News

The Vista 'Turning Point'

Brad Brooks didn't mince words about where things stand with the Windows Vista operating system. "It is a tale of two cities in many ways," Brooks, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Online Services and Windows Business Group, said in a May webcast.

On one side of the border is the fact that, as of April, Microsoft had sold more than 140 million licenses, making Vista "the fastest-adopted OS ever," Brooks said in the free 32-minute show, now archived on the company's partner portal.

On the other side is the market's negative feedback, which Brooks conceded wasn't entirely undeserved. "We had an ambitious plan with Windows Vista -- a very ambitious plan. We prioritized security first above everything else. That led to some compatibility issues," he said. In addition, he said, "we had an ecosystem and a partner industry that was building drivers and software that wasn't ready for the launch."

But by May, Microsoft had reached "a turning point with what's happening in the marketplace" regarding Vista, Brooks said. Factors partners can use to promote Vista:

Compatibility. More than 77,000 devices now work with Vista, most having become available just since January, Brooks said.

Scheduled Deployments. "Sixty percent of IT pros right now are telling us that they plan to deploy Windows Vista within the next 12 months across the majority of their desktops," he said, attributing the jump in support largely to positive response to the release of Service Pack 1 in mid-April.

Customer Satisfaction. "We've seen steady increases in terms of user satisfaction" from both business and home users, Brooks said. Bottom line: There are 83 percent of current Vista users who now say they would recommend the OS to friends or relatives.

Performance. The improvements in SP1 level the playing field with Vista's still-popular predecessor, in Brooks' view: "We see [Vista] on par from a performance standpoint with Windows XP on similar hardware," he said.

Conservation. Finally, Brooks recommends touting Vista's power-consumption capabilities. "For every 10 machines that you have running Windows Vista with SP1, you can take one car off the road in terms of the carbon footprint," he said.

Featured

  • Microsoft Offers Support Extensions for Exchange 2016 and 2019

    Microsoft has introduced a paid Extended Security Update (ESU) program for on-premises Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, offering a crucial safety cushion as both versions near their Oct. 14, 2025 end-of-support date.

  • An image of planes flying around a globe

    2025 Microsoft Conference Calendar: For Partners, IT Pros and Developers

    Here's your guide to all the IT training sessions, partner meet-ups and annual Microsoft conferences you won't want to miss.

  • Notebook

    Microsoft Centers AI, Security and Partner Dogfooding at MCAPS

    Microsoft's second annual MCAPS for Partners event took place Tuesday, delivering a volley of updates and directives for its partners for fiscal 2026.

  • Microsoft Layoffs: AI Is the Obvious Elephant in the Room

    As Microsoft doubles down on an $80 billion bet on AI this fiscal year, its workforce reductions are drawing scrutiny over whether AI's ascent is quietly reshaping its human capital strategy, even as official messaging avoids drawing a direct line.