Slashdot Mirror
What a Vista Upgrade Will Really Cost You
narramissic writes, "James Gaskin wrote an interesting article this week about what he recons it will really cost organizations to upgrade to Vista. Gaskin estimates that each Vista user will 'cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That's each and every Vista user. Money will go to Microsoft for Vista and Office 2007, to hardware vendors for new PCs and components, and possibly a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac.'" Any sense of how realistic those figures are?
Most of the hardware costs would be there anyway as part of a normal IT refresh cycle. So I call BS.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Does Windows Vista no longer support Office 2000? Why not update all your networking cable to fiber, while you are at it?
Why the heck do you need to upgrade everything at once?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
There is no need for something more than 1 GHz for standard office and even programming use.
Does this include several days downtime for when the Vista machines have to be shut off and the old XP machines dusted off when someone discovers an extremely serious security flaw in the new OS?
Where were you when the voynix came?
$2000: New Hardware
$ 900: Vista License
$2100: Solid Gold Mouse
Strange times indeed when the stock market analysts hope a new Microsoft operating system will counteract the declining housing market, but that's the hope of some for next fall. If your company plans to play the Vista game, start cooking your books now.
.com.
I estimate each Vista user will cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That's each and every Vista user. Money will go to Microsoft for Vista and Office 2007, to hardware vendors for new PCs and components, and possibly a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac. After all, if Apple's higher cost has been the factor keeping your company from trying a Mac, that factor just washed away.
Why $3,250-$5,000? Here's my calculation. Feel free to tell me what your company has budgeted, and whether you believe your own numbers.
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000. Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement. You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says. I don't know of any motherboard-based video chip sets that include 256MB of RAM. Upgrade? While in the PC, add memory: Vista needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM. The hardware cost of the RAM may be less than your labor costs getting that installed in every PC. If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000. After all, your company always buys the "professional" packages, right? And they have to be installed, right? If you're getting a much cheaper quote on both packages installed and tested, let me know.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers? Can you run both on one box? Didn't think so.
Document your objections now, because next year the vice presidents will blame IT for their busted budget. But the housing market appreciates you taking up the slack. James E. Gaskin writes books (16 so far), articles and jokes about technology and real life from his home office in the Dallas area. Gaskin has been helping small and medium sized businesses use technology intelligently since 1986. Write him at mailto: james.gaskin@itworld
body massage!
I doubt all the computers have been there as long as XP has. There's got to be quite a few that are only a year or two old. Those ones should be able to handle Vista. Ones that are even 3 years old should be okay as long as Aero/Glass is turned off. And hey, it's cheaper to just upgrade the RAM in the computers they have (which is probably the main thing that'd need to be upgraded) than to go buy a bunch of brand-spankin'-new computers.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
I work at a University. A rather small private one. We use Dells on the desktop and in the server room. Most of the desktops we've bought in the last year will be able to run Vista. We bought them with that in mind. That said, we get Edu pricing from Dell and from MS. The users with the newer machines will be able to run Vista. The older machines will be replaced as they go out of support. It'll cost us about $1300-$1400 a machine to replace them. I don't know how much Vista will cost us, but I doubt we'll pay "full price".
:-)
One of the few good things about working for a school. Edu Pricing.
Sounds to me as realistic as the numbers in this story.
OK, some details.
Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of that.
Methinks this person knows not what he speaks of. My "corporate" computer is more powerful than my (admittedly older) gaming PC.
Is this guy serious? The "primary" upgrade inducment is looks? I bet he doesn't have a girlfriend...
Vista, for better or worse, has quite a bit more to offer than just "looks".
So, i should believe this guy more than MS. Granted MS has a stake in saying it needs less, but this guy seems to have it in for MS just the same.
Even if that was true, why does that affect corporate PCs, which are usually higher quality.
Actually, if we're talking corporate, upgrades are rarely done for a variety of reasons.
I assumed this meant "existing". Exiting is a different word, having nearly the opposite meaning.
And sarcasm? *This* is an article?
The rest of the "article" is worse FUD than MS puts out.
Have you read my journal today?
The cost needs to be broken down into:
1) Hardware upgrades that would have happened anyways. Apply the "Microsoft Tax" and cost of supporting Vista -or- the manpower cost to install XP to the vista-upgrade cost, leave the rest segregated.
2) Application Software upgradest that would have happened anyways, or that would have happened but for the fact the new software requires Vista
3) The cost of upgrading vista, including supporting Vista, training end-users, license fees, Microsoft Tax on new computers if tax is above license fee for the version of XP you were using, and for companies NOT upgrading, the manpower involved to "downgrade" from Vista to XP.
Yes, that's right, "upgrading" to Microsoft will cost you manpower for every new MS-license-equipped PC even if you stick with XP. Happy Happy Joy Joy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What organization upgrades Office and Windows at the same time? Are the older versions of Office not going to run on Vista or am I missing something? Last I was in charge of tech support, even though our University contract got us the latest software cheap (from a departmental perspective), we were always very leery about deploying one piece of new software. Deploying two new pieces of software at or near the same time sounds like you're asking for trouble. I could see that firgure being accurate in such a case because of the sheer amount of tech support you're wishing upon yourselves.
Sign me up for that company! As resident IT guy here, I usually buy boxes for $400 and spend an extra $50-100, depending on current market value, to upgrade the RAM. Depending on the user, another $50 to give them a Geforce 6200 w/ dual monitor outputs. And these systems are nothing to sneeze at. As long as you ensure the hard drive in the computer is up to snuff and it has enough RAM, most people can't tell the difference between processors.
Even if I wasn't a budget oriented IT guy, I sure couldn't justify spending $1500-2000 on a system. For that everyone better be getting hotrod laptops w/ 17" widescreen displays.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Why on earth would companies upgrade all of their systems to Vista if it requires them to upgrade the hardware? Vista in itself has no real advantage over XP for corporate use, so the only machines running Vista in the workplace will be the ones that came with it pre-installed.
You don't necessarily need new Hardware, unless you want to take Full Adantage of Vista. If you don't want to use Superfetch / ReadyBoost, you don't need 2.0 USB. If you don't want Media Center capabilities, don't buy a TV Capture card. If you don't want Aero, don't buy a Video Card. Vista works in my Virtual image, and it sure as hell doesn't have a 256 Mb Video Card emulation in it.
Come on, people. Sheesh.. If it works in my VM Ware image, it will work with old hardware..
If the employees are only doing basic things like writing Office Documents, then the chances are they'll have a stock Dell desktop computer. In the UK they can sell for under £400 (it might even be £300). These machines have integrated audio and video and probably use either Pentium III or Celeron processors with 512MB RAM.
If a company wanted to upgrade all its machines to Vista they'd first need to buy computers that support the minimum requirements, unless Vista support machines with integrated audio and video. How much does a computer cost that meets the minimum hardware requirements?
Summation 2
It depends on how "usable" Vista is with the typical bottom-of-the-line PC hardware. If even the non-Aero versions require a significantly beefier box, that's going to make a difference in how much new hardware costs. Is a Vista roll out going to mean that the receptionist needs something more than that $300 box she has now? Will the guy in the shipping department need 2GB of RAM to run his spreadsheets in Vista Office?
I don't have those answers (I'm one of those "switchers-to-Mac") as I haven't seen Vista. I'm not even very curious since Vista isn't going to have a big affect on my personal computing expenses (for the same reason)-- Just a thought as to why this might not be FUD.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I agree. Also what they did not account for is the price of said "expensive" hardware will drop significantly. Look at most video cards between $75-100 these days. Most have 256MB of memory and some under $75 leverage PCI-e for the extra needed.
-flipsoft
I switched to Mac in March, and after a few Windows-only tool withdrawls, I must say I am doing fine and will never switch back. I'm tired of the weak security and exploits. Using Windows started to feel like walking down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood at night. When you feel like you have to continually watch your OS to make sure it's doing the right thing, in my op it's time to get a new OS. So I did.
That's not to say Mac is perfect and I'm sure the time will come when security will become a more focused concern for Mac users, but I have faith (oddly) that Apple will see this coming, remember what mistakes MS made (and will no doubt continue to make), and adjust accordingly.
And if I'm wrong, there's always Linux
R(k)
Remember how long it took to get rid of NT4/98? Lots of people are still using 2k, and XP has been out longer than other desktop releases. XP is going to be around for a long time.
