Windows Vista's first service pack was released for another round of testing last week, with a final version due early in 2008. SP1 for a new Windows operating system has long been regarded as a green light for business adoption, a signal that the kinks had been worked out. This time may be different.

Gartner recently issued a report saying that companies have "significantly delayed" Vista adoption--and warning that it wouldn't be prudent to skip Vista altogether and wait for its successor.

Vista was released to businesses in November 2006. As recently as a few months ago, Carl Weddle, IT director at manufacturing company Quality Trailer Products, was leaning toward deploying Vista when SP1 came out. He has changed his mind, pointing to concerns about the PC hardware requirements needed to run it. "And it's different enough in the way it behaves that people have trouble using it," Weddle says. Now Quality Trailer Products may stick with Windows XP, he says, until "Microsoft cuts off my access to XP."

About the same time Microsoft releases Vista SP1, it also will release a third service pack for Windows XP, mostly a roll-up of previously released patches. So the question for IT departments becomes: Do we stick with old, reliable Windows XP or jump to the newer Vista, despite its issues?

Shanen Boettcher, general manager of Windows product management, says he's not worried that customers are moving at their own pace. "Everyone has their own plan" for adoption, he says. "Some folks do it through hardware attrition, and there are folks that hold on as long as they can."

Boettcher recommends that IT managers who are concerned about Vista's state of readiness check out the operating system now that Microsoft and its hardware and software vendors have had a year to address user feedback. "Things have changed, and have changed quickly," he says.

Along with the test release, Microsoft last week published a 47-page list of more than 300 fixes within Vista SP1. That's a step in the right direction, but SP1 still won't correct all the compatibility and hardware issues that have put a damper on early adoption.

Vista SP1 is more focused on patches and fixes for stability and performance than on new features, although it does come with a few of those. They include an ability to change the default desktop search tool and encrypt multiple hard drives, as well as support for a new type of flash-based memory. Microsoft also stripped out a controversial feature that selectively disables Vista copies that fail to be validated as legitimate copies of the software.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Not everyone has cold feet. Continental Airlines is rolling out Vista to all PCs that are equipped to handle it. Eric Craig, the company's managing director of technology for global infrastructure, says Continental's knowledge workers like Vista's Flip 3D, which lets them switch easily among applications. Craig sees Vista as being easier to manage because of the way its wakes from sleep mode for updates and new deployment capabilities that support Vista rollouts, updates, and fixes.

Microsoft said earlier this year that Continental Airlines would deploy up to 10,000 copies of Vista by year's end. Craig declined to say if the airline will meet that target, but he says it's moving as aggressively as it can. SP1 isn't a factor in Continental's strategy.

One thing to note: Continental has configured some Vista PCs to look like Windows XP as a way of lowering the learning curve and associated costs. Even Vista's biggest advocates find comfort in XP.