"Analyst firms like IDC estimate that more than 90% of businesses are currently in progress with their Windows 7 migrations," Microsoft official . "And we've seen that companies who have deployed Windows 7 save an average of $140 per PC per year -- showing a 131% return on investment in just more than 12 months."
MAKE THE SWITCH:
Just as Microsoft launched a to highlight advances in Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is offering a "Windows XP End Of Support Countdown Gadget" that can be installed on your desktop to count down the end of support in 2014.
Oddly, is only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7, even though people who have upgraded from XP don't have any reason to worry about the OS end-of-life date.
Convincing users that XP is out of date, in part by , could help continue to boost sales of what Microsoft calls "the fastest selling operating system in history."
But while the 10-year-old Windows XP in U.S. usage share, it's far behind XP worldwide.
Net gives Windows XP a , followed by Windows 7 at 24.17% and Vista at 10.56%. Mac and Linux combine for a little more than 6%.
StatCounter, another market share tracker, puts Windows XP share at 47.32%, but still far ahead of the 30.6% garnered by Windows 7. While the smartphone and tablet markets are being dominated by non-Microsoft operating systems, when it comes to desktops and laptops it is still very much a Windows world.
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in Network World's Software section.