If the move to Vista is stretched out over a number of years, much of the cost will be absorbed by normal new hardware spending, and I don't see XP becomming rare until the next decade.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
good point, but I'd say that current word processing, email, web browsing and spreadsheeting technologies are at a point where tossing more hardware at them makes no discernable difference after about a gig of ram and a one gigaherz processor. Number crunching, Image and movie manipulation is an other matter. Most offices don't do those things.
The reason Microsoft has such a monopoly in the OS market anyway is that they give such volume discounts to hardware manufacturers if they preinstall OS's on new hardware. So, if you're going to include new machines in with this upgrade, then vista will only add about $30 per machine. OOOOOO. Big whoop. Volume discount office is also nowhere near the retail price - but who the heck upgrades all of the software in their department at once?
These numbers are correct, if their IT people are incompetent.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
We just upgraded all the machines in the library to p4 3ghz with 1 gig of ram and x600 video cards, why would we need to upgrade again just to install vista?
The main problem is that the author assumes that to upgrade to Vista means you have to use Aero. Microsoft has made it very, very clear that Vista is supposed to scale up as new hardware is released, but it will still run fine on most PC purchased recently. I'm running it fine on a PC and a laptop that are both 2+ years old here in office. Plus, if a company is going to be running 3+ year old PCs, well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they aren't the type of company that upgrades operating systems on their desktops all that frequently either.
FTA:"Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers? Can you run both on one box? Didn't think so."
MS and the MS-kateers really pushed Sharepoint at work like it was the greatest thing since the wheel. It did nothing for me, and I really didn't see the point (a few small end-user hand-holding convieniences and the usual glazed-over security problems, but that really seemed to be the extent of it), but it was *FREE* . Just like that first hit of crack, sans the high, but complete with the addiction and heavy hidden future costs. The curious thing is the MSkateers, when asked about security, just say "Its secure", after they give you the usual nasty attitude.
*sigh*
I'm almost to the point of keel-hauling vendor reps on a parking lot who give you free stuff to get you hooked. Dell gave us a blade server with one blade, in the hopes of us filling the rest of the slots. We won't put anything on that box, because of Dell's disasterous server track record (100% rate of failiure of some component withing the first three months, 0% for everybody else). Its hard to tell a CFO you have to say 'no' to this new free thing that looks to have some kind of value, and then get money for important projects in the future.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I have no sense of what it will really cost corporations/organisations/etc to upgrade their computers to Vista. I do know, however, that it would take between 3250$ and 5000$ for me to upgrade. Any givers? I'll even take that in Canadian dollars.
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000. Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement. You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says. I don't know of any motherboard-based video chip sets that include 256MB of RAM. Upgrade? While in the PC, add memory: Vista needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM. The hardware cost of the RAM may be less than your labor costs getting that installed in every PC. If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.
Now, Vista is a trainwreck, but unless there is some gigantic inexplicable performance disaster between current versions and the released build, the above is very much in the 'obvious fabricated attention-grabbing FUD' area of truthiness. Given that Vista works fine without with 128Mb video RAM and 512Mb system RAM, the argument above boils down to 'Hi guys, I need hits on my articles so I'm going to make preposterous claims and get linked to!'
If I were spreading Vista FUD, I'd focus on the much more difficult question of 'what will it actually do for you? Specifically, what does it do that Win2k doesn't?' Sadly, the main answer is 'Well, Microsoft will make sure that new stuff doesn't run on Win2k'.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Most organisations are going to wait until the hardware replacement cycle dictates new PCs before putting Vista in place, at which point it will be "free" (in the sense of costs being hidden in another budget). Also, people who are going to deploy e.g. collaboration servers are going to do so anyway, regardless of Vista, so no extra costs there.
The big, big cost will be user education and support - which TFA didn't mention. Even 2000 to XP confused people enough to have a significant extra support cost.
The author apparently "writes books and jokes about technology" so I suspect he's not being entirely serious here, but whether he was primarily trying to be funny or not, he could have done a better job of it.
I didn't need to upgrade my monitor with XP or 2000. If fact no hardware changes were really required at all with the exception being additional RAM. VISTA actually requires you to upgrade several hardware components to the point that you would have to just buy a whole new computer.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
The author is fishing for click-throughs with an unqualified, speculative cost "analysis".
Nothing to see here, move along.
body massage!
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
Even if we ignore this very important flaw, a Vista basic ready machine from dell is sub $600. Including a laptop. I bought one myself a month ago, and it has 512 RAM and is Vista ready. Very decent machine for the money.
Add maximum $100-$150 for a DirectX9 card (Aero Glass), and you have a full blown Vista desktop for sub $750.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.
Existing Office versions work just fine in Vista. Many people use Office 97 in XP.
Also "depending on your volume purchases" is quite a stretch. Notice the prices of Office and Vista (the corporate editions) and you're looking into more like sub $500 for both, if you're that keen on the new Office, that is.
Office Pro 2007 upgrade is $320-ish. And most people don't need Pro, they need the basic Word/Excel/PowerPoint pack. Upgrade: $239.
Vista Business upgrade is somewhere in those figures too, so sub $500 for all goodies, and sub $250 for Vista.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers?
Again he presumes we need Office 2007, while his heading says "Vista" upgrade: misleading. If the back end is good for your business, good enough to outweight the cost, the cost doesn't matter.
If it doesn't, then you don't buy it, simple as that.
----------
Totals:
Vista upgrade only - ~$250
Vista + Office upgrade - ~$500
Vista + Office + PC upgrade if outdated hardware (avg) - ~$750 (pessimistic: $1000)
make it seem likely most companies would have to upgrade their hardware.
I haven't really thought about it, but it seems that the cost is about right (at least to have all the "features"). Most of the companies around here don't run the latest and greatest stuff. Most are P4 systems with some P3's still around (the company I work for still has a couple P2's around running W2k, but we are also a government agency). The newspaper my parents work for are still running Win98 on P3 systems with NT4 servers. The nearby State Hospital just recently (read, within a year or so) upgraded to XP from NT4 workstation. Our local hospital still has mostly Win98.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
These figures are probably in the ball park. Lets not forget the down time each user will incur to learn new things and setup things they had "just right" before. I have known developers that will spend hours trying to find the right mouse acceleration setting!
... and even I know those figures are absolute crap.
It's comforting to know that the FUD isn't all coming from MS :)
This sig used to be really funny...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now, let's go back to our prices..
- They don't have to upgrade ALL software AT ONCE.
- They don't have to buy ALL new hardware - maybe some pcs will need 512, other - 256 mbs of RAM to be added, etc, etc...
- Did they count how much a computer costs to buy and then raise?
So, let's not count everything from zero and buy/build new pcs for vista from scratch - those number will NOT be that big in the end...Aero is not required on corporate PCs so scratch the video upgrade. We deployed Windows XP with the dummied-down Windows 2000 interface and expect to do the same with Vista. We do allow users to change to the Fisher-Price UI if they like, though.
Corporate customers don't pay between $750 and $1k for Office - our enterprise licensing for Microsoft products (which includes the OS, Office Professional and Server and Exchange CALs) runs about $200 per PC per year.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Yeah, but look at the benefits you get - a spiffy new CPU hogging GUI and tons of great new DRM!
[Insert pithy quote here]
For all that Microsoft does to make our life harder, they create more jobs for everybody supporting windows. In a strange way, windoze sucking as bad over the years has spawned whole industries that would not be around probably if we had a rock solid OS.
Why $3,250-$5,000? Here's my calculation.
And here is why he is wrong:
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.
Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000. After all, your company always buys the "professional" packages, right? And they have to be installed, right? If you're getting a much cheaper quote on both packages installed and tested, let me know.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers? Can you run both on one box? Didn't think so.
The items the guy completely missed is training costs, deployment costs, and business process changes. Those will wind up costing the organization just as much, if not more than the licensing costs. The cost IS higher than licensing alone, but not to the extent that this guy claims, nor for the reasons he expects.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Playing games?
Seriously, when I was writing simple C programs on an 8088, that was suuuuper slow and an upgrade shaved about an hour of compile time a day. For programming, I chose an extra monitor over a dual core box. Long gone are the days of starting the compile and finishing the cup of coffee before its done.
Here's what I see happening:
Small businesses will delay their upgrades until they absolutely have to get off XP/2000 server/2003 server. The small businesses that I've done contract work all own their machines, they don't lease. They upgrade as much as possible until it no longer makes sense. Many are still using P2's and P3's loaded with as much RAM as possible to be able to run XP smoothly. Because their current environment simply works, there's no rush to upgrade.
