How Many XP Users Holding Out for Windows 7?

TechCrunch has a guest post by Jon Bach, who apparently travels on his own straight-talk express: "Microsoft has created a real mess in the industry with Windows Vista. On its release in January 2007, most major manufacturers dropped Windows XP from their products, only to add it back months later at the demand of their customers."

But the end is nigh! Bach points out Microsoft will stop shipping XP in July. On the other hand Windows 7 is almost here: "If you can just hang on and use Windows XP for a few more months, you can skip Windows Vista entirely!" That's got to be an exclamation mark that strikes fear into the Vista marketing team's hearts.

(Bach expects Microsoft to offer free-upgrade coupons with Vista as the Windows 7 launch date approaches, but how many people really want to go through two OS upgrades in the space of a few months?)

We have XP on a "Vista-ready" 64-bit machine and are holding out for Windows 7 ourselves, which got us wondering who else is doing the same thing. So why not check Seattlest's stats? 70 percent of our Windows visits are XP versus 27 percent for Vista. And believe it or not, someone out there is still using Windows 95. (22 percent of our visits are from Macs, by the way. And kudos to the small band of visitors via Playstation!)

Based on this extensive research, we think Windows 7 is going to break sales records and that now is a terrific time to buy Microsoft.