Of course, both Foster and Bryant represent hardware manufacturers. Talk to an everyday IT administrator and your answers might be different. 'The new hardware's great, but we're not waiting for it,' FranklinCovey's Connelly says. 'We've tested it, and we think it runs fine in 512MB or 1GB. The WIM tools are good enough that we can do the OS rollout right now and give our users the Office features they want without waiting for new hardware. We can add those advanced features later.'

According to Connelly, FranklinCovey's network carries approximately 800 distributed users, placing it on the small end of the enterprise rollout scale. Although the lower desktop count undoubtedly had something to do with Connelly's decision to run his rollout across the existing hardware landscape, this isn't a trend that's relegated to the SMB segment. LeSueur says Avanade's large enterprise customers aren't following the hardware lease rollout plan, either.

'Enterprises are evaluating Vista based on internal TCO, not initial hardware costs,' LeSueur says. 'With Microsoft's advances in software deployment tools, scheduling the rollout around lease agreements doesn't interest them. Better to focus on software compatibility and mission-critical testing.' Just get your users what they need. Hardware purchasing doesn't have to be affected at all.

Too much too quickly?

It's the first time in more than a decade that Redmond has released this many product platforms at once.