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To say that enterprise IT’s acceptance of Windows 7 is on a steady upward trend would be an understatement. Responses to our July 2009 InformationWeek Analytics survey asking about deployment plans contained such vitriol as, ”Stop being so greedy” and ”Stop abusing your OS monopoly.” Our personal favorite: ”Be more like Apple.”

Today, however, attitudes are much more upbeat. Our February 2010 survey of 699 business technology professionals from companies with more than 500 employees yielded responses like, ”Better and more useful than I expected,” ”It is a vast improvement over registry cleaner Vista,” and ”It just works, finally.”

While the OS still has its share of detractors, a critical mass of comments–and the hard numbers–point to a positive direction in terms of broad-based acceptance. To analyze changes in overall rating, deployment timelines, and migration barriers and drivers, we compared the July 2009 and February 2010 responses of those hailing best registry cleaner from companies with more than 500 employees. Then we went on to ask current respondents about testing strategies, the app compatibility outlook, their plans for 64-bit editions, and the nuts and bolts of deployment strategies; registry software we cover these in depth in our full report, at windows7.informationweek.com.

In terms of the percentage of PCs running various operating systems, Win 7 now accounts for an average of 7% of PC operating systems. Trending data suggests most of that pickup is coming from retired registry software reviews Windows 2000 and XP installations. While a 7% share is not an earth-shattering debut, it’s also not a bad showing considering how risk averse we’ve been over the past year, and how complex and costly OS migrations are. Direct trending data collected in our most recent poll further reinforces our view that enterprises are generally more amenable to Windows 7: 55% of respondents feel comfortable classifying Windows 7 as an ”excellent” operating system, compared with just 34% six months ago.