Isn't it ironic

The Apple and Linux operating systems don't get much attention when it comes to virus warnings and outbreaks. That's the upside of having such small market share ... no one dreams of infecting less than 15% of the machines out there. So I guess it's a badge of honor that infection rates among Windows 7 PCs is now estimated at 4 PCs per 1,000. Not surprisingly, Vista PCs are infected at a rate of just under 8 per 1000. That nightmare OS is just not as secure or robust as its younger brother. Also unsurprisingly, XP infection rates fell; XP is no longer a tantalizing target.

Windows 7 is helping in interesting ways

When Microsoft released Windows 7 in the fall, it began to release a modest amount of pent-up computer purchasing demand. According to research done by Andy Golub at ChangeWave, companies have been holding off non-essential PC purchases in hopes of bypassing Vista altogether. Now that Win7 is coming as the default operating system on new systems, corporate purchases of PCs is beginning a modest recovery. As the chart here suggests, next quarter's PC purchases will could approach levels not seen several years.

Most of my clients are still using Windows XP, and we are now starting to plan the rollout of Win7 as a focused effort in 2010. Have you considered how Windows 7 will impact your business? Does your IT team have a plan for utilizing the new operating system? Now is the time to start the process so that your firm can be ready when the inevitable life cycle replacements become critical.

Read more from this ChangeWave blog post ...
Windows 7 Accelerating Corporate PC Purchasing

Big market share gains for Windows 7

At this point, no one can claim to be surprised by today's announcement that Windows 7 was running more computers than Apple OSX. The data was compiled during the past weekend (November 21-22) by Net Applications and showed that Win7 was running 5.07% (daily average) of the PCs that were connected to the internet. Apple OSX was running 5.0% of the computers, so the difference does not appear, at first, to be all that significant. But considering that the number of PCs worldwide passed the 1 billion mark over 15 months ago, that 0.07% difference equates to more than 700,000 computers.

Granted, this is a small window to measure and one would expect that the advantage will swing back and forth over the coming months, we already know how the movie will end. Apple's ability to exploit the bad dream that was Vista is fading quickly. And although Apple certainly won over a non-trivial segment of the marketplace, (After all, 5% of all the PCs worldwide is 5,000,000 machines) Microsoft is well on their way to reestablishing their position of dominance of the personal computing market.

Read more at ComputerWorld

The meaning of Win7's sales numbers

Microsoft is understandably pleased to announce that Windows 7 is off to a strong start, claiming they have sold more than double the copies of any other operating system over the same time period. Despite the market gains by Apple, Google and Linux, this tells me that Microsoft's season of desktop dominance is far from over. Vista was truly a mistake, just like Win98 and WinME. But Win7 has accomplished exactly what Microsoft had hoped it would do.... make a Vista a memory.

Wait before moving to Win7

On Friday, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based computer support company stuck its neck out. Rescuecom, in an interview with ComputerWorld, is advising users to wait for the first Service Pack to be released before upgrading an existing PC to Windows 7; especially if that PC is still working well.

This is certainly sound advice. WinXP is remarkably stable and mature ... and Microsoft is still releasing bug fixes and security updates. Win7 is a dramatic departure from WinXP and, while it has outstanding functionality, is still quite unproven in the marketplace. Microsoft is working feverishly to resolve a reboot problem reported a few weeks ago, just to illustrate the point.

Nevertheless, this firm may end up as a target, just for stating a fairly obvious truth. First versions of major releases are always buggy, and not for the novice. But, I suspect that we are only three to six months away from the first service pack. And then, Win7 will settle down quite nicely.

Read the ComputerWorld article here ...
Wait for Service Pack 1 to show up, or back up data and buy a new PC

A pretty good Win7 upgrade article

If you're preparing for your upgrade to Windows 7, this article is a good place to start. Some of their advice it is pretty obvious, like backing up your files. But it lists good resources for online storage if you'd rather not store everything on CD or DVD.

Be aware, though. Comcast places a daily upload limit of 1Gb. If you exceed that limit, they cut you off ... forever. It's a hard lesson to learn.

The article also links to several Microsoft sites that will help you determine if your machine will effectively run Win7. A few minutes doing that legwork will save you significant time and frustration down the road.

Before starting your backup, I recommend that you invest some time in installing and learning to use 7-ZIP. It is a free compression utility that does a much better job than WinZIP. You'll be glad you did it.

FAQ: How to prep for an XP-to-Windows 7 upgrade, from ComputerWorld

Windows 7 on the Virtual Machine

Today, VMWare announced support for Windows 7 Workstation in the virtualized environment. This should help Microsoft build momentum for the operating system and accelerate the pace of transition from WinXP to the new platform.

At the same time, however, it does make it easier to keep a limited number of PC's on WinXP. This will ease the transition costs since it will help companies put off purchasing new machines just to handle the demands of Win7. PC manufacturers who were hoping for a big lift along these lines may be moderately disappointed.

Credit where credit is due:
VMware ships Workstation for virtualizing Windows 7,
By Mikael Ricknäs , IDG News Service , 10/27/2009