By: Doug Caverly

Microsoft Vista has suffered one embarrassing blow after another: people were shunning it, people were returning to XP, and so on.

It seems that Vista is gradually gaining ground, however, and according to a new study, people are somewhat pleased with the results.

CDW’s Windows Vista Tracking Poll found that about 58 percent of “IT decision makers” who were using Vista had either a somewhat or very favorable opinion of it. Another 20 percent of respondents weighed in somewhere within the neutral range of feelings.

Not bad, eh?

These numbers, and the positions of the people surveyed, certainly imply that a lot of upgrades will be taking place, and CDW’s stats seem to back the idea.

The company states, “The final phase of the year-long study finds Windows Vista gaining traction in the mainstream business market, with 48 percent of respondents stating that their organization is using or evaluating Windows Vista - up from 29 percent in the previous poll taken in February 2007 and from 12 percent in the first poll taken in October 2006.”

Vista still doesn’t have a huge fan base, though; there’s no getting around that.

The fact that anyone is impressed by a “using or evaluating” rate of less than 50 percent, and that 22 percent of IT decision makers who are using Vista retain either a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of it, is not good for Microsoft.

Even less so since Vista is not a new product, and is instead almost a year old.

Also, there’s the recent recommendation of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency that UK schools not switch to Vista.

Given this split, service packs look likely to remain a turning point in the debate, and fans of XP, Macs, and Linux will continue to have powerful voices.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.