Michael at 4Sysops finds an interesting data point:
In a report issued last month, Gartner said Vista adoption among businesses is in line with that of XP at a comparable juncture after its release, and predicted Vista will have an installed base of 21.3 percent by year’s end, compared to 16.9 percent for XP in 2003.
The anti-Vista hysteria is extreme, but the reality for businesses is that adoption takes a long time. Always has, always will.
[Update: I’ve sent a request to Gartner askng for more details.]
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
but wait… the guy at the Apple store told me that no one is using Vista…
My friends uncles boss’s next door neighbor tried Vista and said he hated it.
Informationweek, PCWorld and PCMag told me that businesses are avoiding Vista at all costs
The Apple PC commercials said the same things…
Are you telling me they were all wrong?
I wonder if we’ll see retractions from any of them…. heck, I wonder if we’ll even see this story from any of them!
Thanks for the info, Ed, it’s always nice to hear how well Vista is doing like we all knew it was.
Anecdotally, I think businesses are in fact adopting Vista at a slower rate than XP. Just as anecdotally, I have no problems with Vista. The Vista desktop PC I use every day is up to a 9.75 reliability rating.
Anecdotally, the company I just left (a Fortune 50 company) was still using Windows 2000 primarily. My computer had 512mb of ram, Pentium 4, and a 40GB hard drive with 2k on it and it was considered a “developer” machine (meaning higher end than the average Joe)… so, yeah, sometimes people are just slow to adopt…. They should be ready for Vista in about 2025 😉
Part of the reason was they were not interested in technology “first” (although I believe they should have been) but some companies (technology companies) are and therefore do, sometimes, upgrade sooner. In the case of my former employer, they were going to stick with the cheapest things they could get away with.
Ed in reading an A+ certification manual I bought recently I noticed it talked at length about upgrading to XP from 2000. It was recent enough to mention that Vista was about to be released. I was surprised when it mentioned that many enterprises still run 2000. So why is the gradual adoption of Vista by enterprise a surprise?
I guess its not such a surprise, I work for a small Government agency that just upgraded to new XP desktops at the end of 06.
Vista is working well for me, and I’ve just finished experimenting with Windows Server 2008 on two different ThinkPads.
Everything worked ok except WiFi. On the R50p, Server would not even see the hardware. On the T60, the hardware showed up in Device Mgr but no dice on the drivers.
So now, my wild-eyed prediction: Windows 7 will be nothing more than Server 2008 but with more of a “consumer type” GUI and an easy add/remove Windows Features menu. (that would be the “modular” part)
Also, expect all the drivers you would now find in Vista, but they would be downloaded only as needed.
Server and Vista are based on the same kernal, after all, so why not, eh?
Before SP1 i was an happy Vista user, after SP1 i am a more happy vista user.
I do not understand the hate campaigns towqards Vista.
Most of the hate campaigns are media led IMHO. When consumers read bad press they just follow the pack and believe what they read. Half of them haven’t even tried Vista yet they talk as is they know everything about it. Come on you non users get a grip and stop this nonsense. J.B.
Well Johnathan Bennett, I am one of those who have actually tried Vista. At least three times! And every time I give up. I agree that Vista as an OS is probably better than XP but most users are driven by the user interface which I think is appalling. From an explorer that I can no longer use single-click (since clicking on whitespace now opens the item) to cleartype (that I find visually irritating) that I cannot turn off totally. The problem for me is that there is no reason why I should upgrade. Everything I have in XP now is fine.