IT's 'Love Affair' With Windows XP Ending

Businesses are finally prying their hands from Microsoft 's Windows XP as they warm to Windows 7 .

"Over the years, IT has had a real love affair with XP," said Diane Hagglund, an analyst at Dimensional Research, which surveyed 923 IT professionals about their Windows operating system adoption plans in January. "It was just a great OS. It just worked for them. But that feeling is going away."

In the new study, 40% of the respondents said that they're worried about the hassles of maintaining the nearly nine-year-old Windows XP as it gets increasingly outdated -- up from 28% in an April 2009 Dimensional survey.

Meanwhile, 60% of the respondents said they're worried about the cost and overhead of migrating to Windows 7, but that figure is down from 72% last year.

"IT is still more worried about Windows 7 than XP, but the trend is favoring Windows 7," the study said.

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