More users are starting to evaluate and deploy Windows Vista, but they are showing more concern over perceived performance and patching improvements and the operating system’s hardware requirements, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by Walker Information for IT services and product supplier CDW, shows that nearly 30% of respondents are using or evaluating Vista. The software shipped in November 2006 to corporate users. The Vista Tracking Poll was the second conducted by Walker for CDW. An identical survey was done last November.

The poll shows that 87% of respondents plan to eventually adopt Vista. The survey was conducted among businesses with one to 100 or more employees, state/local government agencies, K-12 education and higher-education institutions.

The poll is available for free but requires a user’s e-mail address to download.

The survey of 753 IT decision makers showed an 8% increase over the first poll in terms of deployments and evaluations of Vista by corporate users.

Since the first survey, 1% of users had completed Vista implementations, and another 19% planned to complete their implementations in the next 12 months.

The survey also found that 6% of organizations are implementing Vista on a schedule that extends beyond 12 months, while 13% plan to start their implementations in the next year. Another 13% said they have no plans to upgrade.

“I don't think we were surprised by any of the data,” says JoEllen Amato-Tuck, Microsoft brand manager for CDW. “It seems to be in line with what the first survey showed.”

The company plans a third survey sometime between September and December. CDW says the tracking poll will show over time how evaluation variables and deployment strategies are progressing.

The second version of the survey revealed that user concerns over hardware requirements being too excessive rose 9% over the first survey, from 28% to 37%. It was the fourth most common concern. The first was the expectation of bugs in the first Vista release.

A full 18% of users said they would need to upgrade 91% to 100% of their Windows-based hardware for it to be Vista compatible, a 2% increase over the first survey.

Also, concerns that the benefits of adopting Vista are not clear enough rose 6% from 32% to 38%.