Let me say "no" immediately so as not to engender accusations of hopping on the sensationalism bandwagon (I think it is stuck over at Scoble's house today anyway).

But Matt Asay's post at CNET the other day certainly offers up some food for thought on the debate that Microsoft's latest operating system has kicked off in the market place, and asks whether it's just a terrible product (it's not; just mediocre) or whether people are realizing, inevitably, that with Web 2.0 and SaaS taking up increasing amounts of their workload, using a bloated, insecure, processor and RAM intensive operating system as your primary interface with the lightweight web doesn't make the most sense (they're not).

This is particularly true in the enterprise, where security and support concerns aren't just nagging annoyances but significant cost centers. And there are people in the enterprise (I'm looking at you CIOs) who are paid to think about these things in depth, unlike the average consumer. But inexplicably, heavyweight, excessively complex desktop operating systems continue to dominate the corporate computing environment. Although there is no question in my mind that Vista adoption is extremely low (there are other perspectives... but I can't reconcile them to any reliable numbers or my own experiences with a variety of clients and colleagues), I can't really attribute it to some global realization that most consumers and most businesses simply don't need the software. Or rather, while it seems that the realization is there, on some level, there is also some sort of fatalistic perception that even if it isn't needed or wanted, it will be purchased eventually and installed nonetheless simply because it seems to be the only option.

I can't really understand that and yet I know that I will be dragged along with the tide as well, eventually... even though I am writing and posting this from a stripped down Linux box, there is a VMWare session of XP open on Desktop 3 and I'll be back over there shortly doing work for clients who will someday need it to be done in Vista instead.

What breaks that cycle, finally? Or do you have some solid reasons beyond inertia for avoiding thin-client or lightweight OS-based systems?