Windows Vista is one year old today. Microsoft’s latest operating system was released to business users on 30 November, 2006, and its first year of availability has seen what could politely be described as a mixed reaction.
Eighty-eight million copies of the operating system have been sold to to businesses and consumers so far: the consumer versions of Vista have been available since the end of January this year. Yet analysts at Gartner say “the uptake of Windows Vista in the PC installed base is taking longer than previously expected, with Vista becoming the dominant operating system only in 2009″.
A survey released last week suggests only 13 percent of businesses are planning to move all their desktops to Vista. For businesses, the problem seems to be twofold.
Firstly, Vista does not seem to offer many immediate benefits over its predecessor, XP. In fact, testing of upcoming service packs for both operating systems has given XP a marked edge in performance over Vista.
Secondly, there are currently few applications that run on Vista only. Until that happens, analysts suggest, most businesses may find it hard to see why they should invest in new PCs to support the hardware demands of Vista.
