Both Gartner and Forrester Research had released reports last year predicting that enterprise uptake of Windows Vista would be sluggish, just as it was with Windows XP. Forrester, for instance, said in December that its surveys indicated that only a third of big business users planned to start deploying Vista when it became available -- or even by the time Microsoft releases a Service Pack 1 update, which typically takes a year or so. About 20 percent of users in Forrester's July 2005 survey of 56 large companies said they had no plans to upgrade Vista at all.

Microsoft will continue to release Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise to volume licensing customers in November. The four consumer editions of Vista, while still being released to manufacturing in November, won't arrive installed in PCs on store shelves until January -- after the important holiday shopping season. Jim Allchin, co-president of the company's platform and services division announced the delay Tuesday, saying the company wants to ensure that the OS is solid and secure before releasing it.

Microsoft also said that retail sales of new PCs are actually higher in January than in december.

Even enterprises with speedier rollout plans said the consumer version shipping delay doesn't affect their rollout plans.

'The Microsoft announcement does not adversely affect us,' said Robert Fort, director of IT for Los Angeles-based music retailer, Virgin Entertainment Group. Virgin has about 500 PCs serving as in-store Point-of-Service (POS) terminals and kiosks running a combination of Windows 2000, Windows Embedded for Point of Service (WEPOS) and an old IBM 'green screen' OS. The retailer is part of Microsoft's early Technology Adopter Program, or TAP, and 'will continue to follow its timeline,' Fort said.