Even as early as before Windows Vista hit the shelves, Microsoft's latest Windows client was forecasted to convert Windows users to Mac OS X and Linux. And it seems that indeed, Vista has triggered users to look for alternatives to the Windows platform. A new study put together by KACE Networks, after surveying no less than 900 IT professionals revealed that only 13% of the participants have plans in motion for the migration to Windows Vista. This figure comes at more than a year since the operating system was released to manufacturing.

"The vast majority of participants, 90%, said that they have concerns about the migration to Windows Vista (Figure A). These concerns are reflected in the limited adoption of Vista with 48% of participants reporting that they have not yet deployed Windows Vista in any way, and 39% having deployed Vista only on a few test machines. Less than 1% of participants have migrated to Vista already - the majority of those from very small companies. These concerns are also impacting plans for future adoption of Vista with the majority of participants (53%) reporting they have no plans to deploy Vista," reads an excerpt of the KACE Networks study.

Moreover, the participants indicated that, as an explicit alternative to Windows Vista, they considered moving to another operating system. No less than 44% revealed that they looked to alternative operating systems as the sole way to avoid moving to Vista. On top of this, some 9% are already in the process of adopting a new operating system, with 25% planning to do so in 2008. "Among participants who said they had considered switching operating systems, the most frequently mentioned operating system was Macintosh (28%). Red Hat Linux was cited almost as frequently (23%). SUSE Linux was cited by a further 18% of participants and other Linux platforms were chosen by 9% of participants. 4% of participants were unsure of which operating system they would be most likely to choose", adds the KACE Networks study.