It won't happen overnight ...

The only people who won't eventually move to Windows Vista are the Linux and Mac enthusiasts.

There's been a lot of discussion on ZDNet Australia recently about the benefits of upgrading to Microsoft's new operating system. We've covered plenty of cases where large organisations have chosen not to make an immediate switch to Vista, citing no compelling reason to upgrade.

We've had comments on the site from IT professionals who've assessed the benefits and costs and decided they'll wait.

And of course we've had the Linux users who live for the opportunity to make the same jokes about Windows.

But market realities are if you're in a corporate environment, you will adopt Vista. Maybe not this month, maybe not this year, but you will eventually buy or use a computer with Windows Vista pre-installed. That's the market dominance of Microsoft.

The question is not whether corporates will adopt Vista, it's when.

While some Talkback comments have howled with delight at our stories of organisations who've chosen not to immediately go down the Vista path, is such a move feasible?

If I still have 12 months remaining on my Windows XP licensing, is it really necessary for me to discard that and plunge into Vista, bugs and all?

Microsoft doesn't expect the business world to drop everything and install Vista as soon as they can. The average IT manager is more likely to check out the benefits of the OS and consult his PC refresh cycle to see when there might be the opportunity to deploy. This is why vendors like Dell hawk their wares immediately after a Windows launch.

But what of the alternatives? It seems the worst case scenario for Microsoft would be for a customer to dislike Vista so much that they stay on XP, waiting for the next Windows release. Hardly a likely scenario.

The only thing that can thwart corporates moving to Vista is if Apple can convert its momentum in the consumer market into enterprise sales. Or if Red Hat, Novell etc can make a viable business case for desktop Linux.

And that seems a long way off.