For example, the Fulton County government in Georgia tested the beta of Vista three years ago and initially planned to upgrade all 6,000 of its PCs by the end of 2007. But even now, Vista is running on only a small portion of its systems because of budget cuts forced by reductions in tax revenues.

"We're stuck," said Jay Terrell, the county's deputy director of IT. "We're going to wait for Windows 7, though it's not because we [want to] wait."

Papa Gino's Inc. looked at Vista for its 160 corporate employees but decided to wait for Windows 7, said CIO Paul Valle. And, he said, the Dedham, Mass.-based restaurant chain probably won't "get serious" about upgrading until Microsoft issues a second service-pack update for Windows 7.

This version of this story originally appeared in Computerworld 's print edition.