Analysts: Vista did not meet first year expectations

It’s common knowledge that the entire computer/IT industry has been somewhat disappointed with Vista, be it the lack of drivers, hardware required to run it or general presence of bugs in the thing, it’s clear that Microsoft could and should have done better.

ComputerWorld says that if Vista were to be graded on a report card it would have recieved “not meeting expectations.”  From the business side, I can certainly understand that point of view.

When Vista was released to consumers in January 2007, Jim Allchin, then head of Vista development declared, “This is a good day. I am super-happy.”  He may not be so happy today, if he were still with Microsoft.

The sales figures surrounding Vista are somewhat confusing, with one side saying this and one side saying something completely different, we may never know the truth but what really matters is the installation base of Vista and not the sales of Vista.  And the install base for Vista is quite low.

Vista might be making inroads in the home consumer market but it has done little to perk the interest of the enterprise world with analyst firm Gartner Inc. saying, “the uptake is much lower than expected.”

Many companies had planned to roll out Vista in late 2007 or early 2008 and now that has changed to late 2008 or early 2009 with many stating that the roll out schedule is now 12 months (or more) behind.  Part of that is due to many of the specialized applications not being ready for use on Vista, the hardware requirements to run Vista and the ever present legacy hardware compatibility issues in Vista.

Most existing computers and peripherals in many organizations would have to be replaced and old equipment recycled or trashed.  An expensive venture for even large corporations and would put medium or small businesses in the red.

Michael Cherry, an analyst at Decisions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash., research firm said, he doesn’t even recommend businesses use existing hardware to run Vista and is telling them to just replace everything.

However, Vista has lived up to its promises as far as the consumer is concerned but at some point, Microsoft is going to have to get businesses up and running with Vista and as I write this, some US government departments are preparing to roll out Vista beginning this year and by this time next year, most agencies in the government will be equipped with Vista.

It’s true that SP1 is somewhere out there and will be released at some point and that’s what many businesses are waiting for, until then, the six year old Windows XP will do them just fine.

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• Microsoft might forget about Vista SP1 until 2008
• Analysts still split over Windows 7′s short-term future
• Analysts questions Windows 8 leaks
• Microsoft CEO expects to ship 90 million Windows Vista licenses this year
• Microsoft will launch Longhorn Server next year