Medium sized businesses may test the waters, but will ultimately delay upgrades until their leases are up on the current batch of PC's. As lease refreshes begin, Vista will roll in, creating a support headache as techs now have another platform to learn and keep track of. They'll eventually get over to Vista, but it'll take a couple of years.
Large businesses may follow the same pattern as medium sized business clients and upgrade with lease refreshes. Having two platforms to support isn't much of a problem as they can usually afford to get their techs up to speed quickly and some may even dedicate a group to Vista support.
I don't see many businesses running out to buy new machines just for Vista. In fact, I see the opposite; very few will. They'll just get Vista with new PCs during lease refresh cycles.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
There is an article just down the page showing how much commercial OSS costs and it isn't pretty!
I don't know about your company, but mine will upgrade to Vista the same way they upgraded to XP - when it comes preinstalled on the new PCs they buy. They also won't be upgrading Office, assuming 2000 will still run. There's also no need for new hardware to run Vista if you have a relatively recent machine; you don't need to run Aero, so you don't need a high-end graphics card.
Cost to my company of upgrading will effectively be zero, as it'll come free preinstalled on PCs that we'd have been buying anyway.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Of course, the average cost of a good developer, total to the company, is around $60-90 per hour. That's $500-750 per day. If having the latest hardware around makes them even slightly more productive, or gives them a reason to work an extra hour per week (not day, week), that pays for a new, kick-ass system every six months or so -- and that's assuming that you just shred the old hardware.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
It sounds like Vista's pretty pathetic.
I have a box I got for a 10$ lunch. Its 400 MHz and is more than good enough to be a web server and simple development box (running BSD). I'm not ever going back to windows. My job uses 100% linux, my "fun" box is a mac and my server is BSD. There is no longer anything remotely compelling about windows for me.
from 2000. Then again, it was totally worth it. We basically did the same as we did moving people to Mac OS X - hunt down groups of users and spend a lot of time migrating. But the increase in stability and capability it added really made up for a lot of this.
Now, this isn't to say I agree with the figures. I haven't seen them, yet. With 2000->XP and OS9->OSX, there typically weren't hardware upgrades required. It was mostly technician time. But there was a cost, and it's not inconsequential.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
that sounds ueber-pathetic :(
I'm sorry for you folks who have to deal with that.
So you pay, at a minimum, $600 for that copy of Office. The only way that SA would cost you less is if you upgrade Office every 2 years or less. And exactly how much money would you spend to stay on *that* upgrade treadmill? Why would you even *want* to do that, even if the software were "free"?
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Holy cow, what a load of slanted language and unsubstantiated claims.
``New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000. Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement. You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says.''
New PCs cost $1500 to $2000? I'm sure I've seen them for less than that. Since when do you even have to buy a new computer? Last I checked, PCs could be upgraded without replacing them. "Darn"? "No matter what Microsoft's marketing says"?
``If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.''
I know plenty of people whose PCs meet the requirements he states, and more who have PCs that meet the requirements Microsoft states. I'll judge how many people can run Vista without upgrading their computers when Vista is out and people are installing it.
``Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.''
I won't comment on the figures, but Office is _not_ Vista. Even if you upgrade Office at the same time you do Vista, that's a separate upgrade. And I bet that's where most of your 750 to 1000 dollars go to.
``The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers.''
Another upgrade that's separate from Vista.
And the best part:
``a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac''
I bet you didn't know that you need to buy a Mac to run Vista.
I'm sure that upgrading to Vista won't be cheap. I'm also sure there will be plenty of things wrong with Vista. But that's no reason to be spreading FUD. That one guy does so is one thing. That it gets posted as News for Nerds is quite another. I thought everybody knew FUD by now?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This thread really highlights the importance of quality IT consulting. The fact that no one can agree on the actual cost of upgrading (ranging from the low thousands to the low hundreds) shows that at least some of you IT guys don't know what you're talking about. Sucks for the companies that employ the people that are wrong. Contracting someone who knows what they're talking about could end up saving you a few thousand dollars per user.
Before I ditch my (3 years) old 3200+ based PC which run RC1 pretty well as it is (GeForce FX 5200, 512MB RAM)...
a new GeForce 7300 GT or 7600 GS AGP card: 100
a new 512MB memory module: 70
a licence for Vista (OEM or upgrade): 100-200
Maximum Total: 370
I really wish the exchange rate was that 1 for 10$...
What I really want to know is, having decided to do without the revolutionary new filesystem (VFS - Vaporware File System?) and several of the other radical new goodies which Vista was supposed to bring, just how is Vista superior to current OS offerings. I'm not interested in different, somebody tell me what makes M$ Vista superior? Surely not spending half my CPU cycles driving the GPU at 100% so I can see pretty "Aero glass" effects? Surely not security, which still sufferes most of the same bugaboos which have plagued Windows these last few years (WMV, ActiveX, User priveledge escalation becoming a knee-jerk habit, etc.)? Certainly not openness - there's more than a hint of Palladium still hanging around all of Redmond's offerings lately (call it TPM or Trusted Computing if you insist on the polite euphamism for "Fritz" chip, guaranteed to put your machine on the fritz!)?
I'll stick with Linux - it's free, and well worth the price! Of course, it won't run DK4ever, but at this rate it'll release at about the same time!
I had a fairly unexciting testing period with Vista (pre-RC1, RC1, and 5728) on my home PC (Athlon 2600+, 1GB RAM, Raid0 SATA setup, GeForce 6600GT Graphics) and have come to realise a few things..
Either... Vista desperately needs some more mature (and performance enhancing) drivers from hardware vendors OR I need to upgrade before I am able to run it (which quite frankly I just refuse to accept) OR Vista is basically a big old load of bloat and considering Windows XP runs like its supercharged on my current PC, maybe its worth just sticking with what I have for now!
Not to wheel out the old Apple Mac 'trump card' (as i'm really not a Mac user / owner anyway) but I had in the not to distant past a Quicksilver G4 800MHz with 512MB of RAM and a GeForce FX5200 retrofitted from a Powermac G5 and it used to run OSX 10.4 Tiger like an absolute charm - including all of the shiny visual effects. Why the hell then does Vista's visual performance suffer so badly on my PC when it should absolutely annhilate it?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
There is also the HUGE issue of hardware diversity, which is generally a very bad thing in larger corporate environments. You try to keep the number of different types of machines very low to keep the costs of imaging and deployment down. It's one thing to vary the CPU speed, memory, and disk, and another to support lots of different models and vendors of equipment. Equipment and software licenses are only a part of the total cost. Depending on diverity, user knowledge, applications, etc., the support and training costs can sometimes be several times more than the other more tangible costs.
An example: if we have 6 configurations supported in a given year (desktop and laptops for general, power user, engineering) and keep equipment for 4 years, you already have 24 images to support! Now have some on 2000 and some on XP: 48 images. Add vista: 72 images. This doesn't even consider the special "one off" boxes. Given that images generally need to be refreshed every 3 to 6 months, it's a huge job. This is why you do all or nothing deployments whenever possible.
If anything, the numbers in the FA are low.
Wow.
I saw an inkjet printer for sale, supposedly for $50. But it actually cost me (on average) $200 to get one, because I bought a $350 LaserJet instead.
That makes it sound expensive. I should look at it the other way. I bought a LaserJet for $350, but it actually only cost me $200 because some people buy inkjets. Yeah, I like this analysis.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
and even then.
if i have a new widgets company, employees hired, but NO computing in place, then, yes, the cost of vista may be in the range suggested in the article.
no company is in that boat. the *true* cost is incremental, and even then it has to be adjusted for the 2-3 years out before companies actually consider upgrading. most enterprises still have plenty of windows 2000, 6 years later. so, sure, required hardware for vista is expensive now, but by the time companies get around to rolling it out the extravagent requirements will be standard, business class hardware?
how do i know? oh, well it was the same with windows xp, windows 2000, windows 95, windows nt, windows 3.1, etc. windows 95 recommended 8 MB of RAM. RAM cost $50/MB then. microsoft OS releases always drives hardware down, which will be a nice side effect of vista's release.
This logic is terrible - but in our painful reality oh so true.
How about this version: "For all that the [US Government/Military Industrial Complex] does to make [people's lives harder in other parts of the world], they create more jobs for everybody supporting [the US war machine]. In a strange way, [US foreign policy] sucking as bad over the years has spawned whole industries that would not be around probably if we had a rock solid [leadership].
Or this version: "For all that [the oil companies] do to [ensure our dependency on oil, global warming be damned], they create more jobs for everybody supporting [production of inefficient gas guzzling monstrosities]. In a strange way, [our addition to oil] sucking as bad over the years has spawned whole industries that would not be around probably if we had a rock solid [alternative energy strategy].
