Opinion: I will if you will

This has never happened before. Windows XP took some time to become accepted, but not this long.

Eventually people realised it really was much better than Windows 95, and that other thing that came out in between, which we won't mention in case it somehow reappears on the desktop.

But Windows Vista? Let's just say bubonic plague was slightly more popular and that could really kill you.

However, many of us have used Vista, and we've discovered that the version tagged Ultimate, with a service pack applied, seems to work fine on newish kit.

The "Business" edition is best avoided from all accounts. One of the things Vista Ultimate does well is networking.

You'd think that would be enough incentive to get the corporate world to take the plunge. But they're not.

Is it really Vista's fault? Possibly. Probably.

But is it also due to the sheer number of PCs out there in the corporate world these days?

Back in the "old days", about five years ago, there were still some staff members without a PC on their desk. Now even the janitor has one, and probably a PDA as well.

And the further up the food chain you go, the more PCs, laptops, PDAs and mobile phones per person. And the more they totally rely on these gadgets to do their jobs.

Do you really want to mess with them without a very good reason? You probably already take annual leave when daylight saving changes over.

So perhaps it wouldn't matter if Vista was really, really good and had hardly any problems. There might still be massive resistance to a major upgrade.

Maybe Microsoft needs to figure out a way to incrementally improve the bits of Windows XP that need attention, until, after a year of patches, you discover you've been upgraded to Vista without noticing.

Hang on – they already send us patches every month. Have we already done a background upgrade to Vista? No, but if they'd planned it better, maybe that's where we'd be right now.