Over 95% of business users will need nothing more than basic Office functions, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc...
ALmost all businesses have a 4-5 year replacement cycle for PC's. WinXP does what these users need right now. The added costs of hardware upgrades for Vista, Vista's cost, the cost of upgrading systems to Vista, and re-training of users, are cost prohibitive and will force businesses to keep WinXP as long as possible, or force the move to linux. If I'm not imaging systems to WinXP, I'm installing linux and OpenOffice on those boxes.
Even now, almost every system that arrives at a business customer, is re-imaged to WinXP. Businesses have custom apps that don't work on Vista, and until recoded and tested, Vista will not get to the floor.
Microsoft's lastest numbers show that this is occuring. There simply is no reason for most business customers to move to Vista. OEM's, such as Dell, have announced that they will continue to supply XP.
No....WinXP is here to stay for a long time.
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