There you go applying 'logic' to 'business decisions' ;-) Some people just never learn! (the others go into mgmt!)
My biggest peeve is a lack of development focused PCs, we're saddled with the 'standard' footprint that everybody gets. I don't want email, or office or anything else non development related on my dev box. All developers should get 2 machines - 1 cookie-cutter footprint for mundane office stuff, and one completely unshackled and free dev box (on a separate dirty LAN).
The amount of productivity lost to such 'decisions' boggles the mind....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Vista seems to do that to a bunch of people. I downloaded it when they released the beta to the public a few months ago. It proceeded to set my system clock 40 years ahead, rendering the Vista install worthless and unable to be accessed. I deleted that partition and went to Ubuntu because of my disgust with the M$ response. Their answer was basically, "Bummer, it's a beta." I had changed the clock back through the bios, but once the licensure for the beta had "expired" according to the system, there was nothing I could do with it. I have been a happy ubuntu camper ever since. The only thing Ubuntu can't do that my Windows instances could is view newer flash sites. My wife was skeptical at first, as she didn't see all of the clutter that was once there in Windows and couldn't immediately find her files. She quickly warmed to it and doesn't have any desire to use Windows now. It is a simple OS that the average user wouldn't be able to differentiate between.
I was hoping someone would point that out.
Not to mention most of the workstations in our office are a year or two old, and they'll all support Aero.
The specs are not exactly insane.
For your system needs for programming use, it depends on what the program is intended to do. If it's just a common app aimed at either the lowest common denominator or the average machine out there, then you're right. However, if you're creating computer games, VR programs, haptic (touch) programs, or time critical simulations then you'll need a faster/beefier machine. I mean, sure, you can write the code on that 1 GHz machine no problem, but compiling and testing it would be a pain.
Read my blog posts on usability.
What would be the cost of:
- replacing/training desktop support?
- training the rest of the workforce?
- lost productivity due to the above?
Training costs would be equal. Vista is as different from XP as a well configured XP desktop is.
Lost productivity would be equal as well.
vista is dramatically different. just like how XP was dramatically different. and the retraining costs and time lost is identical upgrading windows as it would be switching to a new platform. linux or mac.
Training desktop support will also be close to the same. remember, dramatic differences here. the new version of office is way different than office 2003.. so actually OO.o would be easier as it is closer to 2003 than the new office suite.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From what I have read, Vista is total bloatware and hogs system resources for the User Interface as well as a bunch of other things that even XP doesn't mess around with. I work in a somewhat corporate environment (non-profit educational actually). I have a Dell Optilex GX260 here at work. It's not that old. IT has a plan to replace computers every 3 years but from experience I know they like to hold off longer if they can. I already had IT upgrade the RAM to 1 GIG at my own department's expense. The problem is that the computer has a crappy Intel video chipset with 128 megs of RAM. SO basically when Vista comes around my computer is going out the door. There is not way to make this thing work with Vista. It works fine with XP though and I run image editing programs and all kinds of junk while my UD client in the background and I've never had it slow down noticably. So that's good hardware going in the recycle bin because of Microsoft Bloatware.
A typical "employee computer" costs less than $1000. They get replaced USUALLY about every three years. The warranty expires, and they're ready to leave, though there are exceptions. I've still got a 386 running a perfectly capable dBase program (It prints labels fast and easy). Sometimes we compress a buying cycle; sometimes we stretch it, depending on the application. But the point is that when we replace the boxes next year, they will come with Vista installed on them already. So we'll be supporting, 2000, XP, and Vista at the same time, with the 2000's falling off the end as we speak. It will take three to four years before everything is Vista--and whatever is post-Vista. On a larger scale, the same is true with the servers. Training costs for employees are minimal. They're not doing anything that different and we don't want them to. Our major apps "run on Windows" in Java. They go through a rev a year; I guarantee the next new rev will run on Vista. The company is already exploring that to see what they need to do to support it, if anything. We have to do the upgrade anyway, so it's no greater a cost. The rest of the stuff is just normal.
IF we decide we can't live without the next version of Office (unlikely, I think), then we'd be looking at some costs and training all around, of course, but that decision would be based on what the software could do for us and is independent of the hardware/OS issue, which is going to take care of itself automatically.
So, at least for our org, the figures are vastly inflated.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Microsoft keeps users because (among many reasons) their software's interface is consistent and familiar. I can't imagine they break that with Vista.
I really hope you aren't suggesting that the differences between Vista vs. XP are similar to Vista vs. Linux.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Dozens of thousands of lines of it compiled pretty quickly. My comment was about the .NET monstrocity.
That's a hell of a lot of money for shitty software. And they say crime doesn't pay!
The last $100 is for the MousterCable.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
besides your dignity...?
We aren't spending much more than our annual Microsoft Certified Partner fee for this, and I can tell you it's way lower than $5000 and grants us upgrades for client and server systems alike, along with applications. We won't have to upgrade our hardware. We did 2-3 years ago, and that's clearly enough for Vista. I know this because I've ran it myself. Users on our company jumping to a Mac just like they wish out of a personal agenda? Are they kidding me?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I've only got 26 points left after seeing that Shoggoth last week.
you did not do the XP transition in a corperate environment. Support desk calls went up 60% the day we rolled out XP and office 2003. useability is very different if you do not change XP's default behaivoir back to 2000 style as most people do.
remember, most corperate users have the IQ of a small box of rocks and they absolutely freak when things change. XP was a dramatic enough change we had to schedule training for most of the sales and marketing staff.
and do not get me started on office 2003. incompatability with many office 200 documents, things that used to work dont anymore, etc...
So yes, the amount of money we spent on training staff for XP last year would be very close to the expense to train them on osX or linux.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
With this kind of "budgeting skill" I wouldn't be surprised if he's buying hookers on the company credit card.
>>Aero is not required on corporate PCs so scratch the video upgrade. We deployed Windows XP with the dummied-down Windows 2000 interface and expect to do the same with Vista. We do allow users to change to the Fisher-Price UI if they like, though.
>>Corporate customers don't pay between $750 and $1k for Office - our enterprise licensing for Microsoft products (which includes the OS, Office Professional and Server and Exchange CALs) runs about $200 per PC per year.
Exactly right. Our first XP PRO PC was a Pentium 200MHZ, which ran XP PRO just fine with all the UI bells turned off. All it needed was extra memory to be usefull. This was my PC.
Prior to installing XP, we bought XP and used the backrev agreement to install NT4. When Vista comes out, we will do the same. We will purchase PC's with VISTA, but install XP. Eventually, once all our software works with Vista, we will roll it out to everyone. By that time, half the PC's will have VISTA ready hardware anyway and the others will run it without Aero.
...it will run with 1Gb of RAM. And most of mid-rage pc out of there has 1Gb of RAM.
So vista will run well on current hw.
For sure 3D effects are more likly to work at home on the game-killer-guy.
Win95 was a problem because you need at least 12Mb to get it workng good, and the bare minimum of 4Mb was a very tight limit.
So these extimates seems to me FUD.
-- Giovanni Daitan Giorgi http://gioorgi.com http://www.siforge.org
productivity improvements. No one has mentioned how productivity will improve with users using Vista.
I forsee that productivity, due to a more intuitive interface, a more satisfactory user experience, and improved deployment will make up for the cost of even the highest estimates.
...'cause it ain't happining.
:-)
I'll stick to my dualboot (win 98 for games-FC5 for everything else) setup. My upgrade costs can be figured at the price of a cdr or dvdr disc and the bandwidth to download the newest desired linux distro.
I see no compelling reason to even think about the newest spyware sponge from MS getting installed on my PC. I feel bad for those out there that have little choice with their jobs requiring Vista, but luckily that does not apply to me.
I actually kinda liked XP until MS sprung the WGA spyware feature- my legit copy worked for 3 1/2 years until WGA, then suddenly WGA decided it was a pirated version....format-install FC5- did not look back.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Yeah, XP was dramatically different from Windows 95/98 -- if by dramatically different you mean shinier with rounded corners. Ditto for Office 2003 vs. XP/2000/97.
Have you even tried Vista yet?
Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about. Differences between versions of Windows and Office were largely cosmetic, as far as an end-user office employee is concerned. Spreadsheets still act like spreadsheets no matter what version you are using, and a fancy (cheesy?) ribbon toolbar is not going to change that.
Buuuut...
