An analysis by IT market watcher Gartner concludes that the new Microsoft operating system is installed on less than 1% of desktop PCs in North America and Europe, and less than 3% of notebooks.

The poll of 265 IT decision-makers found that Windows XP remains the dominant operating system in both Europe and the US, installed on 80% of US PCs and 50% of those in Europe.

However, 55% of European companies and 40% of US companies said they were planning to start to roll out Vista from the first quarter of 2009.

“We believe mainstream adoption of Windows Vista will begin in the second half of this year and peak in early 2009,” says Gartner, attributing the delay in adoption to “cost-containment measures” in light of the economic downturn in the US.

The survey also found that Linux and Mac OS remain niche, with none of those polled considering major redeployments of either operating system.

Further reading

Wider options on the desktop The front line of IT used to come in a single flavour, but the variety of configurations now possible on the desktop allows organisations to make some strategy choices

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