OT Windows XP - Vista (long ish).

[jonah]

I am a freelance PC builder / installer / general dogsbody type, I
work for several PC firms and help out clients, running websites,
general stuff part time when I am not running the IT stuff for a
couple of yacht brokers which is my main breadwinner.

I have had a developer copy of Vista for 8 weeks now via work which I
was asked to evaluate ie play with and show customers so when it is
released I will get the job to do Vista builds, setups, upgrades and
configuration stuff.

In the couse of playing with it myself I cannot honestly see what it
is that "industry" has been waiting for as the PC press would have me
believe. I have showed it to many clients who are mostly impressed
with the graphics initially but after a few minutes playing they have
it set to classic mode and tell me its just XP with a new look. I have
to agree with them, despite the much trumpeted Avalon, Indigo, WinFS
etc most of which won't be ready by release (try selling that to an
office manager - good luck) this is very difficult to get anybody
worked up about including myself. IE7 would have been great 2 years
ago, now its old hat for most people, the ones that know about browser
issues have switched to Firefox / Opera long ago and the rest don't
give a toss as long as the "interweb" is working. TBO under the skin
Vista looks exactly like XP with small differences which I would
expect of course but clients want to see why they should fork out hard
cash, and its very difficult to show them, big selling point of the
new FS is a non starter innit so where do you go from there. Recommend
Google Desktop Search maybe?

The other issue is Office 12, most managers don't want to know about
yet another Office upgrade which will cause confusion and slow down
work for months whilst their employees get used to it and set it all
up again. Weather this is true or not is irrelevent to them,even if I
offered £10-00 / seat to upgrade to it I would have a hard time, they
are not interested, they are however interested in seeing Open Office
and very impressed that it will handle M$ office formats. I don't know
I don't do a lot with office beyond installing it and setting up e
mail etc but the response at the moment is positively chilly. Also I
know a lot of companies use custom applications specifically designed
to work with older Office incarnations that could not change if they
wanted to because they cannot get the software updated.

Back to the upcoming Vista release I am finding that the non computer
junkies who just want to file, print and e mail are very unimpressed
and extremely unlikely to bother upgrading especially if new hardware
is required wheras the knowlegable guys are not touching it with a
barge pole because of the hardware issues and the draconian DRM which
seems to have been dictated by the Media Conglomorates. Then there is
the magnified inertia effect caused by XP being perfectly good for 99%
of users who don't care about the finer points of filing systems and
pretty graphics but only care about costs.

Personally I will have 1 copy on the lowest spec machine I can get
away with for work purposes because I have to but at present it looks
like being a very part time job for me.

By comparison when XP was coming up we had hundreds of people waiting
for it with pre paid built machines all over the show just waiting for
the OS to arrive - Vista nothing not even a serious enquiry.

The other thing that is happening in a big way is Linux - most of our
large banks and institutions have already gone over to Linux, the
government departments are all changing to Linux over the next 2 years
which I am getting involved with, also I am now getting a lot of
enquiries from the small business, home user people I usually deal
with about how to change over to Linux so I am unwillingly learning
Red Hat in particular very quickly and it is a painful process believe
me.

It is however growing on me rapidly, its not as easy to use as Windows
but there is not a lot it can't do if you set your mind to it and its
strangely satisfying to beat into submission.

Anyway I live in a very small but financially very significant tax
haven, if the buzz on Windows Vista is dire here whats it like in the
real world and why are M$ releasing it half finished and apparantly
needing new hardware or upgrades to run? Not looking good here I
reckon I will have trouble giving it away.

I am not thinking it will bomb totally but I do think it will be very
dissapointing sales wise by comparison to previous OS releases from M$
and a huge boon to Linux.

Google OS anybody? coming soon probably.

Should I bin my M$ shares and up the Google shares with the proceeds?
I reckon so.

Jonah

 

[PA Bear]

...why are M$ releasing it half finished and apparantly

needing new hardware or upgrades to run?

Vista isn't even close to being RTM, Jonah. In fact, it's still in Beta1
(and a new build of Beta1 was released since you installed yours).

Current Beta builds are not intended for broad consumer trial and
evaluation.

 

[Trax]

|>Back to the upcoming Vista release I am finding that the non computer
|>junkies who just want to file, print and e mail are very unimpressed
|>and extremely unlikely to bother upgrading especially if new hardware
|>is required wheras the knowlegable guys are not touching it with a
|>barge pole because of the hardware issues and the draconian DRM which
|>seems to have been dictated by the Media Conglomorates. Then there is
|>the magnified inertia effect caused by XP being perfectly good for 99%
|>of users who don't care about the finer points of filing systems and
|>pretty graphics but only care about costs.

