Vista, New Coke and selling pigs in pokes.

Forrester has researched OS penetration in large enterprises (saw this on Computerworld) and the view for Vista is not encouraging:

Fewer than one in 11 of the PCs being used in large or very large enterprises runs Windows Vista, according to survey results released Wednesday by Forrester Research Inc.

Of the 50,000 enterprise users surveyed by the Cambridge, Mass., analyst firm, 87.1% were still running Windows XP at the end of June, compared to 8.8% for Vista. According to author Thomas Mendel, that implies that the majority of PCs upgraded to Vista were those running older versions of Windows, such as Windows 2000 or 98.

"Vista is 'new Coke,'" Mendel wrote, comparing Microsoft's flagship operating system to the ill-fated soft drink.

Not just large enterprises - Vista's legendary difficulty to integrate with small office and home networks and other issues is putting off many SME / SOHO's as well, we understand. Still, at c 8.8% penetration, although its 1/10th of XP 's 87%, it's still nearly double that of the Mac's 4.5%.

Update - just seen this story on El Reg - apparently the reason the Vista OS is doing less than well is because its marketing has not been positive enough. Are they kidding? The real lesson here is that all the king's horses and all the king's men still can't sell a cr*p product!

Here's to Microsoft following Coke's example and re-opening the channels for XP.