Microsoft Does Vista's stunted growth hint at the death of the desktop?

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/microsoft/Does_Vista_s_weak_growth_hint_at_the_death_of_the_desktop';Is the desktop metaphor dead, replaced by Web services like Google and Facebook? Or is Vista so bad that it's not worth buying?

New data points to the latter suggestion, leaving Microsoft with two options. It can either view its sagging Vista sales as a testament to the incredible work of art that is Windows XP (gag). Or it can concede that Vista is a pile of potty.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, this isn't a Windows thing at all but simply a recognition that we may have tapped out the "must-have" innovations on the fat-client desktop leading people to wait out upgrades until a hardware refresh makes the choice a no-brainer.

Regardless of how Microsoft chooses to view its Vista numbers, it clearly has a problem. Though it's only one dataset, PCWorld's users aren't jumping up and down for Vista. PCWorld measured Web traffic on its site, and found that adoption of Vista is tepid (14 percent), and is crawling compared with how fast XP came out of the gate: