A new survey conducted by Dimensional Research shows that five out of six IT professionals don’t plan to upgrade to Windows 7 when the new OS is released sometime next year, and slightly fewer of the same respondents say they won’t upgrade to Vista at all, and will go directly to Windows 7 instead when they do their next upgrade. The survey was conducted among a variety of small, medium and large corporations and included IT professionals, IT managers and IT executives.

Some IT professionals expressed the concern that Windows 7 is just a revamped Windows Vista because Windows 7 is being built on Vista code. One of the issues that has plagued Windows Vista is the system’s memory usage. Another downside: the absence of software drivers.

Nearly three out of four respondents in the same survey said that they would be more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than they would be about staying with Windows XP, despite the fact that XP is outdated and no covered under Microsoft’s primary technical support. Microsoft says it will provide per-incident support on Windows XP through 2014, and will continue to patch the XP product indefinitely.

Home Users Take Vista, Business Users Stay Put

Home users have warmed up to Vista a bit, but Microsoft’s target market – the business users – remain cool to the ideal of upgrading, especially since Windows 7 is right around the corner. In terms of business computers, Windows Vista is operational on less than 10 percent of the deployed business machines. The company received strong pushback from Windows XP users, and agreed to continue selling licenses for the older XP product for a year after Vista had been available. Major manufacturers, including Dell, shipped Vista only as a customer option until XP licenses were no longer available, began offering Linux operating systems as a option to Vista.

The first Service Pack release for Vista, introduced in February, did resolve some of the performance issues. Microsoft is testing a second Service Pack release that it plans to make it publicly available sometime in the second quarter of ‘09.

The company is also testing Windows 7 though it’s not clear that a solid release can help the company recapture some of its lost market share. In April ‘07, when Microsoft debuted Vista, it held about 93 percent of the OS market; today that figure has shrunk to 88 percent. In addition to the market share slide, nearly 65% of XP users are still holding off on upgrading to Vista, more than two years after its initial release. Less than one-quarter of Windows users upgraded to Vista and the remaining 10%-12% of Windows users are sticking with products that pre-date XP.

Photo Credit: Microsoft

Intel CEO Paul Otellini says that while computer sales were off by 55% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same time period in 2008, the worst of the market decline is over, and Intel is looking for decreased chip inventory to be a major factor in second quarter new computer sales.

Otellini told shareholders in the company’s quarterly earnings announcement that he believes that the company has seen the bottom of the sales decline, and expects to see modest growth in new PC sales in the second quarter. Consumers shouldn’t look for a fast recovery, however. Demand for the company’s products seems to be recovering in the US and China, but is still off in Europe, Japan and other areas around the world. The company reported slightly higher-than-expected earnings for the first quarter.

Otellini said that the company was not so confident in its recovery prediction that it was willing to provide an earnings estimate for the second quarter, but did indicate that the company was anticipating essentially flat revenues for the current quarter.

Is Now The Time To Buy

For consumers, is now a good time to buy a computer? Regardless of what platform you’re using, or what type of computer you’re looking for, now is a really good time to consider the purchase of a new computer. Dell and HP both have a number of laptops for sale under $1,000. Dell also has the Studio Hybrid desktop model available, bundled with a monitor, keyboard and mouse for $500-$850, depending upon the bundle options you choose.

Several manufacturers, including Dell and HP, are offering “mini” notebook computers for a few hundred dollars. For most users who are accustomed to a larger keyboard and display space, the mini is probably a little too compact to be comfortable. Nonetheless, a mini notebook is a relatively good option for truly portable computing needs. Most minis feature a flash drive and a LED display, which makes the profile a little more rugged than notebooks that rely on traditional hard disks for storage. Another advantage of the flash drive is that it takes up less battery power, meaning that the mini’s standby and runtimes are better.

The HP and Dell minis run on the Intel Atom processor and come with Linux and Windows XP operating system options. The designs support as much as 4 GB of memory as well. The 1.33GHz and 2.0GHz processors are certainly slower than what you would find on a desktop computer, but are favorably comparable to what’s being used in higher-end laptop models.

Photo Credit: N1NJ4, via Flickr

If you’re looking for a way to solve your computer problems, but aren’t a trained PC technician, Driver Detective may just be the answer to your computer troubles. Driver Detective is a software program that will examine your computer’s operating system for obsolete, missing and broken drivers that can cause problems for your computer, like crashes.

What Is A Driver?

A driver is a piece of software that works with your computer operating system to integrate hardware and provide command and control functions. In short, the driver tells your computer how to talk to hardware devices that are connected to it. Microsoft Windows comes with many drivers, but individual hardware items may require special drivers, or will only work correctly with updated drivers. Out of the box, your Windows installation may not come with the drivers you need to make your hardware work correctly with your computer.

There are no two ways around it: your computer can’t work properly without the right drivers, but many times application updates, operating system updates and new hardware installations leave broken drivers behind or don’t load the drivers you need to make your computer operate the way it should.

Driver Detective finds and fixes obsolete drivers, and can tell you whether your computer has the drivers it needs to make hardware and important computer functions work properly. In just five minutes, the Driver Detective can scan your operating system and determine whether obsolete, corrupt or missing drivers are causing your computer problems.

Why Driver Detective Beats The Alternative

The company that manufactured your computer, or the additional equipment you want to add will likely provide the most updated drivers for its equipment on the company Web site. You can spend hours visiting Web sites and locating new drivers for your hardware, or you can leave the heavy lifting to the Driver Detective. Driver Detective maintains a database with information on more than two million device drivers. When the Driver Detective scans your computer, it notes which drivers you have, the drivers you need and then it downloads the correct driver for your installation.

Having Driver Detective is like having a personal PC technician. A scan takes about five minutes to complete, and when the Driver Detective is done, it will provide you with a list of recommended actions. You’ll be surprised at how well your computer works after you’ve run the Driver Detective. You can try the program free, and a small fee will keep Driver Detective working on your computer indefinitely!

Photo Credit: Steve Woods