twitter's Journal: USA Today Notices Vista's Bad Reputation.

USA Today has noticed Vista's failure.

Will Weider is just the kind of customer Microsoft (MSFT) needs to keep its Windows computer operating system franchise growing. He oversees tech for a chain of Wisconsin hospitals 14,000 computers' worth.

"I wouldn't put on Vista if it was free," says Weider, chief information officer for Ministry Health Care. "In the past, there's always been an important reason to upgrade, but XP (the previous version of Windows) is perfectly acceptable."

Corporate customers such as Weider are staging a rare revolt over upgrading to Vista, which launched with much fanfare in January 2007. Last week, Microsoft reported a 24% decline in Windows sales in the third quarter.

Computers don't last forever. Let's hope some nice vendor comes to the rescue with new computers pre-loaded with GNU/Linux that can run legacy applications. New hardware won't support XP forever and that will put people like Weider in an expensive bind.