Nine out of 10 corporate PCs can run Windows 7 ... but that's not the whole story

According to a survey carried out by Softchoice, 88% of corporate PCs in the US are capable of running Windows 7.

The data is pretty interesting:

• 88% of PC capable of running Windows 7, compared to 50% when Vista was released
• 65% can run advanced features such as Aero, compared to just 6% when Vista was released
• 93% still running XP
• 5% running obsolete Microsoft OSes (currently outside of support period)
• 4% running Windows 2000
• 3% running Vista

Seems like there's huge potential for a massive upgrade wave on the face of it. However, we need to be cautious when drawing conclusions. For example:

• Survey says nothing about software compatibility
• The survey also says nothing about device compatibility

The data also raises some other interesting questions, such as:

• If 88% of PCs can run Windows 7, then that means that could also, technically, run Vista. So why aren't they?
• The data seems to suggest that there's been a lot of hardware upgrading going on over the last few years, but users have been sticking with XP. Why?
• Why are so many PCs running obsolete OSes? That's just crazy on so may levels.

Softchoice research notes here [PDF].