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Businesses Slow to Adopt XP SP2

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

April 4, 2005, 11:44 AM

A study released by research firm AssetMetrix Monday indicates that even though April 12 is quickly approaching, the day when Automatic Update will attempt to force Windows XP users to install Service Pack 2, less than a quarter of businesses have made the upgrade.

The study looked at 251 North American companies, consisting of about 131,000 computers.

"Microsoft allowed a significant period of time to accommodate companies' demand to test and validate Windows XP SP2 within their IT infrastructure," said Steve O'Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs.

"To date, we have observed that 40% of companies using Windows XP have actively avoided upgrading to SP2, and only 7% have actively accepted it," O'Halloran continued.

"The other 52% of the companies showed no direction or policy towards SP2, and may find themselves having support issues by allowing multiple editions of Windows XP to exist in their infrastructure."

While the upgrade is not going to be mandatory for customers, new products, including Internet Explorer 7, will require that SP2 be installed. In addition, support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 will cease in September 2006.

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By purist

edited Apr 7, 2005 - 11:25 PM

I work for a stuart-up company that's been in business for 4 years and have recently started to take off. In the past year we've hired aprox. 80 emplyees and 60 contractors, all with new IBM laptops. We have an accounting group, Felid Tech group, Network operations, financial, HR, Engineering, Engineering Ops, Production, Marketing.....they all use different software. In some cases we have to pay to upgrade all the software...just for SP2 compliance. The product isn't necessarily end of life, or even close to it, but it's not SP2 compliant. In other cases we have software that was born antiquated, it's good at what it does and it's continually being improved but requires an older version of Crystal reports to function. We use v.9 for most reporting functions in the company, this app uses v.8 and we have to upgrade to v.10 for SP2. Oh, and get this, we use MS Business Solutions Great Plains in our accouting dept. relatively new software, but are forced to use Adobe Acrobat v.4 just to write to PDF files, hows that for lame. I'm one of 2 people in IT, we have to support 200 users, continually provide increased levels of security, collaberation tools, deploy new field offices to support the company's growth. 200 users isnt alot for two people, in fact it's fast paced comfortable, but taking the time out for testing and time to become upgrade compliant as well as the cost of software and time. And, to top it off, the only problem we have with SP2 is the crappy IE6 update in SP2. Or of course we could spend the tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade server software and hundreds of man hours fixing out intranet, which our whole company functions around, just to continue to get updates, which we cant guarantee wont cause more problems down the road......

Score: 0

By zridling

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 7:31 PM

Most companies have old, moldy computers and equipment, especially smaller and larger businesses, and for them to upgrade to SP2 requires they update their hardware. Simple as that. Intel has been quiet for so long that if you haven't got at least a 2.8GHz processor with a Gb of memory, then you need to upgrade.

Score: 0

By indoguys

posted Apr 5, 2005 - 12:31 AM

Right... why should I spend lots of downloading time from a dial up connection for something which probl cost me a lot of time to get it 'running' while my setup is working just fine here. Now I'm talking about one standalone pc, what about all those big companies with hundreds of pc's... MS listen to what the consumer wants and needs without difficult upgrades... They all wait till you come up wqith a new written OS which is not to far away and which cost again a hell lot of money! No company is willing to spend twice. SP2 and all after update patches my God what a struggle!

Score: 0

By pjlasl

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 12:46 PM

Microsoft should force anyone to do anything!! If a user doesn't want to upgrade then they shouldn't have to. As far as the new products are concerned, there are better options than IE7 that doesn't require a user to have the most up to date SP and there will always be programs that are cross platform oriented or accessible to all versions of windows. If people aren't upgrading there is a reason, and it may not be just piracy issues either.

Score: 0

By yohimbe9

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 3:50 PM

No one is forcing anyone. If you have Automatic Updates turned on, you get updates. SP2 is an update. Therefore if you have AU turned on you get SP2. If you don't want SP2, turn off AU. But don't expect future patches/releases/programs to support anything less than SP2.

Score: 0

By AaronDobbins

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 1:32 PM

You do realize that all companies force users to upgrade eventually right? Example, my employer has a mainframe system that has been in use and very effective for business for the last 15 years. At year end 2006 it will no longer be supported, therefore they have to upgrade or switch systems. They chose to use PeopleSoft. Oracle bought PeopleSoft and has already stated they will support the existing implementations for the next 10 years, and then stop supporting them, meaning companies will have to upgrade or switch systems. In order to move forward you have to stop supporting legacy applications because manpower and resources become an issue. This is what happens in the business world in order to provide customers with the best possible enterprise applications.

Score: 0

By greygh0st

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 1:04 PM

With all the security problems Windows has had, it is not very smart to not apply every patch that MS puts out. Look at the bigger picture: So much of the world relys on Windows XP, and if even half of those machines are compromised, then that becomes a huge problem. I suppose this is MS's way of idiot-proofing the installation of SP2, for those out there that are either too ignorant, or too stubborn to do it themselves. For those of us that have legitimate reasons to avoid the upgrade, I'm sure that there is a way around it.

