Vista loses steam

Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is not winning any popularity contests these days. Bill Gates, the outgoing head of Microsoft, disclosed on Sunday at the Consumer Electronics Show that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Vista since January. But numbers do not tell the whole story. While 100 million sounds like a lot, Vista was loaded onto 39 percent of the PCs that were shipped in 2007--a far poorer showing than had been expected.

Despite the fact that Microsoft spent millions on developing Vista, customers are concerned about its compatibility with older apps and its resource requirements. A new survey in InformationWeek released last week found that nearly one-third of corporate desktop managers had no plans to upgrade their company's PCs to Vista. The new OS has also encountered a few other problems. Many competitors are moving into new desktop alternatives such as Apple's beefed up Leopard OS and open source offerings from Ubuntu and other Linux distributors. We'll be interested to see the next turn of the wheel for Vista.

For more on Vista:
- See this InformationWeek article