My new computer is Vista ready; in the bios is a CPUid setting it's
off now, but Vista will require it to be on. Vista will then determine
what I can run or do and what I can't (DRM).

XP's as far as I take windows OS's

|>I am not thinking it will bomb totally but I do think it will be very
|>dissapointing sales wise by comparison to previous OS releases from M$
|>and a huge boon to Linux.

You should see the request in just this group asking about Vista, and
when they can purchase it; freaking sheep they have no clue. Vista
will do very well I'm afraid.

 

[tiktoor]

I am a freelance PC builder / installer / general dogsbody type, I
work for several PC firms and help out clients, running websites,
general stuff part time when I am not running the IT stuff for a
couple of yacht brokers which is my main breadwinner.

I have had a developer copy of Vista for 8 weeks now via work which I
was asked to evaluate ie play with and show customers so when it is
released I will get the job to do Vista builds, setups, upgrades and
configuration stuff.

In the couse of playing with it myself I cannot honestly see what it
is that "industry" has been waiting for as the PC press would have me
believe. I have showed it to many clients who are mostly impressed
with the graphics initially but after a few minutes playing they have
it set to classic mode and tell me its just XP with a new look. I have
to agree with them, despite the much trumpeted Avalon, Indigo, WinFS
etc most of which won't be ready by release (try selling that to an
office manager - good luck) this is very difficult to get anybody
worked up about including myself. IE7 would have been great 2 years
ago, now its old hat for most people, the ones that know about browser
issues have switched to Firefox / Opera long ago and the rest don't
give a toss as long as the "interweb" is working. TBO under the skin
Vista looks exactly like XP with small differences which I would
expect of course but clients want to see why they should fork out hard
cash, and its very difficult to show them, big selling point of the
new FS is a non starter innit so where do you go from there. Recommend
Google Desktop Search maybe?

The other issue is Office 12, most managers don't want to know about
yet another Office upgrade which will cause confusion and slow down
work for months whilst their employees get used to it and set it all
up again. Weather this is true or not is irrelevent to them,even if I
offered £10-00 / seat to upgrade to it I would have a hard time, they
are not interested, they are however interested in seeing Open Office
and very impressed that it will handle M$ office formats. I don't know
I don't do a lot with office beyond installing it and setting up e
mail etc but the response at the moment is positively chilly. Also I
know a lot of companies use custom applications specifically designed
to work with older Office incarnations that could not change if they
wanted to because they cannot get the software updated.

Back to the upcoming Vista release I am finding that the non computer
junkies who just want to file, print and e mail are very unimpressed
and extremely unlikely to bother upgrading especially if new hardware
is required wheras the knowlegable guys are not touching it with a
barge pole because of the hardware issues and the draconian DRM which
seems to have been dictated by the Media Conglomorates. Then there is
the magnified inertia effect caused by XP being perfectly good for 99%
of users who don't care about the finer points of filing systems and
pretty graphics but only care about costs.

Personally I will have 1 copy on the lowest spec machine I can get
away with for work purposes because I have to but at present it looks
like being a very part time job for me.

By comparison when XP was coming up we had hundreds of people waiting
for it with pre paid built machines all over the show just waiting for
the OS to arrive - Vista nothing not even a serious enquiry.

The other thing that is happening in a big way is Linux - most of our
large banks and institutions have already gone over to Linux, the
government departments are all changing to Linux over the next 2 years
which I am getting involved with, also I am now getting a lot of
enquiries from the small business, home user people I usually deal
with about how to change over to Linux so I am unwillingly learning
Red Hat in particular very quickly and it is a painful process believe
me.

It is however growing on me rapidly, its not as easy to use as Windows
but there is not a lot it can't do if you set your mind to it and its
strangely satisfying to beat into submission.

Anyway I live in a very small but financially very significant tax
haven, if the buzz on Windows Vista is dire here whats it like in the
real world and why are M$ releasing it half finished and apparantly
needing new hardware or upgrades to run? Not looking good here I
reckon I will have trouble giving it away.

I am not thinking it will bomb totally but I do think it will be very
dissapointing sales wise by comparison to previous OS releases from M$
and a huge boon to Linux.

