My whole provincial (state) government just did the same thing. I was reading an article on MS fiscal results and this is pretty wide-spread because XP is no longer supported and 8 is both more expensive and isn't perceived as an improvement over 8 as far as businesses goes.

MS has no qualm with this, they are making untold millions. As long as governments/businesses are not upgrading to Linux or iOS it's all gravy to MS. They fact they they aren't on Windows 8 is a bonus as that means they'll all need to upgrade again that much sooner.

Well yeah, highly unlikely that Win 7 will remain our OS for as long as XP did. But I think XP was an outlier because Vista was such a dog of an OS.

As to size of the department, keep in mind that New Zealand's largest employer has fewer than 10,000 NZ-based employees. Our department has a staff of about 3-4,000.

Hmm, one of my friends who is so-so in Windows 7. And hated it when it was just hype, actually really likes it best. She says it handles memory the best and working on large database makes her happy.

There are a few hickups on some old legacy items on her mom's laptop, but overall happy.

Still, I think it's probably not bad for the government. Its been a round for a while and relevantly safe and stable.

But if you want to run the latest DirectX 11.1 you need Windows 8.