Ignore Vista Until 2008

Blakey Rat writes "According to Gartner in a research note entitled 'Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista', businesses should wait until 2008 before installing Windows Vista, or 'pursue a strategy of managed diversity' by only bringing in new machines with Windows Vista and not upgrading existing computers. Although acknowledging the security benefits of upgrading, they explain in the report that most of the security-related benefits that come with Vista are available today through third-party software products."

Comments

Amazing

[shmlco]

Amazing how many things stay the same. I remember reading the same headlines for XP, W2K, and NT.

Though this article is pretty lame. First time I've read, "Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista client," in a summary and the linked article doesn't even bother to list them.

This is news?

Summary: Too Little, Too Late

[rsborg]

Seems as if Gartner, the analyst who was deeply in love with Microsoft in the nineties, has turned sour on them lately.

The majority of improvements in Vista will be security-related and most of this functionality "is available via third-party products today"

Ouch.

"Search is slow in Windows XP and files, email and calendar objects cannot be found with a single search." While Microsoft has tried to remedy this in Vista, "competent third-party desktop tools are already available" from companies like Google, Gartner pointed out.

I'd hate to be furniture in Ballmer's office.

My main problem with the article was the lack of options specified:

The analysts acknowledged that companies who use IE7 and Vista will have fewer points of weakness.

Or you could just install Firefox, with the foxie plugin, and get completely secure browsing for all sites, and great Triton/IE support for intranet/extranet legacy webapps.

By that time...

[Spy der Mann]

...I'll already have ReactOS installed in my PC. Oh, btw, this week ReactOS reached version 0.2.8.

Of course, ReactOS will be installed in a dual-boot with the latest Linux, which I hope, will be user-and-hardware friendly by then.

Isn't this Already the "Word on the Street"?

[eno2001]

Where I work we still have more Win2K than XP Pro because the move from NT4 to AD was a long and involved process for 3000+ machines and a team of 3 people to do it. When we got to Win2K AD (we STILL have NT4 domains because of crap legacy software we HAVE to have!) the move to XP was not relished. We've been doing it a building at a time now (60 buildings) and it's going. But this is 2005 going on 2006 and XP came out in 2002. So, you could say we are doing "managed diversity" in a big way. I don't see how this approach to Vista is any different than the way most wise insitutions proceed.

Re:The reason not to upgrade is...

[birge]

I see your point, but I think it's really more of a polite way of saying "Well, they didn't fix the shit that's REALLY wrong with Windows so why bother." In the case of Vista, maybe they actually will improve security and reliability, but heaven knows the pretty GUI isn't exactly what Windows has been most sorely missing all these years.

What's wrong with Windows may very well be something that doesn't exist at Microsoft: elegance, simplicity and modularity of design. They are trying for that lately, at least they say they are, but it's going to be hard to change the mindset of everybody at Microsoft. They've always had very clever people but not very smart people, as exemplefied by Bill Gates himself. He's a man who is as shrewd as any suit in the room, but he has no sense of elegance. He's like that guy everybody knows who can do any math problem you give him, but who has the creativity of a field mouse. Elegance goes a long way in design, and a good OS is equal parts design and science, I think. You can have the tightest kernel in the world, but when some dipshit comes up with an idea like the Registry, it's all over.