Google OS anybody? coming soon probably.

Should I bin my M$ shares and up the Google shares with the proceeds?
I reckon so.

Jonah

Vista reminds one of Windows ME and the great success that was.

 

[jonah]

Vista isn't even close to being RTM, Jonah. In fact, it's still in Beta1
(and a new build of Beta1 was released since you installed yours).

Yeah I am supposed to get a copy when the boss gets round to it, I
don't have access so I can't download it myself legally.

Current Beta builds are not intended for broad consumer trial and
evaluation.

I am well aware its beta and so are the people I have shown it to,
note shown not installed for them as a demo, just let them have a look
at it on my LT.

Point is the marketing is crap, the press is all mediocre to negative
and full of things that are not due to be released with the final
build. Its not good, the journos seem to be struglling badly to be
enthusiastic, it comes across as a bit forced on this side of the
pond. With XP things were very different. the people I have showed
Vista to make desicions long before release dates and where they were
quite happy even eager to upgrade to XP from 98 especially, the vibes
for Vista are terrible at the same general time scale pre release.
Plus Linux is a far more realistic option than it was at the time of
XP, in fact all the big players here have already gone to Linux based
systems.

As an example one of the biggest PC magazines in the UK did an article
called "10 reasons why you want to upgrade to Vista" it was totally
lame. WinFS was raved about as revolutionary with the rider that it
would not actually ship on time and Google was already there with
desktop search, and IE7 was described as a "shameless rip off", and
this was supposed to be a pro upgrade article, you should see the
negative stuff! The only thing vaguely positive was the 2 way firewall
"better late than never" or words to that effect.

It does not matter weather its Beta or not the vibes here are pretty
dire, everybody has heard of it, read about it seen screenshots and
prejudged it long before they saw my version. I am not actively
running around trying to flog it just showing those who have not seen
it and buy lots of PCs.

I am certainly not having a pop at M$ I make my living in computers
running windows of one flavour or another, I know Vista will be far
better than XP but the market will decide and the general feedback I
get is very pretty - no thanks.

IMHO, at least in my back yard it is way too soon for another M$ OS -
2010 maybe. A new SP for XP upgrade would be a better idea and Vista
in 2010. But then I am not a multi-billionaire yet, got high hopes for
Google shares though

I am hoping that the odd post in NGs from guys like me at the sharp
end will wake them up at the M$ marketing department and a really good
pre release beta version with something very convincing to sell would
be nice. The press are reporting whats there now and what is rumored
to be happening with the final build, thats what people are reading
and its not helping at all.

Jonah

 

[jonah]

jonah wrote: snip

Vista reminds one of Windows ME and the great success that was.

Saw that once - it was broken



Jonah

 

[Richard Urban]

You live under a bridge and should crawl back there.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[PA Bear]

MS is not marketing Vista. Legit beta testers like it overall and are
seeing improvements with each incremental release. I suggest you reserve
judgement for at least a year, Jonah.

Meanwhile, consider joining the official beta testing when it goes public:
http://connect.microsoft.com.

 

[Michael Stevens]

In

I am a freelance PC builder / installer / general dogsbody type, I
work for several PC firms and help out clients, running websites,
general stuff part time when I am not running the IT stuff for a
couple of yacht brokers which is my main breadwinner.

I have had a developer copy of Vista for 8 weeks now via work which I
was asked to evaluate ie play with and show customers so when it is
released I will get the job to do Vista builds, setups, upgrades and
configuration stuff.

In the couse of playing with it myself I cannot honestly see what it
is that "industry" has been waiting for as the PC press would have me
believe. I have showed it to many clients who are mostly impressed
with the graphics initially but after a few minutes playing they have
it set to classic mode and tell me its just XP with a new look. I have
to agree with them, despite the much trumpeted Avalon, Indigo, WinFS
etc most of which won't be ready by release (try selling that to an
office manager - good luck) this is very difficult to get anybody
worked up about including myself. IE7 would have been great 2 years
ago, now its old hat for most people, the ones that know about browser
issues have switched to Firefox / Opera long ago and the rest don't
give a toss as long as the "interweb" is working. TBO under the skin
Vista looks exactly like XP with small differences which I would
expect of course but clients want to see why they should fork out hard
cash, and its very difficult to show them, big selling point of the
new FS is a non starter innit so where do you go from there. Recommend
Google Desktop Search maybe?

