Microsoft: there is no gain in waiting for Windows 7

Despite the incredible figure announced by Microsoft for the sales of Vista, this system is far from creating unanimity in PC world. Described as too heavy, too greedy, constraining… it has difficulty being accepted, especially by the companies which balk at migrating their stocks of machines, which also implies changing the oldest models.
For this reason Microsoft has pushed back the date of abandonment of after sales service of XP and continues to sell licences of this OS. Recently, in order to inflate the sales of Vista, they announced that it would be henceforth possible to buy Vista, and to downgrade to XP at no cost.
Another factor also plays to discredit them, the announcement of a too early date for the release for Windows 7 in 2009. A number now hesitate to go for Vista and prefer to await the next version.
Of course, this wait-and-see policy does not please Microsoft who has launched a charm campaign for Vista. Their new argument is rather amusing. Windows 7 will be closer to Vista than XP is to Vista. To upgrade now to Vista will thus make it much easier the eventual transition towards Windows 7.
They have even produced a PDF giving the 5 good reasons to migrate towards Vista in the professional world.
Of course, this helps to a certain extent the business of Apple which proposes today, more than ever, a coherent alternative with Mac OS X. But the big winner could in the final analysis be Linux. Indeed, the current fashion is with EEE type machines, based on not very powerful but cheap components. However, most of these products are sold with Linux or to a lesser extent with XP. Vista is well too demanding for these systems. Note that OS X cannot be used here either.