In XP, the processor load for the old and new interfaces is the same (I think). If you allow your Vista users the same freedom to use the shiny interface, you are going to be getting a lot of hardware complaints - slow, etc. - because Aero requres so much more than vanilla. Are you then going to retroactively tell them they can't use the shiny interface?
I'd predict that, despite the logical course, money will be allocated to accellerated equipment replacement, if only to shut the office drones up. Which is exactly what MS and the hdwr. makers are counting on.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
We'll see machines with suitably fast integrated video. The Mobo market isn't going to sit back and hand business to the graphics card market.
Straight in at number one and modded up Score:4, Insightful)
was Re:FUD
davecb5620@gmail.com
Sad.
I don't buy it.
I know what happens when developers are allowed to have an unshackled dev box - they spend hours or days trying to get it exactly how they want it. Then, every few weeks they try a few things to tweak the performance or interface using up a few more hours.
I've seen this happen many times in many different places, (but it is still anecdotal evidence), so I think this is fairly wide-spread.
My recomendation is to get 3-4 different footprints for the developers which include all the toys they might want - like vi AND emacs. This way they get some control over their environment, but they don't get sidetracked into "perfecting" it. It also eliminates the need to maintain a second LAN - which can be a royal pain. Someone is going to do something wrong and their box will get hacked. Developers aren't administrators. They may be similar in many ways, and some people may multi-task the two positions, but don't confuse the two.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
My $900 computer that I built in February - everything except a monitor, mouse and keyboard - runs Vista beta 2, Aero just fine. Snappily, I might add. And yea, it should be amortized in the IT refresh cycle.
I don't think this guy's going to be out doing next business day repairs for free. That's going to end up being a very expensive $200 savings for the company.
Apple could make a lot of sales form business users if they open up there os to any hardware.
They should at least have a mid-end head less system if they don't do that.
If your department/company is on desktops then the upgrade costs for a rollout will be minimal anyway as a vista PC will likely only be a couple hundred more than a bottom end XP box from dell, and I'm sure the entire optiplex line will be Vista compatible.
Not to pick on you in particular, but there is a pretty big misconception out there that Vista requires everybody to upgrade hardware. I was at a TechNet event (mandatory for work) last week regarding Vista deployment and the MS rep stood in front of 1000+ people and told us that officially, Vista absolutely WILL run on *any* box that comes with a Microsoft "Designed for XP" sticker on it, which most people are already using in a corporate environment (and if you're not, then you're clearly not the early-adopter type anyhow). Part of the install checks your hardware capabilities and turns off eye-candy and such to (hopefully) make a reasonable-performing system.
There is reason to be skeptical that it will perform just as good as XP, on exactly the same hardware, but he said that this was one of Microsoft's priorities.
Anyhow, my point is that most people won't *need* to upgrade just to run Vista. XP Ready == Vista Ready (although not necessarily "Vista Optimal").
teeker
As an IT manager, I think your idea is a good one. Now just get your boss to budget the money to get you two machines and the money for me to put together the dev network.
Why are you buying models that change that often? The models we buy change maybe every year. We've got 5 years of stuff out there any maybe have 4-6 images for all of it (including the laptops).
Of course if you need to reimage your machines every 6 months, then you're obviously doing some other things wrong too.
I think he forgot an "f", making it 25-30% off that, which is completely reasonable for a desktop machine. 2000$ - 600$ = 1400$ which is what you cite.
Perhaps they are, but if we're on a fixed four-year replacement cycle (we are) the only people who get new machines every year are application developers and people who have enough corporate horsepower to get a new PC whenever they want ;-)
;-)
Can't stop someone from turning on Aero (well, I could but I won't) - but if they deviate from the Standard Non-Shiny Corporate User Interface and complain about performance then I guess they've got a choice to make. This is, after all, a business PC.
I'll be the first to admit that some user customization is a good thing - generally speaking a happy user is a productive user, but I don't have to give a user the full Aero/Glass experience in order for them to be able to do their job.
The decision point is where user customization interferes with productivity - so if the user turns on all the bells and whistles and then calls the helpdesk because his PC is slow we either turn the bells and whistles off or get the user a new PC, depending on his position in the food chain, I guess
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
I feel like he's lost the plot with regard to the functions *most* people do for their jobs (not /. readers of course...but the people /. readers support).
HR staffers, admin support staff, accountants, etc. aren't going to need Aero.
Aero is really just a fancified interface and while it's pretty, it adds nothing but overhead to people who just need to get the excel sheet written. Verdict? - no hardware upgrade is truly necessary.
If you run Vista in 'windows classic' mode with no themes and no fancy options (basically like windows 2000) it'll run just fine on almost anything currently running XP.
The compelling reasons to move to Vista from an Administrator's point of view is in the background...everyone runs as 'Normal User' until an admin function is required - at that point you're prompted with a credentials popup that, while annoying as flan may end up saving support staff untold hours of undoing the evil that users can do in XP and Win2k because on those operating systems they frequently feel they have to run as local admin to do their jobs; Adding printers and changing wireless networks are no longer admin-only functions.
Bottom line - this guy should spend a little more time learning what 'Vista Capable' and 'Vista Premium Ready' means as well as identifying target groups that would use/require the Aero Glass features before he spouts off on the costs to companies who are full-blown Windows shops.
Funny, we just did this analysis at work. Our cost is about $1,500 to $5,000 per pc tech and server guy, depending on the training package we send them. PCs will be replaced on the standard 3 year cycle, so no addition cost there. Assuming the worst, $5,000 worth of training each for 18 people, we are spending $27.27 per user (About 3,300 of them). Testing of applications cost us nothing with Vista, since if it isn't on the vendors' Supported Technical Enviroment, we will not install the app on vista machines. Essentially a non-issue for us.
Now, if I did not follow a 3 year cycle, upgraded each pc to support Vista instead of just replaced the pc, and trained the user expensive training, maybe I could get to $3,500. ($1,500 training, $2,000 in pc upgrades) Hey look, I would be an idiot.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Most of this argument is based on getting a system that supports Aero, most companies I work with wont even allow their users to run XP with the XP desktop and require the "classic" mode. Why would a business invest in thousands per user just so their desktops looks pretty?
I probably should have been a bit more clear. Your points are valid, completely unfettered computers probably aren't practical, but something without that various stuff that gets jammed into the cookie-cutter distributions for the masses. Developers don't need that. If there's a separate 'developer' footprint available, then I agree that's a good compromise. (oh crap I said the 'C' word on /. the horror!).
As far as getting hacked, if it's a separate dirty lan, it's supposed to be unconnected to *anything* including the internet. Hard to hack across an air gap. If they need something from the internet, download it on the 'safe' box/lan and transfer it themselves.
And developers aren't admins, this is true, but they do generally need admin priviledges on the boxes (at least windoze ones that I'm familiar with). To me that's another reason why they need something on a separate box/lan so any damage they might cause is contained.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
That is one thing that vista will fix as it will make it easyer to have a image that will run a lot of hardware and software licensesing may force you to support different images for things like general use, engineering, Coders, and others.
also as for vendors there are only a few for video cards / chipsets. amd-ati / intel / nvidia
That should teach you a lesson about buying substandard equipment for your developers. Your biggest expense with an in-house programmer is not the computer they use, it's the salary. The faster the machine and tools work, the more productivity you can get out of them and happy programmers work faster and better than grumpy whiney underequipped code grunts.
Go ahead and spend the extra $20 on the MS Natural, or whatever they want. Go and spend the extra $100 on the dual-core. They want 2GB ? One-up them and get 4Gb for a couple hundred more, then you can tell them the machine's maxed out and they will stop whining.
What if they want a whole new PC from Boxxtech ? Buy it! You can give the perfectly fine Dell to an office worker and they will brag about it being the fastest machine in HR. And of course your programmer will be delighted and much more willing to help you out when crunch time comes along and overtime is involved.
Business intelligence is mainly data driven, but the sticker price is only a tiny portion of the value of a good computer.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Agreed. The OP's point was that in the name of 'saving' money, such things aren't usually done, even though in the long run they'd see a financial benefit to a slight more expensive initial outlay.
Something I find myself saying is it compares 'quantifiable' (new computer, new lan) vs 'unquantifiable' (better productivity, more results) costs. And since the bean counters usually have the money, it's far far easier to quibble about the known costs than the unknown (and not gauranteed) benefits.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The writer of the article claims that somehow a 256MB video card is going to cost you some huge sum of money and that more RAM will destroy your budget. Hmmm... Well, I can find a GeForce 6600 256MB Video card right now for less than $60 from Newegg, and it will do all that you need for Vista. Gosh, that's a bank-breaker! He also claims that 1GB of RAM is going to destroy your IT costs! That's odd, I can find 1GB of PC2-5400 for around $110. So, for well under $200 I addressed his two main hardware concerns. While that particular RAM might not work out for you, for another $100 at most you can always get much higher quality RAM.
