Windows 7: PC Replacement Cycle

How long can enterprises milk their existing PCs without having to upgrade? The answer for now is: Quite awhile, perhaps forever. But technology chieftains are betting (praying?) that there’s a big PC upgrade cycle looming and the Windows 7 Oct. 22 launch will be the catalyst.

The consensus view is that companies will have to upgrade their PCs at some point. Many of them have stretched the desktop replacement cycle perhaps as much as a year beyond the usual 3 to 3.5 year refresh rate.

The PC replacement cycle: Will Windows 7 light the fuse? | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

My school computers suck.... maybe they will upgrade them....?

~Lordbob

I see a world wide refit by 2015. jmo

I can tell you from the organization that I work for, we have ~1000 pc's that need to be upgraded. They are all <P4 2.8ghz. Over the last year with the whole economy thing, we had to cut the budget and the first thing to go was the funds for upgrading pc's.

My organization still has P3's in the inventory. We just completed upgrading RAM from 128 to 512 MB on about 800 systems. Our inventory ranges from P3-800 mHz 512 MB systems to 2.4 gHz CD2, 4GB RAM. We have about 3500 PC's currently and 80% are 3 years old or older.

Like your organization, new PC's are only purchased for replacement of non-repairable systems. We just completed a whole company move to XP last June. We still had approximately 400 Win98 systems operating. It's actually quite embarassing.

The only reason I run Win 7 on this laptop is that I have convinced my local IT guy, that I can fix any problems. I also am on the hook for fixing systems locally, so he doesn't have to make the 50 mile drive out here. I'm calling it a long term beta test. A Vista or Win 7 migration isn't even in the plans for the next 3 years. I think they are going to be in for a shock as the newer systems start arriving without XP drivers. That will either force their hand, or they will hold on to old hardware even longer.

PhreePhly

Our IT Leadership is recognizing that issue, they are looking into moving to windows 7 (we still have ~800 w2k sp4 boxes). About half of our pc's are core2duo's so they will not have any issues with windows 7 (or xp mode). The largest hurdle is making sure all of the custom (off the wall) apps work with the new OS.

As an IT consultant for many clients, I've been feverishly testing apps, hardware and special enviroments with Windows 7 in the hopes to upgrade them next year. Even though the release is this year I like to give it either 1 year or 1 service pack before roll out. That being said, I want to get clients on 7 as soon as possible along with Server 2008 R2. Lets not forget how much more secure 7 is than XP, which is one huge reason, along manageability (no more damn defrag scripts). But even still, for larger corporations with over 2500 pc's, it has to be done in small waves over time. One of the schools our company does work for has over 2,000 students and is the worst for little wannabe hackers...damn kids.

A major law firm for whom I used to work still has more than 300 P2-based computers in general use.

This demonstrates as to why Vista was such a failure (beside other problems). You cannot blame large companies for not wanting to update there OS when the systems they are using are more that five years old. With the recession; this can only continue being a problem. Even with prices at the level they are now it is still an expensive venture, and one that is hard to sale to the bean counters. On the lighter side may be we can get the President to use some bale out money to help fix this problem.

Windows 98 is still useful for "Office" usage.

There's no need at all for Windows7 fancy things if the user will only make simple documents in word. =_=

Which means, that ancient computer is more than enough and has no "need" to be replaced.