That's primarily because few of them planned to aggressively roll out the new operating system.
Microsoft will release Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise to volume- licensing customers in November. However, the four consumer editions of Vista, although still being released to manufacturing in November, won't arrive on store shelves until January -- after the holiday shopping season. Microsoft had expected Vista-based PCs to be on sale by late November.
Marc West, CIO at H&R Block Inc."No surprise," Marc West, CIO at H&R Block Inc., said of the delay. The Kansas City, Missouri-based company has 120,000 PCs throughout its thousands of tax-preparation branch offices running either Windows 2000 or XP. According to West, H&R Block has no plans to upgrade to Vista until 2009 at the earliest.
"Given the current state of XP, it is wise for them to go for a higher-quality and more security-tested product versus rushing for a deadline and having problems," he said.
"I'd rather have a stable, secure product than a rushed product that immediately needs to be patched," said John-Mark Tucker, IT manager at Seattle-based manufacturer Red Dot Corp., which is part of Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program (TAP).