As even Apple managed to conquer some of the corporate users' soul, Windows has to win back its traditional customers

 Even though Windows Vista was released two years ago, XP is almost all that you can see in corporate computers these days. It is clear that Vista didn’t have a good start, as various problems and bugs made Microsoft to announce delays after delays. In addition, when it did come out, it was not quite acclaimed and, therefore, Microsoft’s nightmares began.

People stormed on every forum on the web to blame the endless compatibility issues, stability problems and the eye-candy Aero feature, which slowed everything down. A Service Pack was expected and when it was released, people found out that it only dealt with data transferring issues. Various users just could not get used to the new interface and issues of the new OS and just went back to XP, which, by all means, is one of the most reliable iterations of Windows.

A recent report by ITIC and Sunbelt Software, which surveyed 700 senior executives, most corporate users didn’t bother to switch to Vista. The research pointed out that 88% of the computers of these organizations are still sticking to the XP operating system, while just a mere 10% switched to Vista. However, it looks like Microsoft now has to face an unexpected competitor, which is Apple. It is quite a surprise that Apple is beginning to be a major player in the corporate market since the Mac platform has always been aimed to home users. Nevertheless, it may be possible that Apple managed to win the heart of big enterprises by taking advantage of the “wounded” Vista. The study shows that 77% of the corporate users have one or more Macs and 50% of them plan to embrace more devices from Apple’s portfolio, including the iPhone.

With these things being said, Windows hurries to roll up the new version of their operating system, i.e. Windows 7, probably at the end of 2009. Bearing in mind that the economic recession will more or less force many big corporations to refrain from any type of purchase, Microsoft hopes that the holiday season will bump the sales a bit. Still, an analyst from ITIC stated that Microsoft has to get it right “the first time” with Windows 7 in order to make both consumers and corporate users to move to the new OS.

However, it looks like things will go well for Windows, as the pre-beta release of 7 which was displayed on October 30 was acclaimed by many users and reviewers. Even though it has similar visual styles with Vista, Windows 7 brings up a new taskbar, which is called “Superbar” and promises to be more careful with the resources along with the user’s nerves.