The news about Windows 7 in the corporate space has been confusing in recent months, with 50% of businesses saying they were making the switch or already had. New research by Forrester today and reported by Ed Bott, shows a very different picture though.

The chart above (click the image to view it full size) shows that only 1 in 10 business PCs are running Microsoft’s new OS. The survey took place between June and August this year and surveyed more than 2,300 IT execs in the US, Canada, UK, Germany and France. They found that Windows XP was still powering a massive 75% of all business computers.

As I have already mentioned, it’s been widely reported that Windows 7 has so far been doing much better in the business space and these figures will be a blow to anyone who was hoping that Windows 7 was firmly muscling XP out of the way.

Last week, Microsoft announced that they had sold 240 million licences for Windows 7 in the year since its launch, but technology blogger Paul Thurrott questioned this, saying that other research had shown over 300,000 PCs were sold every year. He asked what was powering the other 60,000+.

Things should change after the launch of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, the traditional time when businesses consider a new OS mature enough to migrate to and, according to Forrester “an additional 42 percent of firms surveyed said they were planning to deploy Windows 7 in more than 12 months”. In the mean time these figures are a blow to the people who are hoping to see the back of buggy-old XP.

Fonts use quite a bit of system resources, for optimal performance you should remove any unused fonts that you do not use on a daily basis. This tip shows you how.

* Open Control Panel
* Open the Fonts folder
* Make a backup of your fonts before removing any.
* After backing up your fonts, remove any unused fonts from the folder to speed up the Windows 7 performance.

Taskbar thumbnail previews are one of the more cool features in Windows 7. To decrease the time taken to display thumbnails in Windows 7 make these tweaks.

* Click on Start and type in regedit and hit Enter
* Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced
* Right-click on Advanced, select ‘New DWORD‘ and enter the following value: “ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime”
* Then right-click on ‘ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime’ and select ‘Modify’.
* Choose Decimal Base and enter in your new number in milliseconds. Use 200 for 0.2 seconds or a speed that suits you.
* Click Ok and restart PC

Now your windows 7 toolbar will be faster

Enable Internet search from the Start Menu using your default browser. Run GPEDIT.MSC from the Start Menu search box to start the Group Policy Editor. In the left pane, go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Start Menu and Taskbar. In the right pane, right-click to Edit and Enable Add Search Internet link to Start Menu.

Use Clear Type Tuner for the best look on your LCD monitor or laptop screen. Run ‘cttune.exe’ from the Start Menu search box, or go to the Control Panel Display applet, and select Adjust ClearType Text from the left.

Like the command prompt? Miss the ‘Open Command Window Here’ Windows XP power toy?

Press ‘Shift’ when right-clicking on a folder to get that option in the context menu. This also works on the desktop. No power toy required!

You can create keyboard shortcuts for any program in Windows 7. Right-click the program icon and select Properties. Select the Shortcut tab, click in Shortcut key, to set the keyboard shortcut for that program.

You cannot pin the Control Panel to the taskbar via the Start Menu or by drag and drop. Open the Control Panel and right-click its taskbar icon to pin it to the taskbar. An advantage of this is that Control Panel’s Jump List allows quick access to recently used functions.

You can add any library or folder to the Favorites section in Windows Explorer. To add a folder, navigate to it in Explorer, right-click Favorites in the left navigation pane, and select Add current location to Favorites. Now you get quick access to your favorite folders in all File->Save As dialogs!