On its U.S. small and medium business site, Dell offers customers a choice of operating systems when they buy laptops. Windows XP Home Edition and XP Professional come pre-installed, with media included; if customers want XP Pro they have to add $99; if they want Vista instead, they have to pay up to $169 except for Vista Home Basic, which is free but is still an add-on.
Vista Haters
Opposition to Vista is strong: BadVista.org, which promotes free software , is just one of many set up by opponents of the operating system.
Meanwhile, there have been many complaints that Vista is difficult to use and that it makes your existing PC incapable of doing things it could do before.
Possibly the most embarrassing moment for Microsoft over Vista came when internal e-mails between some of its top executives about their problems upgrading to Vista were released in February during a lawsuit filed against Microsoft over its marketing of Vista.
The executives are Jon A. Shirley, former president and COO of Microsoft and now one of its board members; Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president overseeing Windows product management; and Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's senior vice president responsible for Windows.
Recently, Ballmer admitted that Vista is "a work in progress."
No More Bloated OSes
But the outcry over XP and Vista may soon be moot because Web 2.0 and Software as a Service are going to change the way Microsoft does business.
"The Windows and Microsoft Office environment are cash cows, but Microsoft knows change is coming," McGregor said. "They're going to have to go to an environment that's more browser driven. Where the application resides, where the data resides and how it's used will change, and Microsoft's going to have to make some major changes in its strategy."
