Bide your time on MS Vista

Don’t upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista until 2008, says IT analyst Gartner, according to a Silicon.com news report, describing the views expressed in a research note entitled Ten reasons you should and shouldn’t care about Microsoft’s Windows Vista client.

While Vista holds out the promise of improved security and better search capabilities, Gartner points out that Internet Explorer (IE) 7 will have many security improvements when it is delivered in early 2006; meanwhile, "competent third-party desktop tools are already available" from companies such as Google. In other words, there is no need to rush.

The launch of Vista will presumably follow the pattern of previous operating system releases, with organisations waiting for Microsoft to resolve any major bugs before committing themselves to the new OS. Notes such as Gartner’s will confirm the wisdom of this approach. If firms delay things until 2008 and then only upgrade as machines reach the end of their service life, we could be talking about some users not getting the Vista experience until maybe 2011 (and having come across numerous small firms in the UK construction sector still working on Windows 98 today, I suspect some will delay use until even later).

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