Business users should stay away from Microsoft's upcoming Vista OS until 2008 at the earliest, say analysts Gartner.

The researchers note that most of the security improvements offered by Vista, due in 2006, are already available as third party add-ons to Windows XP.

The note, titled: "Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista client", says Vista offers the business user only incremental improvements. They recomend only putting it on new machines, and then not until it's had a two year bedding-in period.

Gartner says Internet Explorer 7 will have better security - to cut defections to Firefox. It also offers a personal firewall which was welcomed by Gartner but the analysts said laptop users should have at least a decent firewall protecting their machines already.

They also note that promised search function improvements in Vista are already available from firms like Google.®

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