During the past several weeks a couple of the trade magazines that I receive for VARs [value-added resellers] have been covering two of Microsoft’s newest products, Vista and Office 2007. In two of the magazines that I receive the theme has been very similar. Office 2007 seems to be in high demand while Vista is getting an attitude of no need to hurry from clients.

What also is surprising is the attitude of some VARs. They are actually telling customers not to upgrade to Vista because it is not ready yet. This is from people who make their living selling products to clients. Out of everything I read the one response that seemed to convey the attitude of many of the solution providers was this one:

“It doesn’t work very well for everybody yet” notes Bryan Sensintaffar, vice president at PC Computers & Software, a Tulsa, OK, based solution provider. Also cited is a lack of drivers for some printers and scanners that are widely used by the small business community as another thorn in the deployment of Vista. Plus there are still many business applications that are not entirely Vista ready as well.

Now the real problem. VARs are saying that the real problem is that there is no value proposition in trying to convince their customers to adopt to Vista. Most also note that Windows XP which Vista is supposed to replace works perfectly fine for their customers who see no need to upgrade.

It is also noted that Microsoft is not being blamed for the lack of support that third party vendors are not providing for Vista. Most partners feel that Vista is a great product, but until 3rd party apps and drivers catch up, will remain a tough sell. While everyone is looking forward to the day when Vista starts to support more and more apps, another common theme seems to be “XP isn’t dead yet.”

What do you think? Should Microsoft have taken more time to insure that more software and drivers were available before Vista was released? Or was it rushed out the door too quickly? I don’t know how five years to development could be seen as too ‘quickly,’ but you get my drift.

Comments welcome.

[tags]microsoft, vista, business[/tags]