Microsoft and its partners say the adoption cycle for Windows Vista is still in the early stages, particularly for businesses -- many of which are likely waiting for the release of Service Pack 1. Likewise, many businesses need to upgrade their hardware to run Vista, which is a major proposition. For consumers, this holiday season is the first in which Vista-loaded computers will be on store shelves.

Still, one year after Vista and Office were launched for businesses, some headlines today might have some people at Microsoft cringing.

There's this, from CNET, on a Qualys study that shows a major increase in Microsoft flaws between 2006 and 2007. "We have seen a huge jump in the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office products," Amol Sawate, manager of Qualys' vulnerability-management lab, told CNET. "These charts show growth of nearly 300 percent from 2006 to 2007, primarily in new Excel vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by getting unsuspecting users to open Excel files sent via e-mail and instant message."

And the AP's locally based correspondent covering Microsoft, Jessica Mintz, has this report on tests showing that an updated Windows XP will perform faster next year than Vista. Key passage:

    [The testers] found the original Vista performed 50 percent to 100 percent slower than the prevalent XP Service Pack 2, or SP2.

    Vista SP1, due out in the first quarter of 2008, barely improved the operating system's performance.

    But XP SP3, scheduled for the first half of 2008, did improve on XP's earlier performance, running 10 percent faster than SP2.

Microsoft says its too early to make such comparisons.