"If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well."
The above quote smacks of FUD. I am quite certain that every system in my small company could run Vista right now with no problems whatsoever. We don't have a system with less than 2GB of RAM, and an NVidia 256MB video card (has to be NVidia because ATI is awful for OpenGL) is what we recommend as a minimum. I know, I build them all. We're a small business, which is where the article appears, on a small business site. Our slowest processors are 3.2 GHz P4's. For some reason, the article writer feels that "small business" means "company with old decrepit hardware". Even our laptops conform to our system guidelines.
"Short version: after messing with it for a couple hours, I went and downloaded Ubuntu."
:)
Funny, I did the same thing!
I'm a developer / system administrator and I am *not* happy about Vista being just over the horizon. Since I've been out in the working world, I've only worked for Microsoft-based companies and it would be an understatement to say that my *nix skills had gotten rusty. I really don't like the idea of being 'forced' into Vista upgrades sometime in the future, so I decided to see how well I could do in linux, instead.
The answer? I loved the experience so much that I put Ubuntu on all of my home/family machines
I've been really pleasantly suprised! I'm a very demanding user who's very attached to his Windows programs, but I haven't run into many issues with Ubuntu, and I haven't even used Wine for anything yet.
Not to plug Vista or anything, but there was a preview presentation of Vista at my university about a week ago and they also said Vista would run on anything XP will run on (or something to that effect) by scaling the features automatically to your hardware.
There are cost saving companies, and there are image conscious companies.
... $2500 on a laptop for their execs.
A major technology development is often the marker for an otherwise undefined hardware upgrade policy. Certain types of managers like the "let's get the best for our people" approach, own up to a big dent in the bank account, and then spend
Wide screens are "value marketed" - they are priced at what the sales opportunity will bear, and an image conscious manager will declare "I don't want the tiny Freakin screen!" Add on a high end Core 2, Vista Ultimate, Office Pro, and the high end service contract.... and it DOES become $2500 in Software/Hardware.
Add in a estimated miniumum of $500-$1000 of configuration labor... I already have one report from a beta user that some of the expected legacy software compatibility glitches are occurring.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
dev boxes aren't on a separate lan for security reasons. It's to prevent foulups trashing the whole company network. Duplicate IPs, high-bandwidth throughput tests etc; you don't want them on your corporate lan.
As for net access, let them have it. I've worked in places where you needed permission to download a zip file. Didn't work there all that long.
Agreed. Things like Ghost and/or network booting are great for this sort of thing. In a perfect world they could trash the box and have it up and running in a few hours. I reckon VMWare etc will help out somewhat in this respect in the years to come.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I just bought a Gateway MX6920 Centrino Duo laptop for $799. It runs Vista RC1 including Aero just fine. I also disagree with Vista and Office costing $1000 per seat and with imaging technologies and software deployment tools the man hours involved to do a deployment are nowhere near what he says. I should know, I was involved in countless XP deployments when working for a firm with over 18,000 workstations in the AD forest.
Total BS - any large corporate customer is going to be on an EA (enterprise agreement) with microsoft. For a flat fee per user per year you've got rights to ALL of the mickeysoft buisness products, OS etc. Hardware replacement costs are BS to as they're budged annually on the normal refresh cycles. Hopefully Vista, like XP, will LOWER costs by reducing support costs.
That Areoglass runs great on 128MB of video RAM. I have a 128MB 9600 Pro in my work system and I'm running the Vista beta for testing. Runs great, as well as XP ever did speed wise. As far as I can tell, the OS is just as fast in high memory situations, I don't know about low memory, we haven't tested that yet. The shiny interface doesn't seem to affect speed at all. I guess I shouldn't expect it to, it runs on the graphics card which is either good enough to handle it, or not. It's not like it offloads the the CPU.
So if you have an LCD in the popular resolution of 1280x1024, I can confirm that 128MB of VRAM will do the trick for Aeroglass. As far as I know it'll work fine on the Intel GMA 950s on newer boards. I'll probably test that later this month.
Also you needn't upgrade to the newest systems to run Vista. My system is around 3 years old, it's a P4 3Ghz, 9600 pro, gig of RAM. That seems to make Vista real happy, no slowness that I've noticed. I've done some preliminary testing on an older lab machine, P4 1.8GHz integrated video, 768MB RAM and it seems to run as well as XP did, just no Aeroglass support, I use the classic UI. Haven't done extensive tests yet but there doesn't seem to be any new slowness.
So really I think most people who have systems that run XP well will find that they also run Vista well, even if perhaps not with the shiny UI (which while nifty looking doesn't buy you much). RAM is perhaps the only thing to be worried about but with 1GB weighing in at under $100 I'm not really worried. For that matter low RAM systems run poorly on XP. Low RAM systems just run poorly in general, RAM isn't something you should cheapskate on.
You are right, this is just anti-Vista FUD. Sounds like someone realised that it actually may end up being a slick OS and is scared it will do well, and is thus trying to scare others away from it.
Sure new hardware could be worth it. But is Vista worth it? I don't see any significant benefit from it. Only Microsoft gains much from Vista.
;).
If "everyone" told Dell, HP etc to keep preloading Windows XP on the _new_ systems they are purchasing, then even though MS still gets money, there are some benefits:
1) If everything is XP, it keeps the software support and training costs the same as before.
2) It could potentially weaken Microsoft's monopoly and open up the market to 3rd parties.
Explanation of 2) if 90% of the people who want Windows, _insist_ on XP for new machines for the next 5+ years, 3rd party software vendors will continue to target XP, and WINE and others will catch up on compatibility, and then MS might end up like Intel in the Itanic vs Opteron scenario - where Intel couldn't get the industry on the Itanic. Then even Microsoft can't escape from maintaining high "Windows XP compatibility".
And if more "Windows XP" compatibles enter the market, MS could end up like a BIOS manufacturer.
Not likely to happen (since hardly anyone listens to me), but it's a thought
You are so right. We're in a bank. 85% of the people here run one application...the teller app. Absolutely no need for Aero and all the other stuff. They log in to the network, crank up their teller app and stay in it until they go home. They use e-mail...but not Outlook. Our company doesn't do Word. Our XP PC's are streamlined....no funky Toys 'R Us interface...no balloon help...no shadow cursors...no animated menus. ZIP support is shut off...USB is shut off. These are basic terminals.
We need Vista like we need a delivery of counterfeit money.
.... in the same room
One day we see a story of how expensive it is to run and open source based development shop compaired to an MS or proprietary code based dev shop and the next day we see how expensive it is to convert the end users in a company, to Vista. Of course in comparison to say ubuntu.
Sooner or later the world is going to see the container of the humidifier and dehumidifier is the same container and even better, that its the users who have the ability to unplug the damn thing instead of paying for the electric bill the suckers and blowers use.
When coding becomes common and easy enough that you do it when you either need to or are inspired to. And regardless of who you are. Like using a calculator to do math, everybody does it.
Coders have a VERY GOOD reason for updated hardware. The same goes for graphic designers and video editors, they all need all the speed they can get. As another poster already replied, speeding them up a bit pays off the hardware after a few months (or days depending on the speedup). I do video and moving to a dual-core setup literally doubled how much I can get done in a given time. However if you want to get thrifty on the coders and still make them happy, turn on distributed compiling and buy a few dual-core boxes that get shared instead of one for each coder. New boxes will get more use in a compile farm that keeps busy than sitting around waiting for keystrokes while he thinks about the next line. This way you can get 2 top of the line boxes instead of one per programmer and everybody's work speeds up MORE than if you would have given them a new machine. A compile farm can basically scale linearly with each machine added. Heck if you can get them to switch to Macs and use XCode the compiling is done WHILE they type and the program is often ready to go as soon as they press run. Can't speed it up much more than that.
... usually she's typing in Word or on the phone. Making her computer twice as fast will only make 2% of her work take 1% of her time. Just give her the old coder boxes and she'll be happy.
Now let's take the secretary at the front desk. She DOES get a certain amount of speedup on task switching and program startup, but those are a very small proportion of her time
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
When it's a research system. For it we currently get a system with a Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, a nice video card, and a 19" widescreen. Not just a system that would run Vista, one that would make it scream. In terms of systems that would run Vista just fine we bought those too, P4 3Ghz, 1GB RAM, GeForce 4MX, no monitor. Won't do Areoglass but they run it without quite well. Those were $1000... 2.5 years ago when we bought them.
