ANTenna Blog -- Hardware & Software

A panel of CIOs at the Midsize Enterprise Summit West in Los Angeles showed remarkably little interest in quickly moving to Microsoft's new operating system.

The conference is sponsored by Everything Channel, sister company of bMighty's parent company TechWeb. According to Scott Campbell at ChannelWeb, the consensus was clear. Campbell said only about a third of the session attendees raised their hands when asked if they planned to deploy Windows 7 by the end of 2010. And Campbell quoted several CIOs finding creative ways to hedge on Windows 7:

"[Windows 7] is not for me, not until you put a shotgun at my head. We don't have the resources or the time to combat the cultural pushback that will absolutely be enormous."

"Ideally if we go further down the road with [desktop] virtualization, maybe that will change," he said. "It's just unclear right now. It's going to be a while for us."

At least one CIO spoke up for Windows 7, at least in concert with desktop virtualization:

"If someone has trouble [with Windows 7 on their PC], you can blow it up and restore it in 20 minutes. It gives you some flexibility and some options."

I understand the reluctance to tangle with a new operating system, and upgrading Windows XP machines to Windows 7 may be more trouble than it's worth. But if you're buying new machines, I don't think it makes sense to downgrade them to XP. And if you have Windows Vista running in your company, the only reason not to upgrade is the cost of the new OS itself.

More From bMighty:

• Windows 7: Better, But Still Vista
• SMB Insights Into Microsoft Office 2010 And Windows 7

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