Survey: Corporations hold out on Vista

Sixty percent of IT administrators have no plans to deploy Vista despite service pack 1, which fixed the operating systems problems, according to a survey of 1,100 IT managers.

The survey, conducted by KACE, which makes systems management appliances, found that there are 10 percent more holdouts on Vista deployments. Forty two percent of administrators said they would consider alternative operating systems like Linux and Apple to avoid Vista and 92 percent said the release of SP1 didn't alter their plans.

Apparently Vista psychosis goes beyond just me.

Also see: First hints of Microsoft’s “fight back” ads appear KACE notes that the Vista conundrum can lead to new problems. For instance, IT shops aren't used to managing multiple operating systems and haven't researched Apple OS X or Linux enough. To be sure, KACE's reason for the survey was to pitch its KBox, which is an appliance designed to manage multiple operating systems. Given that disclosure you may want to take the survey with a grain of salt (as a rule I'm skeptical of vendor surveys, but it's worth passing on). You can evaluate the methodology, which looked legit, and the complete survey results from 2008 and 2007 for yourself.

The bottom line according to KACE is that Microsoft is facing an uphill climb as it tries to alter Vista's perception. By the way, I've gotten a bunch of emails telling me that Vista has been fine and I should give it a go. But pricing a laptop I couldn't help but notice that a Dell with Ubuntu is a lot of horsepower on the cheap. I'm still evaluating my next move, but choices abound. On the corporate level choices also abound. The rub: The OS choice often means complexity.