These days $2000 is enough to get you a very near top of the line system with a nice monitor. Fine if that's what you want but please don't pretend like it's mandatory for Vista support.
...moving your key production applications to web-based alternatives, standardizing on FireFox and Thunderbird for web browsing and email, and getting people comfortable with OpenOffice by handing out disks for everyone in the company to take home and play with then today you could laugh at Vista upgrade costs because you could use any client OS you wanted.
Some companies have actually been doing that and now it's paying off.
I believe his calculations are going to prove pretty close to on target. If they're over it won't be by much. I use the following rule of thumb guide for hardware/software upgrades/refresh:
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
When the dot bomb happened and we pushed to a 4 year cycle support costs in that last year were dramatically higher than the other years. The knee in the curve appeared to happen at 3 years 3 months (quaterly mapping).
/.?
Doesn't anyone know the WHOLE reason why the TCO of computer infrastructure rises after three years? Don't ANY accountants read
The TCO of computer hardware includes "depreciation expense". The government allows a certain percentage of your fixed assets to be written off for tax purposes. I'm not sure of the terminology in other countries, but the maximum permissible depreciation allowable for taxation purposes in Canada is called the "Capital Cost Allowance". In the case of computers it has been a linear depreciation of about %30 of the original cost. That means your computer is "written off" in about three years. I believe the US has a similar allowance for depreciation expense on computer hardware.
This has more of an effect in the US IIRC, becasue in Canada, if a business does not claim the full allowance (for example, if it is not required to bring net tax to zero), the unused portion PLUS the normal maximum CCA is allowed as a deduction. (I THINK) in the US businesses CANNOT accumulate unused but allowed depreciation expense in future tax years so a business tends to make sure to write off the largest amount possible. This means that in each of the first three years of a PCs life a business could save hundres in taxes from this deduction.
After three years PCs are essentially WORTHLESS assets--they contribute exactly ZERO dollars to the asset portion of the balance sheet, and yet they continue to incur maintenance expenses so they would probably have a noticeably larger negative effect on the balance sheet if there are a lot of old PCs in a busines. Furthermore there aren't many warranties on PCs that go past a year much less three years so if there is a problem a business must bear the full cost of repairs--on an asset worth $0.
Realistically a company could get SOME money from the sale of three year old PCs, and even three year old laptops could be prefectly usable and capable of running five-year-old XP and any contemporary application software. From my practical experience, aside from hardware failiure a machine that is 3 or 4 years old is no more trouble to support than a new machine--WinXP still costst the same for both, it still buggers up just as much on new machines as old, 3 year old machines in an office environment are not all that slow so it doesn't take any meaningfully longer time to perform various tasks and if things are really fouled up both new and older machines have the same reimaging process. Aside from replacing hard drives, however, most hardware upgrades become more expensive over time, when warranties expire and models are discontinued.
I'm not an accountant (as is probably evident from my post--I'm just waiting for a real accountant to pick it apart) but wherever I've worked it becomes instantly and magically easier to justify replacement of a workstation desktop or notebook the moment it becomes three years old, and in the vast majority of cases there was no similar magic jump in maintenance costs. We had scads of flimsy, cruddy Dell C600/610s that were already expensive in terms of hardware replacement costs well before the three year time limit, but it was only at the three year point where the bean counters on high would finally say "yeah, it's crap...put an order in for a new one". I cannot say EXACTLY how much or what kind of a positive effect it has on the financial bottom line, but once accounting has fully written off a PC their tone changes dramaticaly and they are almost eager for you to upgrade--slightest little issue (especially with hardware) will justify an upgrade to a whole new machine.
ANyways, I'm sure that because of this behaviour, it could be almost a full three years before we significantly move from XP to Vista. All incoming PCs will be imaged with WinXP for t
I can see by this article this guy must be an "I love me, I have all the certs, but no pratical knowledge guy" This article is a waste of time, I think he has no clue what he's talking about, and would probably need to read a book it install any RAM or Video Card. How do people like this get in a postition where their opinion is actually wanted? The good thing is that any Tech worth his pay will immediatly recongnize this article is biased and inherintly fabricated. His numbers don't add up and, I think he needs to factor softcost into them. A tech adding RAM and a video card only takes 2 maybe 4 minutes, spending the same amount of time sitting at his desk on /. cost the company the same.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Many large organizations lease their hardware, no big chunks of capital to cough up every few years, predictable replacement cycle = no whining staff, no temptation to "make do" with clunkers for a few more years, usually get better hardware for less each time the lease renews, I believe there are tax advantages too but IANACPA.
I generally agree -- but you have to be savvy enough about the technology to make a judgement call, as an I.T. manager, about which upgrades have validity and which don't.
My past experience has been, software developers often know relatively little about hardware issues. (Why should they, since it's not really their area of focus?) If they're using old CRTs and they're asking for a flat-screen, that's a no-brainer. Get it for them! It saves electricity, gives you less eyestrain, and generally gives at least 1" more of usable space for the stated display size. If it's a $20 item that's all about personal preference (like a particular brand/model of keyboard or mouse), get that for them too. Even if you can't discern a single reason it's worthwhile, that's not really the point. You're just throwing the cost of a couple lunches or dinners their way to keep them happy and productive.
If they start demanding all new computers with faster CPUs though, you have to sit down and take a closer look. Is it just because they read about the "latest and greatest" thing in some magazine, so now they want it for the bragging rights? If so, hey - tell them to buy their own and brag about it at home. Buying a machine that has all different components and necessary device drivers than the majority of your systems is going to create expensive support hassles down the road, in addition to the up-front cost. It may only give them speed increases in areas not relevant to what they're doing with the machine, too! (EG. Adding more than 4GB of RAM on a system using a 32-bit OS and apps is going to be a total waste. Nothing's going to make good use of the memory above 4GB because it can't allocate it. Buying a 750GB hard drive is probably a waste too on a corporate machine attached to a network. Files should be getting saved on a server. If a developer asks for a huge drive, it's likely to do non work-related things without getting caught, like collecting up DVD movies and MP3 music on their C: drives.)
Video, yes. CG, no. Most "graphics companies" use a mix of macs and PCs. Macs handle editting well. PCs handle 3D Apps well. It's not even a matter of how well either handles it anymore, really. It's just old dogmas continuing to thrive. Macs have the best video editting software because at one time they were better at it. PCs have the CG software because at one time they were better at it. Today, if clean ports were made for either, they would run equally well under both environments. But anyway...video, yes. CG, no.
Why are you buying models that change that often?
Um, they don't. It's over a multi-year period. Read my previous post closely and carefully.
Of course if you need to reimage your machines every 6 months, then you're obviously doing some other things wrong too.
No. We don't image every PC, we image every unique type. 6 months is about the longest an image is fresh due to various application patches, upgrades, new application rollouts, etc. If you don't keep your images fresh, then you end up doing too much work to get a newly imaged machine current. I have a need to get a machine from blank hard drive to fully running and in an employees hands in 3 hours without spending 3 hours worth of labor doing it. If an image is reasonbly fresh, it takes minimal labor, and minimal machine reboots.
My work machine is only a couple of years old, once IT load it up with anti-virus, license management and associated drag - I'm not sure it can run XP very well.
Right. We had people using 6 year old machines, where there would sit and waaaaaaaait to do work. It took several years of pointing out to people that they were wasting more money in lost productivity than it would cost to upgrade the machines before we got them into a replacement schedule. One was a cost in the ether, the other was a cost in dollars.
The only real reason to upgrade to Vista, is to support Office 2007. If you are in an office where you need Knowledge Management features (ILM, CRM, DM, ETC) - they are supported by 3rd parties in the next version of office. As an example, see this article on EMC Documentum integration with Office 2007 ( http://www.theregister.com/2006/10/04/microsoft_em c_office_documentum/ ).
If you are a small office, there is really no point to upgrading before your hardware support costs go up. (And probabily can switch to OpenOffice and Linux for everyone not using MustHave Software (QuickBooks...)
Actually, that GUI is a GPU hog.
I can't believe you take issue with someone requesting a good keyboard.
Especially someone whose job it is to essentially type ALL DAY.
And what do you know about memory requirements? You think someone would just request it for the heck of it?
Disclosure: I write software, and I'm typipng from a dual core box with 2GB of RAM on a Microsoft keyboard. (Must be a common setup afterall, douchebag).
