PC Makers Hedge on Vista Effect

Lenovo, the world's third-largest PC company, offers consumer notebooks and desktops with the choice of either Vista or XP through its Web site and retail partners, although Gorman says the retail product mix is "tipping" in favor of Vista.

Gorman would not say what share of Lenovo PC sales are tied to Vista at this point, but said that the company was encouraged by Vista sales, which he said are coming in line with expectations.

No one doubts that Vista will become the de facto PC operating system. Whether it happens through a mad rush of PC upgrades or more gradually with consumers replacing their PCs at their leisure is still uncertain.

Industry research firm Gartner says the picture will become clearer when first-quarter PC sales figures come out in April.

Early reports from some of the smaller PC companies are mixed.

"From a sales standpoint, we definitely have more people holding off than I expected," says Kelt Reeves, CEO of Falcon Northwest, a small PC maker dedicated to high-end gaming systems. "We still think they're probably this year's customer; they're not putting it off entirely. It's more that there's no pressing need to buy it now."

Reeves, who believes that Vista greatly improves a PC's stability, says that a quarter of the PCs his company is building for customers are still loaded with Windows XP. And he has begun offering special dual-boot computers that run both XP and Vista.