Oh boy. I can see this is going to be a fun topic for some people. Let's try to keep ourselves in line here.

---

The penetration of Windows in today's systems is so deep that it certainly won't be disappearing anytime soon. The corporate markets alone will keep Windows for decades to come.

Where Windows will have trouble is the smaller device markets. Windows Mobile has a solid presence, but a smaller, faster footprint seems to be the trend for a lot of devices coming out today.

smaller, faster...

If history is our guide, MS != smaller/faster

It would seem to be counter to the culture, which is to cram as many features as possible into any application regardless of performance or bloat. MS has always seemed to believe that faster hardware was the solution to performance problems.

I agree with Bill. But as the lack of serious Vista penetration shows, I feel fewer and fewer of those businesses will keep upgrading, and the pace of upgrading will slow for those that do continue to upgrade. Especially with the slowing economy, many companies (and individuals) are breaking their addictions for the latest versions of everything and adopting a more pragmatic "if it works, why upgrade?" attitude.

One of the biggest problems with Vista is that a lot of older software will not run on it. So in addition to the expense of buying a new O/S (and the upgraded hardware needed to run it) comes even more expenses of buying upgraded software.

Then there is the training issue. M$ loves to change things around so that new versions of software & O/S almost require re-learning the whole thing from scratch.

True, there are similar issues with every O/S upgrade, but Vista seems to be worse than previous ones.

One of the biggest problems with Vista is that a lot of older software will not run on it.

That's not the case in my experience. I've yet to run into a piece of commercial or open source software that won't run on Vista, and I went from 32-bit XP to 64-bit Vista. Hardware drivers have been the sticking point for me. There's a short list of software that had problems with SP1 [support.microsoft.com], but that's a far cry from your claim.

Outside of large corporate offices that lease equipment, and thus turn it over every few years, what reason has anyone had to upgrade or change base hardware in the last 3-5 years?

My computer's getting a bit older but I still have no plans to replace it or the OS. It used to be I kept my monitor and upgraded my box every year or so. Now I'm keeping the box and upgrading the monitor every year or so.

I think a point has been reached (and was reached about the time they came out with P4 2.4's) where general business/office functionality runs seamlessly and fast and there's no pressing need to upgrade or change speed or functionality. And that may have an impact on Vista penetration. Not buying a new computer, the old one (and OS) is running fine.

LOL! I bet you IBM paid these two Gartner clowns for their 'analysis'.

It's only natural coming from a company that's no longer relevant in the mass computer market.

The sad thing is there are people out there that listen to these so called analysts.

Photoshop 6 had problems installing, then never ran correctly.
Norton AV Corporate Edition wouldn't even install.

Photoshop 6

That version of Photoshop was released in 2000. I could understand problems there.

Norton AV Corporate Edition

I've got a few machines in my office that are running that software on Vista, but it's the Japanese version. Aside from that the Symantec site claims the software is compatible with Vista. What version are you trying to use?

No monopoly or even dominant market position ever lasts in perpetuity. This much is clear from the long and colourful history of commerce. The slower the market is to change, the longer a position can be maintained; IT being a very fast moving market a few years remaining life for the Windows OS would not be unusual by any means.

I'm with Wheel. My motherboard manufacture date was early 2003, and aside from a hard drive dying, my system handles anything I throw at it - although Vista would kill it. Granted I don't game much anymore, but I do music production and record 16 tracks simultaneously several times a week. I also spent years trying different music production solutions and found one I love. Too bad it won't run on Vista.

Being in the IT field, I've always had to have the newest for the sake of the newest. It was fun, and educational to my career to work on the cutting edge. Now I need to be productive and economical. Which means getting every last drop out of my hardware. There is nothing I plan to run on my computer in even the next 3 years that will require the hardware that vista needs.

The point about old software is that previous versions of Windows never seemed to have a problem running programs, no matter how old they were. Indeed there is a compatibility mode you can use to force really old stuff to run, though I've never needed to use it myself.

Then Vista comes out and stuff like Photoshop 6 and 7 won't run on it! (I know someone who had to upgrade to CS just to use Photoshop. Do you spot a conspiracy here?)

Why couldn't Vista be made to run ALL software, no matter how old? Probably because it's a complete rewrite of the Windows system.

In retrospect it might have been better to upgrade XP indefinitely instead. Though I am not sure if the code behind it will allow this. Microsoft must have had a good reason to ditch the code for Vista. (I know security was one reason touted for introducing Vista.)

Now look at Apple when they released Leopard. Did it mean lots of programs that used to run on Tiger no longer worked? No, it was a natural progression of the operating system. Sure, some programs need to be updated here and there, but otherwise it was OK. I imagine the next upgrade to OS X will be just as smooth.

I'm guessing that Apple 'got it right' years back, and are just improving OS X gradually, a bit like human evolution occured in the past. Whereas Microsoft give the impression that they 'got it wrong' with XP (full of security holes) and had to rewrite it. Now they've 'got it wrong' with Vista too, and it'll be Windows 7 before they finally get a stable version worth upgrading to.