Survey: 45% of IT departments will move to Windows 7, eventually; 43% refuse to migrate off Windows XP

A new TechRepublic survey shows that 96% of IT departments are still running Windows XP as their primary operating system, and 43% plan to keep XP indefinitely and avoid migrating to Windows 7. Meanwhile, 45% of the TechRepublic respondents said that their IT department will eventually switch to Windows 7.

The voluntary, self-selecting survey was conducted in June and had over 10,000 participants from among TechRepublic's audience of 1.4 million IT professionals who regularly visit the site.

As for the time frame of migrating, 52% said they will until the absolute last minute before moving off of Windows XP (so that includes some of the people who plan to eventually move to Window 7). Another 25% estimated that it would be either two years (20%) or three years (5%) before they migrate off Windows XP.

As for why these IT professionals are delaying the move off of XP, 63% said that there's is no compelling reason to make a switch:

Despite their reluctance to move to Windows 7, 76% of the IT pros said that they had no plans to consider an OS switch to Mac or Linux or casually considered it and don't see the benefits: