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Half of American Business PCs Can't Run Vista
12.06.06

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2069079,00.asp

By Peter Galli

About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium.

Within these figures, 41 percent and 78 percent, respectively, require RAM upgrades to meet the minimum and premium system requirements of Vista, says a new study by Softchoice Research, which is expected to be released later this week.

In comparison, when Windows XP was released, some 71 percent of the PCs met its system requirements, Softchoice services consultant Dean Williams said in an executive summary of the report.

"At the time of release 71 percent of the PCs met the system requirements for Windows XP, whereas only 50 percent of the PCs included in this study meet the minimum requirements to run Windows Vista. This difference suggests that jump in system requirements to run Vista presents a significant barrier to adoption," he said.
About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium.

Within these figures, 41 percent and 78 percent, respectively, require RAM upgrades to meet the minimum and premium system requirements of Vista, says a new study by Softchoice Corp., which is expected to be released later this week.

In comparison, when Windows XP was released, some 71 percent of the PCs met its system requirements, Softchoice services consultant Dean Williams said in an executive summary of the report.

"At the time of release 71 percent of the PCs met the system requirements for Windows XP, whereas only 50 percent of the PCs included in this study meet the minimum requirements to run Windows Vista. This difference suggests that jump in system requirements to run Vista presents a significant barrier to adoption," he said.

The inventory data used in the study represents a total of 112,113 desktops from 472 North American organizations in the financial, health care, technology, education and manufacturing sectors.

Twelve percent of the PCs surveyed will require CPU replacements to run Vista in its minimum configuration, while 16 percent will require CPU replacements to run Vista in its premium configuration, William said.

Vista's minimum CPU requirements have increased 243 percent from those of Windows XP, which in turn had a much smaller increase of 75 percent from Windows 2000's CPU requirements.

PointerRead what other research groups are saying about Vista.

"Ultimately, the rate at which the average business CPU's MHz rating is increasing has not kept pace with Vista: The CPU requirements for Vista have increased 243 percent from those of Windows XP, whereas the speed of the average business PC's CPU has only increased by 215 percent over roughly the same time period," Williams said.

Williams attributes the poor state of hardware readiness among North American companies to the sharp increase in the hardware resources required to run Vista; the fact that many organizations are maintaining longer hardware refresh cycles where they support PCs for more than five years; and a lack of easy access to the PC inventory information needed to implement an effective life cycle management process.

"Most organizations planning to deploy Vista within the next two years will have a PC life cycle that is affected by these factors, which, taken together, present a significant operational and financial stumbling block if not planned for well ahead of time," he said.

Preliminary user surveys suggest that 27 percent of organizations are planning to wait one to two years before undertaking a Vista rollout, with some 33 percent planning to wait between six months and one year.

"While these findings suggest that many organizations are considering a longer-term deployment schedule, the hardware purchasing decisions made today will undoubtedly impact the viability of a Vista rollout in the coming years," Williams said.

Microsoft estimates that 20 percent of PCs will be running Vista within the first year of its release, double the rate at which XP was adopted in the first year it was made available to the market, he said.

Microsoft has said it expects 10 times more seats of Vista to be deployed at launch, with deployment within the first year being twice as fast as that for any other version.

But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who headlined the business launch of Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 at an event at the NASDAQ stock exchange late last week, is upbeat about the products and said customers will buy them.

In an interview with eWEEK after the event, Ballmer acknowledged that most people will upgrade when they replace their hardware, but he also predicted that some will accelerate their hardware upgrade cycle.