Well, after a long wait and lots of publicity Vista finally shipped. Having spent the past couple of days trying to make my favourite applications work, I'm not sure it was worth the wait. I've switched off the start menu because I couldn't find anything I wanted, disabled much of the "anti-idiot" functionality, otherwise known as User Account Control (UAC), because it was getting in the way of doing just about anything, and my favourite antivirus software is not yet available for Vista.

A couple of applications I use extensively either run with annoying bugs or simply won't work in certain configurations. Now it would be unfair to just blame Microsoft for this, given that beta versions of Vista have been out for months. I mean here we are, two weeks after the official Vista launch and many application providers have yet to even announce upgrades, let alone release any. Were they entirely unaware of the official launch date for Vista?

My real concern, though, is that a number of sometimes key applications no longer function, and are unlikely to be upgraded. Again, this is not only Microsoft's fault. However, I suspect there will be hundreds of thousands who, like me, will be very disappointed to find that a small app that they have come to treasure no longer works.

Any major operating system upgrade brings software compatibility problems, which is why most businesses will delay rolling out Vista at least until the first major service pack. By then the application developers should have released compliant software.

Progress always comes at a price. In time all of the new features and enhancements in Vista will find their right application and we should derive real benefits, but that point is, I fear, some time in the future. In the meantime, most businesses will stick with XP for the simple reason that it is stable and it works. Vista is a bold step forward, but for many smaller firms the cost of training and support will be too high to justify an upgrade. Businesses will probably also wait until the end of the current hardware upgrade cycle before taking the opportunity to move to Vista.

But if we hit another economic downturn, this upgrade cycle is likely to slow down, delaying the introduction of Visa further. After all, any midrange PC bought in the past two years is more than powerful enough to operate most applications. An extra stick of memory costing £50 will give most PCs a new lease of life, so why upgrade?