Vista Service Pack 2 Hits Public Beta - Page 2

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However, SP2 may or may not help the slow, but steadily rising, sales of Vista. First, many customers who are still running Windows XP – perhaps as many as 700 million -- have to make the decision of whether to wait for Windows 7 or to switch to Vista in the meantime. The company, and many analysts, advise users to go ahead and make the switch – although CEO Steve Ballmer recently said it was okay with him if users wanted to wait.

Besides Microsoft's somewhat confusing message to customers, though, there are plenty of other issues in the mix. "I think we'll continue to see growth of Vista adoption that's being driven by the purchase of new machines," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told InternetNews.com.

Indeed, that appears to be occurring, according to a report from Forrester Research released last month. "By the end of this year, Forrester anticipates that one-third of enterprises will begin deploying Windows Vista despite flirting with going straight to Windows 7 when it becomes available in early 2010," the report states.

Still, fears of the fallout from the recession seem likely to slow Vista growth even further, which may mean a death knell for Vista, two service packs or not.

For instance, the Forrester report continues: "Between January and June 2008, Windows Vista adoption among Forrester clients increased from 6.2 percent to 8.8 percent."

That's partly a reflection of the economic outlook.

"I think that whatever chance that Vista had of making a deeper impact will be slowed by the depth of the recession," King said, citing increasing numbers of IT shops that are cutting back capital purchase for the foreseeable future.

In fact, three recent studies show IT spending in 2009 will be mostly flat compared to 2008.

So does that mean there's not a compelling reason for a second service pack for Vista? "Sure there's still a point in having it [SP2] because you've got tens of millions of people using Vista now, and you want to assure them that the users' experience is as good as possible," King added.

Microsoft officials declined to comment on TechArp's "speculation" and Nash said in his post that "the final release date will be based on quality."