Vista: Whose reality do you believe?

In a presentation at Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond on July 24, company officials outlined their bullish projections and claims for windows vista. But it wasn’t the facts and figures that garnered the most attention from attendees here; instead, it was a video of a focus group of Vista skeptics who changed their originally negative opinions of Microsoft’s latest Windows release once they had a chance to see it demonstrated.

Microsoft told the focus group participants that they were seeing a demo of “Mojave,” (why not “Midori”?) an as-yet-unannounced Windows release (which was actually Windows Vista). The participants, a number of whom admitted they had no direct hands-on experience with Vista, said they were jazzed about Mojave and would definitely use it once it was released.

The Mojave demo was used to back Microsoft’s contention that once they had a chance to try Vista for themselves, customers liked the product.

Forrester Research issued new study results today claiming that 18 months after release, “Vista is still struggling to gain a foothold in large companies.” Forrester called Vista the “new Coke.”

Forrester said that Vista use remains in the single digits (”just under nine percent according to Forrester’s month-by-month desk-top analysis of 50,000 of our enterprise clients across 2,300 companies. That’s up from six percent in January of this year, but far short of the 87 percent penetration for Windows XP.”)

Meanwhile, Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President for Online services and Windows Business Group, told FAM attendees today that Vista’s uptake among business users is solid. He said Vista enterprise sales were up 20 percent and renewal rates for Software Assurance among business users were greater than 80 percent. (Not surprisingly, there were no stats in Veghte’s presentation about what percentage of business users are downgrading to XP, one of their “benefits” under the Software Assurance program.)

The answer to whether Vista is growing among enterprise users is “an emphatic yes,” Veghte said.

Veghte said that the higher end of the mid-market also is beginning to upgrade more rapidly to Vista.