Wow, everyone is getting worked up about
Robert May's Vista posting.
I didn't realize that we had so many zealots.
I don't really have an opinion about Vista because I have not extensively personally used it.
From a business standpoint, I think that it will take quite a while to be adopted.
Let's face it, most business types are quite satisfied with Windows XP. Unless they are forced to switch (because of leveraged security concerns) or by new PC purchases, it will not be widely adopted soon.
The key is whether the core software business is commercial software or internal software development/systems analysis. My previous employer (commercial software) was only interested in Vista to make sure that their current software versions worked on Vista go-live. That meant a small group of testers and developers had Vista to check compatibility. This did not represent a wide-spread shift in the company. New development with VS2005 is still in the design phase and will not begin full scale development for some months. Many of these types of businesses have had a hard enough time selling the conversion of older apps to VS2003. Since VS2003 apps supposedly don't run in VS2005, this adds in an additional tier of conversion.
In businesses which sell services, the conversion to Vista is even less attractive. If the core business is web apps, then the conversion to Vista is not seen as necessary at all. All application development can still be done in VS2003 or PHP or something else. Most of the supporting business people and even the call center interacts either through an Intranet version of the web app or through a custom legacy system, which surprisingly may be greater than five years old. Vista is a hard sell in these situations where management sees everything as "good enough". Even new PC's are bought with XP because it is status quo and compatible with everyone else in the company. Until Microsoft discontinues selling XP I don't see that changing.