Come 2010, enterprises still running a pre-Vista platform could face not only support problems, but also the perspective of a forced and immediate migration to Windows 7, in the context of an ecosystem not sufficiently mature for the upcoming operating system.