Windows Vista not likely to succeed in 2008

It’s a new year and some would say “new beginnings,” but that’s probably not going to be the case for Microsoft’s flagship operating system, Windows Vista. The final version of Vista SP1 is due at some point in the coming weeks but that’s little consolation to users that already have mounds of compatibility problems that won’t be fixed in the service pack. With Windows 7 only two years away, there isn’t much motivation for most to upgrade to Vista.

All new computers are shipping with Vista but Microsoft was hoping to sell more upgrade versions or full retail editions but that just didn’t happen due to poor driver support, older peripheral support and several other nagging hardware issues such as a 3GB memory limitation in 32-bit versions which is still a problem.

Information Week says Windows XP is still the most common operating system running and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Support for that operating system continues through the end of 2011 but that will likely be extended because the XP user base will probably still be quite extensive.

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