Discussion on:

Poll: What percentage of your enterprise is still running Windows XP?

Is the current practice of deploying systems changes and upgrades piecemeal, instead of in massive, all-at-once technology migrations, easier or more difficult?

Fleet-wide upgrades are like a snake eating a pig. It's a huge project that draws resources away from more routine support activities. Piecemeal upgrades can be done as part of the normal replacement cycle.

Field deployment can reveal issues that remain despite testing. Fleet-wide deployment means everyone has these problems and they all have to be fixed at once.. Piecemeal means only a few do; once they're dealt with, there's plenty of time to fix the issue for the next system.

The goobermint is a rusty machine. Each step pained by the constant maintenence required just to oil the joints. Most orgs in the .gov are still testing Windows 7.

Example:
A ticket comes in with a Win7 question or issue. The response is "Who let that guy use Win7?", "Are we supporting Win7?", "I don't think it's compatible with that application". I constantly have to remind people that M$ has gone to great lengths to create tools like ACT that can evaluate and sometimes fix compatibility issues. Most are reluctant to even take the ticket.

Ironically, just yesterday I overheard someone talking about a new application that was licensed for use. I remember hearing "Oh, that application was developed for Win7. It may not be completely compatible with WinXP". This is what it is going to take to get them to move.

I'd rather get experience with it on my desk than on a user's. Familiarity will reduce that reluctance to respond.

~95% of my company (about 1000 computers) run windows 2000.

I'm sorry. We retired our last Windows 98 machine (a Slot A Athlon no less) this year, and even I'm in a position to offer you sympathy.

We never visited the versions between 98 and XP.
We usually wait till the version is more stable and offers advantages.
It makes no sense to upgrade if the newer version only offers "it's the latest and greatest" when there is no value in our operation..

That actually is humorous, in the laughing at the misfortune of others kind of way. Don't get me wrong, I like Win2k. It is 2011 and I don't think that it is even safe to have those things connected to the internet.

Funny, I have never had to fix it other than a ram manager. NEVER

Are they running 98?

I'm not surprised at how much XP usage is still out there. I imagine most smaller companies only upgrade when equipment/software stop working.
Out of our current 34 user computers:
19 are still WinXP (56%)
6 are Win7 (only because we NEEDED new computers)(18%)
9 are Mac OSX4-OSX6 (26%)
Piecemeal is all we've ever known.

That is only because you are forced to upgrade your software because they only offer and support the latest and greatest with little or no regard to applicability.

I think only 3 people in our branch of the organization (about 400 people in our branch) have windows 7.

My entire company is still running Windows XP, a couple machines on 2000, and several Macs running 10.5. We run a print management system that isn't compatible with Windows 7.

use ACT to create a shim
XP Mode
App-v
MED-v

In that order. I garuntee that one of those options will work. Do some research and testing. #2 is your best bet because it actually is XP. You may find that App-V gives you other benefits that make it more desirable...

When I took over at the school all were XP (some had XP home actually). I quickly upgraded central server to Server 2008 (print still 2003 as well as web server). Purchased new computers soon thereafter and made sure they came with W7. One student lab is still all XP, everyone else is 7.

Our office maintains about 65 client computers, only 5 or 6 of which are still on XP, and the rest are on Win7 and have been for a few months. The only reason we're not done with the migration is simply because our progress has been slowed due to more urgent projects coming up. However, I'm confident that our total switch to Windows 7 will be completed before the end of the summer.

We are doing piecemeal replacement. We have approx. 8 Win 7 machines and the rest Win XP (100). Although most of our Servers are now on Server 2008 R2 and all of the servers are now virtual servers. We will probably put Win 7 on when we replace old machines.

We followed WIndows up thru 98, then to XP. We have yet to see any value in moving further except for some applications that say we should, because they want us to buy their software or hardware. All of our applications and utilities run just fine on XP, and we would like to know how to upgrade our hardware while keeping XP. That may not be possible much longer. "Pretty" may be important to some, but not our business environment. There is also the change of where everything is, and how it runs, requires too much change in procedures to figure out or adapt. Sorry. XP is just fine for quite a while to come. Seems over 60% still use XP, and less than 25% indicate a desire to move to a more bloated package with little or no value beyond the "trend?"