IT managers pass on Vista, wait for Windows 7


14 Apr 2008

When Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald asked IT managers in their audience at a Las Vegas talk last Thursday to raise their hands if they felt that Microsoft needed to make some big changes to its Windows operating system, roughly 50pc of the room did so.

This Gartner talk, according to Larry Dignan of ZDNet.co.uk (http://news.zdnet.co.uk), claimed that Vista was not meeting the needs of most PC hardware, leaving many customers to consider sticking with XP until Windows 7 comes on the scene.

Windows users may be waiting for longer than they anticipated because despite claims by former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates that the updated operating system would be hitting shelves by 2009 the official line from the company is that it is currently in planning stages.

Gates’ 2009 release date is not completely incorrect, according to the Redmond-based company, because he was most likely referring to the early trial versions.

Meanwhile, adoption of Vista may not be as good as Microsoft had hoped. While the company celebrated selling over 100 million Vista licences in January of this year, Gartner claims that less than 5pc of new PCs keep Vista, instead switching back to the old reliable: XP.

Silver, speaking at the Las Vegas conference, suggested that companies keep running Vista on current PCs until they have reached the end of their working lives and only then use Vista on new machines that can handle it.

Microsoft has previously been criticised for allowing certain PCs to go on sale with a Vista ready label when they in fact reached the minimum spec and struggled to run the operating system.

By Marie Boran