eWEEK: "Vista?" Enterprise: "No."

"Why Vista? Good Question." That's the premise of an eWEEK survey to enterprises. And the answer is... buried in a horrible "slideshow" format forcing would-be readers to wade through flickering screen after screen, for what turns out to be barely a large paragraph's worth of info.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Vista/Why-Vista-Good-Question/

For you, fair readers, I bring the slides' text in its entirety. Here it is:

In a survey conducted by Ziff Davis Enterprise Editorial Research for eWEEK, respondents indicated that they have been underwhelmed by Microsoft Windows Vista. And, it seems the future of Windows is ... XP?

Vista? What Vista? One year after Vista’s release, just 2 percent of respondents said the OS is the primary desktop OS at their company. A whopping 92 percent said Windows XP was the primary desktop OS.

And it seems that enterprises are planning on sticking with what they have for the foreseeable future: 72 percent of respondents said that the OS they’re currently using is the one they expect to be using in 2009. Looks like XP has a longer life than Microsoft planned—or wanted.

More than two-thirds of respondents saw no compelling reason to move to Vista: Thirty-seven percent said they were not planning on moving to Vista because other Windows platforms were meeting their needs, and 31 percent said they had no plans to move to Vista because of the problems that had been reported with the new OS.

The primary driver for moving to Vista? Increased security? Only for 17 percent of respondents. Improved usability/functionality? Just for 7 percent of respondents. Improved reliability? Er, just 3 percent of respondents were driven by that.

“Driver” may be too strong a word. Many respondents seemed less driven and more carried to Vista: Thirty-four percent of people said the primary driver for Vista would be hardware pre-loaded with the OS.

On that same note, a large number of respondents wrote in responses indicating that the primary driver for Vista was the realization that Microsoft would eventually cut support for XP.

Forty-four percent of respondents have plans to upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 3 companywide, with 45 percent of respondents saying they planned to perform the upgrade one to three months after it is released

All that said, Vista is high on respondents’ list of “other” OSes in use at their companies. When asked what desktop OSes are in use at their companies apart from their primary OSes, respondents answered:

Mac OS X 30%
Windows Vista 30%
Desktop Linux 26%
Windows XP 8%
Windows 95/ME 8%
None of the above 32%

All for the amusement of you Vista fans and foes. The latter group will enjoy the article's comments as well – they're heavy on real-world reports from IT professionals, and aside from the occasional "it works for me, so what can be wrong?" boob, the Vista hatred practically coalesces into a living thing that wants to shamble out of the screen and piddle on your desk. (All of which is matched only by the commenters' hatred for eWEEK's annoying "slideshow".)