just wait until they try managing Leopard's massive array of problems with non-mac tools, or even mac tools, the combined total of which is puny at best. the problems they are worried about - compatibility with old hardware and software- will hardly be fixed by Apple and Linux, just like Leopard is hardly fixed by old hardware and software. These are the dumbest reasons to get a new vinatage Mac, of which I have many as well as Vista Business on several machines I built with no problems whatsoever from day one of Vista availability and even earlier during the beta, RC days.

"just wait until they try managing Leopard's massive array of problems"

Huh? We have upgraded about half of our company to Leopard with no problems yet. What 'massive array' are you referring to? The lowest common denominator being an 800MHz eMac. SO I would say older hardware compatibility is pretty good. We have no plans to migrate to Vista however, as it is definitely anemic, at best, on old (1.5 years old) hardware. We have have Apple's OS overhead to be considerably less the MS's.

I have found no issues with Leopard, on several Macs including a Dual 1Ghz G4, and 1.67 Ghz Powerbook, Several G5's, MacBook Pros and Mac Pros.

I have tested about 150 applications and the only app that gave me trouble was my Daily Dilbert app I have compiled under Tiger. This being key to my businesses productivity, I recompiled it with XCode 3 and it is running fine.

I have set up a test server with one of my G5's to server as a temporary file server, and Intranet server with no problems. I am looking forward to getting my hands on Leopard Server.

I have had no problems of any kind with Leopard on an ibook G4 (1.07 GHz.)

In fact it is faster in almost every aspect over Tiger or Panther, and supports the new features efficiently as well.

I remember a year or so ago, talking with our IT guy. At that time he claimed Vista was a "snake-pit" between bugs and hardware compatibility. In the end, he-a die hard windows pc guy-got a mac to work on.

Now it's the other way around, he wishes the entire infra-structure at our institution was mac.

How sweet it is!

The first post must be a troll or unspeakably dense. His rant is so self delusional as to make me wonder if Ballmer isn't posting to this site.

MS has had this coming for a long time. While windows users fear Mac because they're unfamiliar with it. Mac users loath Windows due to the absolute pain in the nether regions it has been to work with a windows world. MS has been a bully and has-literally-made made non-windows users lives harder. Oh, they could have been inclusive-easily-but they wanted to dominate the world. Computo-fascists.

What was that click? Oh yeah, another percentage of market share going to Apple!

Switching to mac is easier then managing macs. If you don't have any old Mac software, and no people who've used OS X before, you don't care if you switch to leopard.

But if you've got an existing Mac hardware base, you're basically screwed. Existing Mac users don't love leopard as much as the reviewers do (hey, Apple did a great job making the Dock even less usable then before!). And then there's the compatibility issues with some existing software. And before you say "Hey, you don't have to upgrade!", you do, because new Macs will only come with Leopard and have no ability to run Tiger.

And that's the difference between Macs and PCs/Windows. Because Apple makes the hardware AND software, they have no incentive to keep them separate entities. Where you could buy a new PC and probably put Windows 2000 on it (and definitely XP), Macs have no such ability (h***, you could install MS's OLD OS on a new Mac, but not Apple's OLD OS!).

On the article, its pure FUD and stupidity anyway. " Of 961 IT professionals polled, a whopping 90 percent expressed concerns about migrating to Vista. What's more, over half of those surveyed said they had no plans to use Microsoft's latest operating system at this time."

Since when do IT departments upgrade to a new OS within a year anyway? h***, several years after XP was released and many were still running WIndows 2000. And nothing is forcing them to upgrade.

BTW, I like how they manage to make it sound like Macs were the top choice, when, in fact, at least 61% said "Linux!".

for all those thinking that Leopard is god's gift of nirvana, you must not be following the serious problems people are having, Apple's own Leopard support page (latest post from Apple is that you cannot see Final Cut Pro templates in Leopard), and the numerous mac support sites and blogs. What about all those freezing imacs? Even Stevie says get off the hate mobile. Just do it.

testudo, you've likely never even laid eyes on a mac, much less have the ability to opine about them. Leopard is a good upgrade , much better, bug free than Vista. The whole widget complaint is-in fact-an Apple strength. MS is bogged down by it's own dominance. Ironic, in a good way. BTW: I have almost every stripe of mac you can imagine including an old PPC 8600. It's still useful and talks, via network with my other tonier Macs.

Our IT has eschewed Vista for the reasons mentioned in the story. We won't be going Mac in a big way, but it has put a futher taint on the MS brand. Until Vista is as trouble-free as XP (which is no bag of candy), you won't get wide spread adoption-in mission critical industry- for some time.