We fall into the "evaluated or adopted" category here - we evaluated it, and rejected it. We'll stick with XP for another year at least.

So, does this survey actually tell us that only half of businesses are even taking a look?!

Useful bundling tested and implemented in the same stat :P

Just about everyone using XP should have tested Vista. The ones who have not even tested it have their heads in the sand.

But I don't think there is anything in that bundled number to say who is actually using it. I had to test Vista before our sales people and certain managers come asking for it because it's new and shinny. Once SP1 is final I'll have to test it again.

"Just about everyone using XP should have tested Vista. The ones who have not even tested it have their heads in the sand."

Not at all. Vista delivers few if any benefits over XP, and the downsides and costs of Vista adoption, for any substantial organisation, are potentially immense.

If everything a company has currently works under XP, what's the incentive to change? After all, some degree of breakage is almost guaranteed with a Vista transition - and that costs money to fix, and keep fixing. Even Gates has tacitly admitted that Vista hasn't fulfilled its promises of stability and back-compatibility. Any sensible business-person will understand the idea of capitalising prior investment.

I am CEO of two companies. We use a mix of XP and Linux, with some MacOS. I see absolutely no commercial drivers to evaluate, much less adopt, Vista: in fact, when XP is no longer available, we will probably be considering standardising on some form of Linux for new systems, as we already have the infrastructure. I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for the past two years, and it's been fine. MS addicts (excepting people developing software for MS, of course) will have a tough job to make a case that they have more need for it than their boss does!

"Just about everyone using XP should have tested Vista. The ones who have not even tested it have their heads in the sand."

We use(d) XP and did not need to "test" Vista. A look at the spec sheet and the requirements concluded that Vista gave us no improvements over XP, or Win2K for that matter. Eye candy does not make a business more productive. The fact that it took Microsoft this long and there is still no compelling reason to upgrade, we chose a different vendor for our next OS.

"That group notched up a figure of 49 per cent to have either evaluated or already installed the OS."

Is that really installed or bought new equipment and didn't have a choice?

"Just about everyone using XP should have tested Vista. The ones who have not even tested it have their heads in the sand."

Or have PCs that are too low-specced to run Vista (some of them barely run XP :/) so don't bother.

Or have an IT department of 1, and I've never used it ;)

Cost of retraining normal and admin staff, new computers, replacing incompatible hardware, therapy etc...

Vista should be a home product.

Nuf said.

"The reseller said the survey, which was taken by 772 IT bosses, also revealed that confidence in Vista's capabilities had improved with nearly half scoring it "above expectations" particularly on security, performance, productivity, search, and updates."

I'm skeptical about those 772 IT bosses. Are they of the Dilbert type ? Does their brain so severly limit their expectations ?

I'm using XP on a 5 years old laptop at work, and Excel for example runs ok even with large sheets.

I was, 2 days back, physically forced to work for 2 days on a brand new laptop running Vista, with HW specs 8 times above my work laptop, and opening an XLS sheet of 300 lines was a *hell* slower than anything I've seen.

Oh, yes, and since I caught the local WIFI spot, it did install stuff and wanted furiously to reboot. And at the time I had to reboot it, it took ages.

What a pile of sh*te !

As the others have said, in 2009 maybe, and if the folks at Ubuntu have stopped the distro, maybe ...

I'm beginning to believe the slowdown in semi-conductor market is due to Vista ...

"As for Microsoft's Office 2007, CDW reckoned there had been a "substantial" increase in organisations upgrading from previous versions, with nearly a quarter saying they had adopted the latest software – up 18 per cent on February's figures."

Erm, so 24% have upgraded, an increase of only 5% of the potential total in a year. Yeah, that's really substantial ;)

And @Jon Green, I'm with you, particularly the last paragraph. I've had the opportunity to evaluate partner companies' Vista machines and mine won't be touching it with a bargepole.

Hmmm.. At work here we still run Win2k with the notebooks running XP and new desktops running Ubuntu. Vista is a no go here. In my on the side consulting business the first thing I do is Nuke Vista and install either XP or Linux.

The business-critical applications here (CRM, ERP, and CAD) *will not run* on Vista. Period.

Out of the 5 systems that came with Vista pre-installed, we have flatlined 4 and installed SP. One has been retained to test applications which claim to be Vista-ready.

CDW's figures most likely represent sales of systems with pre-installed Vista *and no choice* of a different OS. I'd bet real money (if I had any) that most SMBs are installing XP before deploying the PCs.

Many sites have a Vista machines because someone impulse bought from a store and was told Vista was 'da bomb'.

The clients we have that use or evaluate Vista, are using it as a lone testing machine (next to the Mac) or have a section that makes more than their share of support calls. Like some client machines that require UAC promtps to print to certain network printers? I can fix it using GPO but no thanks... the issue sounds dodgy in the first place

The *ONLY* reason I run Vista on my XPS 1710 (a fairly beasty laptop) is because I have to know this damn software enough to run people through support calls when I'm not in front of a PC