"We are using Microsoft Windows 2000, and don't have immediate plans to implement Vista straight away," Parkes said. "We might look at installing Vista later on, but that will depend how well it does [and] on user review."

Adelaide City Council IT project manager David Carroll said its Vista roll out will be dragged out between 12 to 18 months and will follow a detailed project implementation procedure.

"We will roll Vista out over an 18 month period, but I'll probably have Vista on my home computer before then so I'll know its [problems] and will be more familiar with it," Carroll said.

A Southern Cross University IT manager, who requested anonymity, said that while there are no immediate plans to go to Vista, the operating system will eventually replace the current XP desktops and will be rolled out initially to staff and then students in accordance with strict project implementation plans.

An e-mail poll of 40 IT managers conducted by Computerworld US last week found only three respondents expect Vista to be deployed on more than half of their companies' systems by year's end, despite the removal of some of the barriers that hinder upgrades.