I recently came across an article by The Economist where they mentioned how “embarrassing” it is for Microsoft that Intel will “continue to use Windows XP on the tens of thousands of PCs it has scattered around its offices, rather than upgrade them to Vista” and that “Vista is never going to be a blockbuster like XP”. (emphasis added)

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard mostly false statements like this, but I expected more from The Economist. This isn’t going to be a post about why you should or should not upgrade to Vista though, it is about the truth surrounding XP’s adoption. The facts after the jump.

Name That Windows Upgrade

If I told you that I had been reading about the “slow, tortoiselike” adoption of a Windows OS, where people were complaining about a slow UI, how some really old peripheral or software wouldn’t work, and where businesses felt the required investment in upgraded hardware “could be cost-prohibitive“, which version would you guess it was? Vista? Well I have news for you, I was reading about Windows XP; Vista’s now (apparently) beloved predecessor.

I have to admit it is a pet peeve of mine when people act like Windows XP was a blockbuster from the get-go because the fact of the matter is it wasn’t. About the news that Intel isn’t switching to Vista yet, guess what? They were really slow to switch to XP too, and it really shouldn’t have been news back then either.

The Speed of Corporate IT

Anyone who has worked in any sort of large scale IT environment knows that businesses do not rush to change the latest version. In 2005 I was working in an IT environment where all 2,000 PCs we had were finally switching over to Windows XP from Windows 2000 after XP had been out for four years. Windows XP’s adoption was a lot like Vista’s is now, primarily people buying new machines, with businesses slowly embracing the upgrade.

When XP launched in 2001 Gartner said that Windows 2000 Pro would “continue to be the leading business version until 2003.” In 2005 AssetMatrix did a study that concluded “that Windows 2000 is installed on 48 percent of all corporate PCs as of the first quarter of this year, only falling four percent since the last quarter of 2003.” In fact, at that time 10% of companies were still running Windows 95 for some reason.

Even once Windows XP had significantly started to penetrate corporate IT, they were really slow on implementing Service Pack 2. In fact E-commerce Times said that “a substantial number of companies have yet to decide whether to accept or embargo Windows XP SP2.” (emphasis added) Seriously people thought about skipping SP2 somehow?

This is how corporate IT works. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Nobody wants to lose their job over a hasty upgrade. Windows XP did have a ton of bugs when if first came out. In fact I personally had a lot more issues (hardware, software, compatibility, stability, etc) with the first version of XP than I did with pre-SP1 Vista.

My Two Cents

Honestly, Vista is a better upgrade from XP, than XP was from 2000. I held out on Windows 2000 for quite a few years, but Vista got me to upgrade within 6 months. I am not about to say that Vista doesn’t have its warts, but on decent hardware it runs really well and I can’t imagine going back to XP.

Vista’s Explorer UI is way better (breadcrumb navigation, extra large thumbnails for photos, preview pane, etc), the integrated search is literally the only one I’ve ever liked (and I’ve used F-spot, Beagle, Spotlight, Google Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, etc), it is more secure, Media Center is awesome, the network location management is great for laptops, I’m a fan of the application specific audio mixing (ala BeOS), even just simple stuff like how clicking on the time brings up a calendar and multiple clocks is nice.

When XP came out it had very few benefits over Windows 2000. It supported USB better (but that was added into Windows 2000 by a service-pack), it had a slightly different (but not better) UI, it had a worthless broken firewall, and it had fast user switching. It was a lot more stable than Windows 98, but so is a three legged dog, so is that really saying anything?

Ultimately, I think a lot of people don’t like change. People don’t want to learn a new way to do something even if it is way better. It is just really hard to push this much change. By the time Windows 7 comes out everyone will be used to Vista and XP will be long forgotten. My prediction is that Windows 7 will be to Vista what Windows 98 Second Edition was to Windows 98, and it will be very popular.