The other issue is Office 12, most managers don't want to know about
yet another Office upgrade which will cause confusion and slow down
work for months whilst their employees get used to it and set it all
up again. Weather this is true or not is irrelevent to them,even if I
offered £10-00 / seat to upgrade to it I would have a hard time, they
are not interested, they are however interested in seeing Open Office
and very impressed that it will handle M$ office formats. I don't know
I don't do a lot with office beyond installing it and setting up e
mail etc but the response at the moment is positively chilly. Also I
know a lot of companies use custom applications specifically designed
to work with older Office incarnations that could not change if they
wanted to because they cannot get the software updated.

Back to the upcoming Vista release I am finding that the non computer
junkies who just want to file, print and e mail are very unimpressed
and extremely unlikely to bother upgrading especially if new hardware
is required wheras the knowlegable guys are not touching it with a
barge pole because of the hardware issues and the draconian DRM which
seems to have been dictated by the Media Conglomorates. Then there is
the magnified inertia effect caused by XP being perfectly good for 99%
of users who don't care about the finer points of filing systems and
pretty graphics but only care about costs.

Personally I will have 1 copy on the lowest spec machine I can get
away with for work purposes because I have to but at present it looks
like being a very part time job for me.

By comparison when XP was coming up we had hundreds of people waiting
for it with pre paid built machines all over the show just waiting for
the OS to arrive - Vista nothing not even a serious enquiry.

The other thing that is happening in a big way is Linux - most of our
large banks and institutions have already gone over to Linux, the
government departments are all changing to Linux over the next 2 years
which I am getting involved with, also I am now getting a lot of
enquiries from the small business, home user people I usually deal
with about how to change over to Linux so I am unwillingly learning
Red Hat in particular very quickly and it is a painful process believe
me.

It is however growing on me rapidly, its not as easy to use as Windows
but there is not a lot it can't do if you set your mind to it and its
strangely satisfying to beat into submission.

Anyway I live in a very small but financially very significant tax
haven, if the buzz on Windows Vista is dire here whats it like in the
real world and why are M$ releasing it half finished and apparantly
needing new hardware or upgrades to run? Not looking good here I
reckon I will have trouble giving it away.

I am not thinking it will bomb totally but I do think it will be very
dissapointing sales wise by comparison to previous OS releases from M$
and a huge boon to Linux.

Google OS anybody? coming soon probably.

Should I bin my M$ shares and up the Google shares with the proceeds?
I reckon so.

Jonah

Thank you for a very thoughtful and insightful observations. I do believe
the crafters of Vista are listening and hopefully the end product will be
one that shows they did listen. Some of the same feelings were made in the
early stages of XP, and this beta is far different from XP. I believe you
will be pleasantly surprised when it is released.
Being a beta tester for Vista, it's looking good.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[Kerry Brown]

I am a freelance PC builder / installer / general dogsbody type, I
work for several PC firms and help out clients, running websites,
general stuff part time when I am not running the IT stuff for a
couple of yacht brokers which is my main breadwinner.

I have had a developer copy of Vista for 8 weeks now via work which I
was asked to evaluate ie play with and show customers so when it is
released I will get the job to do Vista builds, setups, upgrades and
configuration stuff.

In the couse of playing with it myself I cannot honestly see what it
is that "industry" has been waiting for as the PC press would have me
believe. I have showed it to many clients who are mostly impressed
with the graphics initially but after a few minutes playing they have
it set to classic mode and tell me its just XP with a new look. I have
to agree with them, despite the much trumpeted Avalon, Indigo, WinFS
etc most of which won't be ready by release (try selling that to an
office manager - good luck) this is very difficult to get anybody
worked up about including myself. IE7 would have been great 2 years
ago, now its old hat for most people, the ones that know about browser
issues have switched to Firefox / Opera long ago and the rest don't
give a toss as long as the "interweb" is working. TBO under the skin
Vista looks exactly like XP with small differences which I would
expect of course but clients want to see why they should fork out hard
cash, and its very difficult to show them, big selling point of the
new FS is a non starter innit so where do you go from there. Recommend
Google Desktop Search maybe?

The other issue is Office 12, most managers don't want to know about
yet another Office upgrade which will cause confusion and slow down
work for months whilst their employees get used to it and set it all
up again. Weather this is true or not is irrelevent to them,even if I
offered £10-00 / seat to upgrade to it I would have a hard time, they
are not interested, they are however interested in seeing Open Office
and very impressed that it will handle M$ office formats. I don't know
I don't do a lot with office beyond installing it and setting up e
mail etc but the response at the moment is positively chilly. Also I
know a lot of companies use custom applications specifically designed
to work with older Office incarnations that could not change if they
wanted to because they cannot get the software updated.

