A few months ago I listed a high-level breakdown showing what the typical client PC specifications from the users of my WPF mind-mapper thoughtex. Valve software, makers of games like half-life etc have much more detailed results from a survey of theirs, which (not surprisingly) has a lot more data points - almost 1 million. I find data like this great, because it allows you to plan more objectively around what the real world looks like, and not personal biases (I always think of that cartoon in chapter 8 of “don’t make me think“ - “People don’t like pulldown menus“). I wasn’t able to find any more information on how the data was collected (via the Steam client perhaps), and who the sample was made up of but it provides some interesting info. For example I can’t believe only 3% of people have multi-monitor setups, or is there some kind of gaming bias there, since many games don’t work too well with multiple monitors? Nobody is moving to Vista? - not according to the Valve survey, which give vista a 7% market share. And who are the two lucky samples with 4-way SLI graphics rigs?
Most of other people I spoken to say either "Let’s wait for SP1 or even SP2 first" or "What does Vista give me, really, except for a new look?"
You know what, I understand them - why would a home user bother paying few hundred bucks in order to slow his computer down a bit and introduce to potential problems?
Developers in MS space (like us) need latest and greatest for the platform, but at the same time I don’t know a single Java or Ruby guy who moved to Vista. And that’s developers.