You could always switch to *nix!

Score: 0

By greygh0st

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 1:03 PM

Score: 0

By indoguys

posted Apr 5, 2005 - 12:28 AM

There we go again MS still works like a old fashioned institute.. Not learning from their marketing mistakes, the butterfly effect, now they come up with the most idiot idea to run IE7 only on a updated MS WIndows XP With SP2. It is good marketing but in favour of Firefox and all others... I'm using the Firefox more and more now and what a pleassure to surf around with this browser! Tough I am a MS fan right from the beginnin and keep saying that they brought the desktop pc to homes still they have to walk a long long road if it comes down to Marketing their products. Say to a little kid 'YOU HAVE TOO' and how you think the kid will respond? It is such a old thing in sales, pull on your customer and you drive them away from you....!!!

Score: 0

By roj

edited Apr 4, 2005 - 4:08 PM

"To date, we have observed that 40% of companies using Windows XP have actively avoided upgrading to SP2, and only 7% have actively accepted it,"

That should tell MS something.

Like their DEP implementation stinks. Like people don't want their network connections strangeled without alternatives. Like a personal firewall that can't be completely disabled is NOT a good idea. Like they should have designed the OS to do proper type checking to begin with because then they wouldn't have to do a half-assed, bulky, performance sapping retrofit after the fact.

Like they're doing it WRONG.

I have six computers running in the house with XP Pro. Not one of them will ever see SP2.

In addition, anyone who mindlessly implements every patch MS releases needs to give their head a shake. No, I'm not going to be politically correct - such a course of action means that you're trusting a vendor with a known poor track record in security and "fixes" to get it right the first time. We won't even get into the potential incompatibilities that could arise. Where I come from, that mindset is just plain irresponsible.

When support for SP1 ceases, it ceases. I care not. It's better than running this mess of a Service Pack. I know many small businesses who aren't running it and never will. Given this piece of news, all they're doing is mirroring the rather astute big guys and waiting to see if MS releases a "fixed" SP2.

Personally, I'm not holding my breath.

As to April 12, MS is deluding itself if it thinks that the deadline will make a difference. All it DOES mean is that a LOT of people are going to turn off Automatic Updates - and they should.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

edited Apr 5, 2005 - 12:01 PM

"In addition, anyone who mindlessly implements every patch MS releases needs to give their head a shake."

I didn't mindlessly implement it--unlike other people who post on betanews.com I actually BETA TEST. I tried SP2 RC1 on systems back in May of 2004 for my XP SP2 implementation.

I've updated windows ever since Windows update version 3 was around, installed critical updates on the network on systems as old as Windows 95, and guess what else? In August of 2003, my department was the ONLY DEPARTMENT IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY that was not hit by blaster. I have never had a single problem with SP2--I updated on August 10, as I recall. Disabling the firewall is all one needs to do in most cases, and the "popup blocker" is easily disabled if need be. Get it fixed on one system and make an image. Sometimes I have to wonder--was I the only network Admin that wasn't frikin' lazy?

PS: you don't HAVE to install SP2 until SP1's EOL (technically you never have to, but MS ends support for it), which shouldn't be anytime soon.

Score: 0

By davidx

posted Apr 4, 2005 - 7:09 PM

In my opinion, I believe companies have put off upgrading to SP2 to allow for any problems to surface, which also allows for fixes to be published. If you're smart, you don't want to be the person who find and publishes a fix on some website. You want to be the person that can search Google to find the fix. This process has worked very well for me. Always wait a few months before installing any SP or initial release software from Microsoft. I would say follow this advice for all software companies but most companies aren't timely with their updates (and sometimes you have to pay $$$). But after that period you would be foolish to never install. All future updates will work best if you have the most current version. And all vendors base their future products on the latest Microsoft SP patch. You will be fine for a year, maybe two, but eventually newly purchased software will have problems because it was expecting SP2 and you only have SP1.

I like and trust Microsoft based on my life time experience in using their products and their patches, and when compared to how other companies update their products (if ever). Within an inherently unsecure IT world - the only safe computer is the powered off computer - I like their stream-lined process for downloading and installing updates. No software product is bug free. Look at how many problems came up with Firefox. Yikes! I feel more secure using IE. Bugs in Firefox will never be discovered as quickly as bugs in IE because fewer people are using it. Hackers certainly won't make the world aware of a bug in Firefox. Mostly, security type companies discover the bugs (with a few notable exceptions). And if few people are using Firefox not as many companies will be checking it for bugs.

To sum up, always wait a few months (3-9) before getting any initial release software or SP patch to allow bugs to be found and fixes. But after that period be sure to get the latest, otherwise you will eventually experience problems. This philosophy actually holds true with any platform.

Hope this helps.

Software Consultant.

Score: 0

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