24 March 2008
by Alex Scroxton
The first service pack for Microsoft’s Windows Vista was released last week but partners remain divided over whether it will accelerate adoption of the operating system.
Analysts have downgraded forecasts for PC sales in the UK this year after corporate customers reported a reluctance to move from XP to Vista because of perceptions of compatability issues with the OS. (MicroScope 3 March).
Bentpenny managing director Mike Lawrence was unconvinced Microsoft had delivered: "I’ve heard nothing bad about SP1 but lots of customers are not installing it because they don’t want to be first… and are waiting till after Easter."
"Almost all my clients remain on XP because it is still faster," he added. "If Microsoft fixes the speed, they could still improve sales."
The belief by Microsoft that SP1 was a magic bullet for Vista was not justified, said Gartner research fellow Brian Gammage. "This is a time when you download updates off the Internet," he said. "90 per cent of what is in SP1 will already be out there."
But Tim Hall, Teksys’ business development director, believed Windows patches generally increased adoption rates among end-users: "I think we will see the release of SP1 unlocking deployment," he predicted.
Microsoft Windows business group lead John Curran claimed feedback from the technical community was already positive: "Users are seeing performance and speed improvements."
"Our hope is that SP1 will be a bit of a catalyst to accelerate deployment further," he said.
Curran dismissed concerns around incompatible anti-virus and sound drivers, stating that Microsoft was working on the necessary fixes. He conceded that users with incompatible kit would be blocked from downloading the patch for now.
The service pack is expected to filter through the PC channel to retail and business SKUs by the start of April.
