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Impact of Microsoft's Vista is about to be seen

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) might finally be on the verge of seeing the adoption of Vista, wrote Arnie Berman, chief technology strategist, at Cowen & Company late last week.

Berman surveyed 283 corporate IT buyers and found 47% of small- and medium-sized businesses will begin deploying Vista by December 31, this is up from 43% in a similar survey completed in February. 31% of larger enterprises plan to start rolling out Vista by December 31, up from 25% in the previous survey.

How to invest in the long-awaited Vista uptake? Play the Microsoft food chain stocks, particularly since most investors have given up on Vista's adoption, indicating this is where investors could get the most bang for the buck. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Micron Technology Inc (NYSE: MU), Berman believes will be beneficiaries of Vista's adoption. Other investment plays include memory chip maker Qimonda AG (NYSE: QI), the drive makers Seagate Technology (NYSE: STX) and Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC), and Marvell Technology Group Ltd (NASDAQ: MRVL), a supplier to the drive business.

In our past Intel blogs, the Fly has suggested Intel has capacity in place to start ramping 64 megabyte processors big time, on a scale Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NYSE: AMD) does not possess. Berman points out that Intel's enterprise value/sales ratio relative to AMD is close to an all-time low, meaning Intel is cheap relative to AMD despite AMD's recent poor stock performance.

Nvidia at 19x consensus calendar 2007 results has shown the ability to deliver favorable financial surprises and could provide the solution to the greatest potential bottleneck for Vista adoption, the graphic processors.

Micron is selling close to its $10.91 book value which historically has supported the stock and memory demand will increase with the new operating system.

Seagate CEO gets raw on why hard drives get no respect

After reading this article, I had to giggle a bit. Seagate Technology LLC (NYSE: STX) -- the world's largest maker of hard disk drives for everything from PCs to TiVos to iPods -- has a stand-up comedian for its CEO, apparently. When former CEO and financier Steve Luczo left current CEO Bill Watkins in charge of the $15 billion storage behemoth, perhaps he didn't know about Watkins' penchant for funny candidness.

At a recent CEO dinner this week, Watkins was spotted saying "Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap -- and watch porn." Those are not the carefully scripted words of a PR-trained CEO -- but they are closer to the truth than almost anyone dares to say.

Watkins is someone I've heard in person a few times giving speeches -- he's a hard-driving and hard-working CEO -- and he's a cut above the ivy-leaguers who run most Fortune-500 companies, if you ask me. Seagate continues to operate -- as it has for years and years -- in an extreme commodity business, but continues to crank out the products that make the Internet work (as in web server storage) along with iPods, TiVos and other storage-hungry devices that have infiltrated so many daily lives.

Watkins -- ever the operational guru (like Hewlett-Packard's Mark Hurd) -- could have a stand-up career if he wasn't busy making Seagate the best company at what it does. Oops, time to backup the laptop on an external hard drive now.

[Disclosure: I own STX shares as of 11-30-06]

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