Back to the upcoming Vista release I am finding that the non computer
junkies who just want to file, print and e mail are very unimpressed
and extremely unlikely to bother upgrading especially if new hardware
is required wheras the knowlegable guys are not touching it with a
barge pole because of the hardware issues and the draconian DRM which
seems to have been dictated by the Media Conglomorates. Then there is
the magnified inertia effect caused by XP being perfectly good for 99%
of users who don't care about the finer points of filing systems and
pretty graphics but only care about costs.

Personally I will have 1 copy on the lowest spec machine I can get
away with for work purposes because I have to but at present it looks
like being a very part time job for me.

By comparison when XP was coming up we had hundreds of people waiting
for it with pre paid built machines all over the show just waiting for
the OS to arrive - Vista nothing not even a serious enquiry.

The other thing that is happening in a big way is Linux - most of our
large banks and institutions have already gone over to Linux, the
government departments are all changing to Linux over the next 2 years
which I am getting involved with, also I am now getting a lot of
enquiries from the small business, home user people I usually deal
with about how to change over to Linux so I am unwillingly learning
Red Hat in particular very quickly and it is a painful process believe
me.

It is however growing on me rapidly, its not as easy to use as Windows
but there is not a lot it can't do if you set your mind to it and its
strangely satisfying to beat into submission.

Anyway I live in a very small but financially very significant tax
haven, if the buzz on Windows Vista is dire here whats it like in the
real world and why are M$ releasing it half finished and apparantly
needing new hardware or upgrades to run? Not looking good here I
reckon I will have trouble giving it away.

I am not thinking it will bomb totally but I do think it will be very
dissapointing sales wise by comparison to previous OS releases from M$
and a huge boon to Linux.

Google OS anybody? coming soon probably.

Should I bin my M$ shares and up the Google shares with the proceeds?
I reckon so.

From what I have seen in three demos by Microsoft, (no hands on yet, I just
don't have the time to build a machine just for a Beta,) the single most
important feature is the finer grained security model. You don't have to run
as administrator all the time. This step alone will eliminate most malware
if it actually works and passwords are enforced. The other great thing is
removing drivers from the kernel. This should eliminate a lot of BSODs. The
user interface is just another GUI to ooh and ahh about but in the end just
fluff.

Kerry

 

[Uncle Joe]

Well, I'm very glad to learn that Vista does indeed have
a Classic mode. Hadn't been able to find a straight
on my quesiton about that. Thanks for the input.

 

[bxf]

From what I have seen in three demos by Microsoft, (no hands on yet, I just
don't have the time to build a machine just for a Beta,) the single most
important feature is the finer grained security model. You don't have to run
as administrator all the time. This step alone will eliminate most malware
if it actually works and passwords are enforced. The other great thing is
removing drivers from the kernel. This should eliminate a lot of BSODs. The
user interface is just another GUI to ooh and ahh about but in the end just
fluff.

This is what should concern us, not whether or not Vista "looks good".
XP has enough options to customize the appearance, as far as I'm
concerned.

The opinions of casual observers who are given a demonstration of the
product are essentially useless, as they cannot take into consideration
any internal improvements, such as those indicated here.

 

[jonah]

MS is not marketing Vista. Legit beta testers like it overall and are
seeing improvements with each incremental release. I suggest you reserve
judgement for at least a year, Jonah.

I will, its not my judgement that matters its the press coverage
weather M$ are involved or not.

Meanwhile, consider joining the official beta testing when it goes public:
http://connect.microsoft.com.

Thanks Bear I will do that.

Jonah

 

[jonah]

On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 22:02:11 -0800, "Michael Stevens"

snip

Thank you for a very thoughtful and insightful observations. I do believe
the crafters of Vista are listening and hopefully the end product will be
one that shows they did listen. Some of the same feelings were made in the
early stages of XP, and this beta is far different from XP. I believe you
will be pleasantly surprised when it is released.
Being a beta tester for Vista, it's looking good.

Thank gawd for that Michael



Jonah

 

[jonah]

Well, I'm very glad to learn that Vista does indeed have
a Classic mode. Hadn't been able to find a straight
on my quesiton about that. Thanks for the input.

