Most companies delay switching to Windows 7 for at least a year

The vast majority of companies will start using Windows 7 at the earliest a year after its release. Although testers rate the operating system higher than Vista, business users are concerned about compatibility issues.

As Windows XP will no longer be widely supported as of Tuesday, Dimensional Research investigated whether the industry is motivated to move to Windows 7. InformationWeek allowed take a look at the numbers and saw that 83 percent of the companies surveyed do not plan to migrate to the new OS before 2011.

Nearly half of the respondents indicated that the deteriorating economic conditions are standing in the way of a switch for the time being. Although Windows 7 was positively rated by beta testers, the fear of compatibility issues was the most mentioned.

According to the researchers, 42 percent of the companies surveyed plan to migrate 12 to 24 months after the OS’s release. About a quarter of companies want to wait 24 to 36 months, and 17 percent said they would not make the switch within three years.