Windows 7 Adoption Picks Up
Windows
7 Adoption Picks Up – At Home, At Work, And on Tablets
The verdict is in on Windows 7…and it’s all good news for
Microsoft. After taking a beating when it released the buggy
Microsoft Vista, the software giant has made giant strides
one year after 7′s release.
Web analytics firm NetApplications says that
Windows 7 installations have (slightly) eclipsed Windows
Vista. Since we can assume that Vista will only be
installed by people who’ve been living in caves for the past
year, this trend will undoubtedly continue.
Corporate adoption is on the rise, too: a major IT metrics
firm recently
found that 31 percent of companies surveyed have
budgeted to migrate their users to Windows 7.
That doesn’t mean Microsoft’s work is done, however. If
there’s one arena in which the Redmond behemoth has to make
inroads, it’s tablet computing. It’s already lost
substantial ground to Apple (iPhone) and Google (Android) in
the cell phone market. The announced feature set for Windows
Phone 7, Microsoft’s slated new mobile platform, has earned
derision from commentators for being several years behind
the times.
That leaves tablets as a natural platform the revamped
Windows. The success of the iPad is sparking a revolution in
this space.
It’s pushed down the price of eBook readers like the Nook
and the Kindle, and spurred a series of imitators running
Google’s Android OS. Windows 7, which sports a new slate of
features specifically for tablets, is well poised to win a
chunk of this market.
Indeed, many current tablet users report that Windows 7 runs
like a dream on their existing hardware. Vendors such as
Archos have jumped the gun, and already released tablets
preloaded with 7.
Microsoft’s killed its ambitious foray into the tablet
space, Courier, back in April. But recently, Steve Ballmer
swore that the company was going to do what it does best:
get its software on as many hardware platforms as possible.
The company is working with Intel and other hardware vendors
to release a series of branded tablets tuned for the latest
release of Windows.
Microsoft engineers are committing that the first generation
of Windows tablets will support a “personal cloud” – a set
of networked information (documents, email, music, etc.)
that is accessible across a range of computing devices, and
tied together through your Windows Live account. The
services are already there: Messenger, Hotmail, SkyDrive.
If Microsoft can couple this with a compelling Windows
7-based interface and 3G connectivity, it stands a chance of
scoring a piece of the tablet market before Apple and Google
divide it between themselves.