Well the version I have does, dunno about the next version have not
seen it yet, I have to go into work and get it installed. Final build
who knows but I would say its a good idea to include classic options.Jonah

snip

 

[jonah]

This is what should concern us, not whether or not Vista "looks good".
XP has enough options to customize the appearance, as far as I'm
concerned.
Agreed

The opinions of casual observers who are given a demonstration of the
product are essentially useless, as they cannot take into consideration
any internal improvements, such as those indicated here.

These people are not casual observers they are small businesses that
buy lots of PCs the same people who upgraded to XP when that came out.
Its a bit arrogant to assume they are all unable to take internal
improvements into consideration, this is entirely untrue. They base
desicions on cost / benefit basis, currently they have read the press
reports and opinions and a lot have seen the beta version running.
They are of the opinion that XP is good enough for the forseeable
future and they will not be rushing to upgrade next year in most cases
or they are looking at Linux.

Vista needs some good press now to counter the Vista Beta negative
stuff, saying wait for the final build is not enough the damage is
being done now.

 

[R. McCarty]

It's not the visible changes that validate it as a worthwhile update. Just
as Service Pack 2 was recompiled to prevent "Buffer Overruns", to me
that was it's greatest strength. However, Microsoft low-balled that as
a feature and didn't get the credit deserved. People forget that Vista is
based on a different Kernel than XP. For years, the MS complainers
have cajoled them to "Re-Write" Windows. Now that they are doing
that, the Bitchin' & Carping changes to something else.

It's a year away, it's too damn early to start with the "Thumbs Up or Down"
commentary.

 

[jonah]

It's not the visible changes that validate it as a worthwhile update. Just
as Service Pack 2 was recompiled to prevent "Buffer Overruns", to me
that was it's greatest strength. However, Microsoft low-balled that as
a feature and didn't get the credit deserved. People forget that Vista is
based on a different Kernel than XP. For years, the MS complainers
have cajoled them to "Re-Write" Windows. Now that they are doing
that, the Bitchin' & Carping changes to something else.

It's a year away, it's too damn early to start with the "Thumbs Up or Down"
commentary.

I am not the one giving it the thumbs down I am reporting on the
"vibes" in my neck of the woods where I make a living from computers.
I am saying that curret coverage is too negative and many of my
customers have already prejudged and dismissed it. My point is it
needs some positive coverage now Beta or not it makes no difference.

Jonah

 

[bxf]

These people are not casual observers they are small businesses that
buy lots of PCs the same people who upgraded to XP when that came out.
Its a bit arrogant to assume they are all unable to take internal
improvements into consideration, this is entirely untrue.

What I meant is that one cannot know the internal improvements by
merely looking at or even trying out the system. These things may have
intenal functionality enhancements that, as great as they may be, are
not obvious to the user. For example, fewer blue screens, reduced
exposure to viruses, or faster performance by some services are not
things that one can "see" immediately.

 

[Kerry Brown]

These people are not casual observers they are small businesses that
buy lots of PCs the same people who upgraded to XP when that came out.
Its a bit arrogant to assume they are all unable to take internal
improvements into consideration, this is entirely untrue. They base
desicions on cost / benefit basis, currently they have read the press
reports and opinions and a lot have seen the beta version running.
They are of the opinion that XP is good enough for the forseeable
future and they will not be rushing to upgrade next year in most cases
or they are looking at Linux.

Vista needs some good press now to counter the Vista Beta negative
stuff, saying wait for the final build is not enough the damage is
being done now.

I also serve the small business market. A lot of small business' are still
using Win9x or Win2k. I don't find their understanding of how an OS works to
be very sophisticated. Most of them use whatever the pc came with and
upgrade to a new OS when they get a new pc. If they truly do a cost/benefit
analysis then switching from a MS shop to a Linux shop can be prohibitive.
Retraining users is a nightmare. Employee resistance to change is the most
important and can be the most costly aspect of an upgrade. Most small
business is very resistant to changing something that is working good enough
now. Once Vista comes out if small business owners can see that it runs
their existing apps and they have less problems with malware there will be a
stampede to upgrade. Most of my customers are terrified of malware. Most of
them have lost production due to malware. Even with the best protection in
place the fact that most applications need administrator rights puts the
onus on the employee using the pc. There will always be employees who don't
follow policy when it comes to Internet use. If the malware problem is still
there then it will be business as usual and the only time they upgrade will
be when they purchase new pc's.

Kerry