Service Pack 1 may give Vista a little help, but no momentum. I remember companies such as Dell who said they would wait until SP1 before implementing Vista internally. Depending on the results of SP1, some companies may slowly go ahead with Vista. But that will depend on a few factors such as:

1) Will SP1 ease the compatibility with legacy applications (this is a big issue with Vista on corporate networks)?

2) Will SP1 improve Vista’s overall performance? XP is lightning fast on similar hardware, and rumours are saying that XP SP3 will increase performance by 10%

I agree that time will help Vista, but as you just said, this is far from being a complete shift such as the ones we saw from NT4/Win2000 to XP.

Can you believe that I’m currently dealing with clients that are phasing out NT4 Workstations/NT domains to WinXP and Active Directory/Win2003 R2?

Patrick

Other points to consider are:

1) Improved performance, and reduction in price, of both desktop and laptop computers, allowing the true potential of Vista to be realized.

2) The reluctance factor will reduce over time. In fact as I have used Vista for most of 2007 Vista User Access Control (UAC) has gone from “arch-enemy” to “my new best friend”, and the negativity of UAC within the press will be replaced by the view of necessity in this every increasing hostile networked world.

3) Increased acceptance of the new user interface. I believe that Microsoft in changing the user interface for Vista shot themselves in the foot. This also holds true for Office 2007. Within corporate environments people setup their machines so they are as productive as possible, and the steps required performing any task become routine. In changing the user interface users regress to newbies and frustrations and negativity arise as a result. Having used both for most of last year, there are still times when I know what I want to do, and I know the exact steps required in the old interface, but I just can’t find where it has been moved to. It makes one want to rip the screen off! As time progresses power users will be the champions of the increased acceptance here - there will be someone around who can help. Also internal support desks will actually be able to provide the necessary support required to facilitate this, after all, geeks being geeks they will have built up their expertise.

4) Vista will be the 64 bit Windows OS of choice. As prices fall and machines with 6/16/32/64 GM of RAM become the norm, we will need true 64 bit capabilities to squeeze the most out of it.

5) With the “soon to be released” Vista Service Pack, the main psychological hurdle of Vista deployment will be removed (“We won’t use a dot 0 release – let’s wait for the dot 1 release”).

6) And lastly, Microsoft will cease support and maintenance of Windows XP, although admittedly they will have a tough time in this. Although I believe that XP will have the longest active life to date, if it is not there already.

There will never be a complete shift from XP to Vista overnight, as we have seen, but rather a happy co-existence which will increase in Vista’s favor as time marches on.

It is very rare that a company is thwarted by its own success.