Enterprises which are gun shy about upgrading their desktop operating systems after the Vista experience should still give Windows 7 a fair hearing according to Kyle Rosenthal, managing director of Spider Consulting.

Analyst Gartner has also suggested that the economic downturn might force some enterprises to delay Windows 7 deployments until 2011, especially as XP will continue to be supported until 2014 in the extended support phase. Nevertheless it has forecast that 6% of all news PCs sold this year will be Windows 7 machines as preloaded computers emerge on retailers’ shelves in the run up to Christmas, with consumers and small business the most likely early adopters of the operating system.

Gartner expects Windows 7 to overtake Vista as the main operating system by 2012, with 53 % of PCs running the operating system. It believes that enterprises not using Vista already will transition directly to Windows 7 although it somewhat dauntingly describes that operation as a   “forklift migration.”

According to Kyle Rosenthal; “There was a general feeling at the time when Vista came out that it was not worth the hassle. The technology was good and with Service Pack 2 it became very stable. But it had a bad rap to start and that tainted it.”

Rosenthal said that with Windows 7, which has been released to vendors and will be generally available on October 22, there was a series of compelling reasons that should encourage enterprises to make the move.

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