Bit9

Vista Enterprise rollouts seem to be hitting a significant snag, according to Devil Mountain Software, with 35% of Windows VISTA installs being uninstalled in favor of Windows XP. HP & Dell have been downgrading new Vista machines to XP in response to customer demands. Even though Microsoft no longer supports XP, HP & Dell will allow customers to downgrade XP until July of 2009. Still, a sample of 3,000 machines is not a too convincing statistic. There're more than 200 million desktops and laptops shipped annually. The vast majority of them carry the latest Microsoft OS of record, VISTA. Hence, we need to question results based on less that 0.0015% of the sample.

Bit9's experience speaks to the contrary. Even though the adoption of VISTA is slow and the migration path lengthy, organizations are planning their moves to VISTA. Software compatibility problems are offset with new functionality, better user interface and significant security improvements. Even though some organizations are clamoring about skipping the Windows VISTA refresh, they may simply be waiting for others to work out software and driver incompatibilities for them.

As for downgrades, many organizations need new hardware to replace decommissioned machines. That new hardware needs to be running XP at least until VISTA migration procedures are in place, as not to impact internal security and operational procedures. Not that downgrading is inconceivable, yet 35% seems to be overtly exaggerated.