If your time is cheap and your IT department is free, Windows on a blowout-priced Dell is a bargain.

If there's one thing that's killing corporations it's this narrow focus on acquisition costs and a near total disregard for support costs. People moan about Apple being "too expensive" all the time, but the reality is most computers are too cheap.

I hope one of the major vendors develops some alternative to Windows. HP is shovelling billions into Microsoft's pockets with nothing to show for it.

In my experience, with modern versions of windows, support is a wash for technical users.

I used a windows 2k3/2k8 machine every day for 3.5 years at the same company developing software, and never had a support issue with it. On the other hand, I solely use Macs at home (and, since leaving the aforementioned job to work on my own company), and have also never had a support issue.

However, my grandmother has recently gotten ahold of a vista laptop and a MacBook laptop. She has really shown a greater affinity to the Mac.

Here at HP we're using our own equipment on a fairly large installed base so we actually have a reasonably good feel for relatie support costs.

Also, we have an internally supported and externally available standard Linux environment (LinuxCOE) which engineers (like myself), who run multiple OSes in their cube, can use.

Speaking for myself only here, I would say that the alternatives are available but we can't really ignore what the market demands.

Windows is also a "bargain" when it comes to IT costs. Windows has an excellent track record of strong enterprise support, whereas I have heard from an IT dept that there are all sorts of headaches (and compatibility-breaking changes) to Mac operating systems.

IT departments are also notoriously afraid of what they don’t already know.

Care to explain why a huge swath of corporate IT departments are still running XP and IE6 (or 7) then?

Oddly enough, HP is the one of the major vendors that most appears to be actually planning an alternative to windows. They've already said they plan on bringing WebOS to PCs.

Never underestimate a company's reluctance to change. Usually, the bigger they are (or the more clueless the decision-makers are), the greater the reluctance.

Actually, if you have thousands or tens or thousands of desktops and hundreds of applications something as simple as upgrading Windows (or even Office) becomes quite a serious undertaking - so unless there is a really good reason for doing so it's understandable that organization don't upgrade just for the sake of the latest shiny bit of tech.

This is largely a symptom of Windows itself, not a symptom of needing to upgrade something. It'd be much simpler to push updates to all users if you use a self-configured apt repository than it is to push updates to Windows clients. Not so nightmarey at all to upgrade systems with good package managers, actually.

When I was a sysadmin, I could push my updates via Group Policy. It's not that bad. (I'm now in development so I don't know the Microsoft current recommended method).

The cost of an upgrade is the daunting part IMO. We need to buy a bazillion CALs (licenses) if we want to switch to Windows 2008 server-side, for example.

I don't do Windows (not necessarily by ideology, I just don't do it anywhere I'd learn about IT issues), so this is an honest question: Assuming a decent IT policy that closes off the worst of the security issues in other ways, and which won't change even if you upgrade, and assuming you're not a Windows development shop, what is the big business advantage of moving your company from XP to Windows 7?

1) System stability. If your video driver dies on XP, hello crash. On Win7 you see your screen go blank for about a 1/4 of a second and then redraws itself, back in business.

2) If you work remotely, RDP is way better. I've even streamed video over RDP and forgot that I was streaming it from a remotely located computer.

3) If using SSDs Win7 will have better perf and longer lifetime.

4) Virtual folders.

But I would say that if your machines are completely locked down, for example all XP machines are not on the internet, just some closed internal network, then I think XP might be doable. Once you touch the internet though, all bets off.

We've had to wait longer for cheap computers from places like Dell if ordered with XP than with win7. If you're in a hurry and just need a basic desktop for someone, it's something to consider. At least that's how we ended up with a mix of 2k, XP, and win7.

IMO, Laptops. Supporting XP on recent laptops is an exercise in frustration due to drivers, and in my situation is compounded by the lack of standardization on a small number of models.

At my day job we're making the move from XP to Windows 7 because the large number of cumulative patches to XP have, over time, caused all of the machines to run really really slow. Our ICT department has a really cute name for this OS upgrade project: "CPR" (for "Client Platform Refresh").