XP has a huge installed base including most of the Gov't and Commercial sectors - Microsoft's prime customers. Everyone is hoping that Win7 will be a smooth upgrade, but the change path for major customers is many years long. So I'd expect XP patching (particularly for security issues) to continue for at least another five years.
And I'm told by MS that there will be no direct upgrade path to 7 from XP, which complicates matters considerably.
Although XP users will be entitled to a discount on 7, they will not be able to do an in-place upgrade. They'll either have to upgrade to Vista before upgrading to 7 (which
no one is going to do); or else the "upgrade" will require backing up all data, doing a fresh install of 7, and then reinstalling all of the apps and reimporting the data. There's also no in-place upgrade path from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit 7, of course.
There will be a virtualized Windows "XP Mode" available for 7 Professional and Ultimate, which will require two separate downloads (both free). That should help avoid some of the compatibility issues for current XP users, but it will still require a complete reinstall of the OS, reinstallation of applications, and re-importation of data.
I do, however, know one young fellow who
claims to have imported an entire, intact XP system into a 7 installation as a VHD using information he found
here and
here, and that it is running flawlessly.
That would be interesting and could ease the transition in a safe way by removing the existing HD with the intact XP installation, and installing the new OS onto a fresh disk. The old hard drive with the intact XP installation could be swapped back into the machine if the VHD conversion process failed.
This is very interesting and is something I might try myself. I do wonder, however, how it would affect activation or licensing. Would XP running on a VHD recognize the Windows 7 VPC as a different machine and de-activate Windows and other software that requires activation? My friend says his installation did require reactivation, but that the reactivation was successful.
But VHMs and VPCs aside, there's no in-place upgrade path from XP to 7. There is one from Vista (assuming that the upgrade is to the same bus width version), but I suspect most Vista users are home users. Pretty much all business users I know of who bought computers since Vista's release took the XP downgrade option.
Another factor that may slow or speed the adoption of 7, depending upon how MS responds to it, is that some users actually
like Vista and are in no hurry to upgrade. I know a lot of home users who love it, for whatever unfathomable reasons. Even I must admit that the 64-bit version isn't horrible. I have had 64-bit Vista Ultimate installed on one of my machines since literally the day it was released, and although I'm not crazy about it, it's usable enough.
But Microsoft, of course, wants to sell Windows 7. Most of the existing Vista user base are home users, some of whom actually like Vista. Others may not love it, but they also don't want to shell out the money for the upgrade (plus the time for someone to install it, if they're not tech-savvy). And then there are the XP users who simply don't want to spend days reinstalling all of their apps onto a virtual version of XP running on a VM on top of 7 -- just to do exactly what they're already able to do running XP.
If MS is smart, I think they'll do some work to ease the importation of existing XP systems into 7's VPC as VHDs, possibly even coming out with a tool to automate the process. There is absolutely no technical reason why this cannot be done. Even the activation process is a no-brainer: All that's needed is a patch to allow Windows Activation on the VHD to directly access the hardware to verify that it's the same physical machine, even though it's running on a VM.
For that matter, even if the existing XP system is imported onto a VM running on a new physical machine running Windows 7, MS should allow it to be reactivated onto the new machine, with a promise to wipe it from the old machine after a 90-day grace period (just in case it doesn't work properly on the VM).
There may be problems with third-party apps that are licensed for only one machine, but those would only come into play if they're installed onto 7 itself (not the VHD) in addition to the VHD. But if they run properly on 7, they can then be uninstalled from the VHD to comply with the single-machine license.
The final factor I wonder about with regard to 7's adoption has to do with the hardware requirements for Windows 7 to run properly. The
minimum requirements specified by MS don't seem too scary, but those are
minimums; and MS has historically (and notoriously) understated minimum requirements for new OS releases. Their official stated minimum RAM requirement for XP with full functionality was 128 MB, for example. Just try running XP on 128 MB of RAM.
The official
minimum requirements for 64-bit WIndows 7 include 2 GB of RAM, plus 1 GB if you want to run XP on the VM. That's minimum. Many existing mobos have a maximum RAM capacity of 4 GB, which gets a little close to the minimums. I don't know how long 7 will run well on 4 GB of RAM. I do know that I have clients whose XP machines once ran well enough on 256MB, but now require at least a Gig of RAM to get out of their own way, even with only very ordinary business apps installed.
Finally, both corporate and home users do have a choice. In addition to Mac, Ubuntu is now a viable option. I've done scads of Ubuntu conversions for home users, as well as a few for SOHOs and a couple for medium-sized businesses. Is it perfect? No. But with a little education, it is possible to run a business primarily on Ubuntu, reserving a few Windows machines for those apps that need it.
Realistically, however, I don't think MS is losing sleep over Ubuntu -- yet -- but I do think they're watching. The latest version of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala, to be released next week) is
very polished,
very stable,
very resistant to malware, and
very free. If MS tries to force businesses to adopt 7 before they're ready to do so by withdrawing security patches, more businesses might start eying Ubuntu (or Mac, for that matter).
In short, although I was impressed with the beta of 7 (comparatively speaking), there are many, many obstacles to its widespread acceptance. MS will have to both ease the transition process and continue providing at least security updates for XP for quite some time to come if they want to avoid alienating their core market.
-Rich
