For Small Biz: To Vista Or Not--That Is The Question.

Despite the countless dollars and time that Microsoft has invested in its new operating system--now expected to debut some time in early 2007--most small businesses don't expect to upgrade to the new operating system when it finally becomes available, according to a Small Business Pipeline poll.

Only 14 percent of respondents said they would be definitely upgrading to Vista. Rather, a whopping 77 percent said they were going to stick with what they were currently using until Vista proved stable. Nine percent said they hadn't yet decided.

Small business advisors have differing opinions as to whether small businesses should upgrade. Many are concerned that the new operating system will cause small businesses--who are typically not flush with cash--to have to invest significantly in additional hardware and software. The actual cost of upgrading could be several times the cost of the operating system alone. Any new operating system also takes time to learn, and at least early on, tends to have an inordinate share of bugs.

Yet there are those small businesses that will benefit from Vista when it finally becomes available, says Jason Harrison, president of Harrison Technology Consulting, a Nashville, Tenn.-based technology consulting company that specializes in advising small business.

Harrison has been working with the beta version of Vista ever since it became available."Our initial take is that the operating system is fairly feature complete," Harrison says. "It has the features that small businesses need as well as a lot of new features. It does have some significant changes under the hood."

In addition to additional security, the most significant change for the new Microsoft operating system is the search capabilities, according to Harrison. "It's far more intuitive than the previous system. Search is right in your face."

Why is this important? Because locating files is one of the most time-consuming processes that many businesses, large and small, face today, according to Harrison. "If your human resources [people] are always taxed, if you can make anything quicker or faster, that [saved time] adds up quickly," Harrison says. So a small firm that wastes a lot of time searching today could find that Vista does bring a positive ROI.

"It all comes down to how well someone is trained to use it," Harrison says.

Others are not so sure, citing hardware costs that could be incurred to upgrade PCs, laptops, etc. in order to run the new, more resource-intensive operating system. Some of the oldest hardware will need to be replaced to take advantage of Vista, but systems as old as Pentium IIIs should be able to run Vista as long as they have new (128-bit) graphic cards and 128 video RAM and up."Vista can run on anything that XP can run on," Harrison says. "Most small businesses that we see today are running mid-level hardware and up."

But a system that's maxed out in terms of system resources while running older programs, probably won't be able to run the new operating system, Harrison says.

Of course, some small businesses run fine with older equipment and older operating system. If that's the case, and there isn't a need to upgrade search capability or to run "muscle" graphics, as Harrison puts it, then there's no need to run out and buy Vista when it does become available.

Wait six to nine months is the advice that Dick Leslie, a former director with Oracle and current counselor with the San Diego chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives, gives to his clients. He helps SCORE on the national level with various technology issues.

"The people who get the arrows in the back are the pioneers," Leslie says. "Most of the people I work with are new or aspiring business owners. They have a lot of other issues to address to keep their ventures running."Leslie says he waited nine months before upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows 98. By doing that, many of the early problems with that operating system had been patched, eliminating a lot of downtime that some of the Windows 98 pioneers experienced, according to Leslie.

And just because a new operating system comes out with new bells and whistles doesn't mean that businesses need it, Leslie adds. He himself skipped Windows 2000 entirely, then upgraded to Windows XP a little more than six months after that operating system debuted, so he started with the second version of the product, rather than the more "buggy" first version.

Though some people argue that Vista will add to productivity for many businesses, Leslie thinks there will be more disruption--especially to businesses with little or no technical expertise on staff--than productivity enhancements.

"The operating system is just a tool they need to leverage their business," Leslie explains. "If their current operating system is running fine, we don't recommend they move to [Vista]. My biggest concern is that they would have a serious disruption to their business. There are enough potential disruptions without adding something that is self-inflicted. They should use more of a rifle shot approach to address specific issues."

Those specific issues would include spyware and viruses, which the new operating system is purported to protect against better than Windows XP. Rather than buying Vista to address those issues, Leslie recommends new, stronger anti-virus and anti-spyware applications."I do not believe Vista will have any where close to the demand that previous operating systems have had," adds Scott Whiteman, business counselor for the Palm Spring, Calif., SCORE chapter. "Previous versions of the operating system are managing the processes adequately and our real interest is in portability and wireless mobility."

According to Whiteman, the bottom line is that "the majority of clients we see rate the priority on a new operating system very low. They have other fundamental issues and problems to deal with in order to survive and/or grow their business."