I believe the submitter meant 'reckons' not 'recons', where 'recon' is short for reconaissance. The latter would mean the guy discovered the actual price, rather than making an estimate.
I am not sure how the accounting system in your company works, but mine (a very large bank) has a simple solution: The cost for all new hardware comes out of that group's budget. If we want three 22" monitors per developer, it comes out of our budget. Technically, we don't even own our machines, we lease them from the tech infrastructure group, as does everyone, and not surprisingly they have the largest budget of any division. So generally, when we make hardware requests, we really need what we ask for, and the infrastructure group actually makes money off the transaction by marking up hardware due to future support costs. They also avoid excessive support costs by alloting 2 support incidents a month to users. Any more than that and the group is charged (there is an easy appeals process if there are real problems, its just to keep the not so intelligent peons from calling up and asking how to fax something).
I am guessing it does not work that way in your office since you seem like you are somehow slighted by their hardware demands, though it is a possibility that you just really want to save your company money. If not, you should suggest this structure to your boss or bosses boss.
...is only adhering to the graphite, which in turn is not adhering to the plastic mouse very tenaciously at all. It will flake off in no time.
Aero is not required on corporate PCs so scratch the video upgrade.
Yes, but if you don't use Aero, much of the advantage of Vista is gone. And, I presume as a business you would buy at least the "Vista Business" version, which costs more than the Aero-less "Home Basic". So, you are paying for Aero, but not using it.
Instead of that, why not just keep using XP?
Here is the reality.
All PCs eventually get lifecycled, and all new PC's come with a copy of Windows (Vista starting next year) whether you like it or not. Worst case you have to upgrade from Home to Professional versions at purchase time. If you want to use your existing PC, then just pay the upgrade fee. Unless your hardware is old, it will probably run Vista with a minor memory upgrade. If your hardware is old, buy a new Vista ready PC.
Vista needs more powerful hardware. So? Once upon a time a new PC had a 286 processor and less than a 1MB of memory. By christmas most PC's will be Vista ready. If you really want the full Aero experience, upgrade the video card when you buy the PC.
Office 2007. If you already have a version of office... upgrade! Why would you buy new? If you don't have Office now, then you don't need Office 2007.
Finally. Why do you need Vista & Office 2007? For most of us XP & Office (XP or 2003) is good enough for now. Do you need Vista & Office 2007 or want Vista & Office 2007? If you are an early adopter, then its the price you pay.
Short of it. If you have never owned a PC, the cost of buying a Vista ready PC with Office 2007 is probably going to be steep. As you have no legacy requirements (how could you if you have never owned a PC?) then think Linux or Mac. Otherwise you are buying into the perpetual M$ upgrade program with both eyes open, so don't complain. If you do own a Windows PC with Office, then you are already in the loop, so upgrading is the cost of doing business.
My company buys volume licensing with Software Assurance. I can deploy Vista and Office 2007 upon release without any additional cost. Older machines will stay on XP until their department buys them new equipment, which must already be budgeted for next year.
There is reason to be skeptical that it will perform just as good as XP, on exactly the same hardware, but he said that this was one of Microsoft's priorities.
Like "security" is supposed to be M$ priority, and we all know what came out of this
Let me be skeptical
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
How many of you guys are large shop Windows admins? Obviously almost none...
Have you looked at Vista? Have you Looked at Longhorn Server?
The reason why most people don't see a usablity difference between XP and Vista, is that most of the change in Vista is all under the hood and meant to be used in a corporate environment...
Have you seen the new task scheduler yet? INCREDIBLE, we can can schedule tasks/scripts on almost any event - before and after a particular program runs - before / after suspend, screen saver its incredible.
the new group policy objects totally rock as well, alot of this stuff we have been crying for since 2000 came out....
I don't work in a large shop anymore but I was a production server engineer for a fortune 50 company and I do know what I'm talking about...
Personally, I'm banking on being a Vista / 2007 migration specialist...
How is the 2K interface for XP dummied-down? It's much more efficient, both in terms of the hardware it requries and the time taken to get things done (fewer mouse clicks.)
But otherwise, I agree. There's no need for all the eye-candy, which (other than DRM) seems to be the only new feature of Vista. Even outside of a business setting, I think most people would prefer an OS that doesn't get in the way of the movie they're watching, Web site they're surfing or game they're playing.
You're an idiot.
Do I sense someone is a little jealous of the clever coders?! Minions in support, your skills are nothing but a perfect subset of coder skills.
I would only say upgrade from win95/98/me because they were total pieces of crap. But why WinXP? An operating system does not "wear out" so what is the use of a change? Maybe if there was some feature in the new OS they needed--though not many will. Maybe if it was to a much better OS (which I doubt Vista is) and they wanted to spend the money, but MS made sure nearly all of the competitors were wiped out along with the chances of improved desktop operating systems coming to fruition.
Where is the great OS coming which everyone must upgrade? In the dreams of users perhaps, but they probably won't see their dreams come true. Nobody is really researching toward a great system, they are all just slapping together buzzword features or copying older systems, wether they improve things or not. Even on the open source side, the major projects are Gnome and KDE, which actually try to clone win98 (couldn't they choose something better?!?) and certainly aren't any better than WinXP. Apparently they take the same psychotic drugs as those at MS, so their dialog boxes are just as screwed up.
If you computer works good enough, I don't see a reason to throw it away. Especially if there will be no improvement for the user in the new system. The only "improvements" I have heard about in Vista are better copy protection (which may cause problems for users) and a prettier interface--which will not increase productivity, and I have even heard it makes everything more difficult to read, which would most certainly decrease productivity. And that is what users need, something to help them with productivity, because no one wants to spend their free nights at work. (well except those who have a bad home life or something...)
But what do I know. I run "old mouldy" software. I am still runing Linux 2.4.x and use xfig for drawing...
I've been an application software developer for over 30 years and I concluded decades ago that developers should be given old slow boxes to work on and not the latest most powerful systems with all the extras.
The problem is that when applications that the developer finds to be fast and responsive on his machine are deployed to an average user's machine it will be sluggish and unusable. I've seen that many times. Give the developer a 2Gb dual 3.8MHz box with SATA II 120Gb drives and he won't notice that it uses all that RAM and CPU. On the mangaer's 1Gb 3.2Gb it will seem adequate, on the workers' 3 year old 256Mb 1.6MHz boxes it will be a dog.
Force the developer to use an average 512Mb 2MHz box, or less, and he will make it run efficiently.
... $2500 on a laptop for their execs.
Let me fix this "... $2500 on a laptop for their execs, and then tell their employees that the budget only has $1000/year raise increase"
The extra core2 duo, 22 inch monitors, etc may be added on, and this would add to the price - but it is NOT what is required to run the software in an optimal fashion. Otherwise, lets throw in the latest and greatest video card at $900. Got to get the latest and greatest keyboard mouse (could run 100-200)...the latest and greatest nic card (Killer has one for 257$)....and since that exec is going to be working hard hours, we need to get them a brand new herman miller aeron chair at 700... Yea we can tack on stuff to inflat the numbers, but a brand new pretty high end dell laptop for business purposes will run under 900 and that WILL include vista. That IS using core2 duo...anything extra is just smoke and fluff.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
His main reason for the expenses is that most computers sold for under $1000 can not run Aero, and no integrated graphics built in systems have 256 MB of VRAM, so you need to buy a new system with a 256 MB GPU.
Why? For a business, why must you run Aero? Disable Aero and all the effects (heck, the basic version of Windows Vista doesn't even have Aero, so it's clearly unnecessary), which should remove the GPU requirements and reduce the RAM requirements, and you'll be able to upgrade to Windows Vista WITHOUT purchase of a new system.
M$
You know, you're not clever. You just look like a tool.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Corporate customers don't pay between $750 and $1k for Office - our enterprise licensing for Microsoft products (which includes the OS, Office Professional and Server and Exchange CALs) runs about $200 per PC per year.
Uhhh... so, let's see .... $200/PC/Year * 5 Years = $1000, yes?
Probably the best list I've found is on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista. Which ones matter to you? Well that depends on what you do, but there's a ton. I'm personally rather excited about the new audio layer. Just the fact that they are moving it to 32-bit FP alone has me excited and it sounds like it should have the simplest interface for low latency pro audio yet. I am also extremely exited about DirectX 10.
/. FUD. It's not just XP with a shiny UI slapped on. MS really did a major overhaul of the way a lot of things work. I see lots of useful applications at work, and for my hobbies.
Vista actually does have a ton of pretty amazing new changes. You can argue as to how useful they are in a given environment, but don't buy in to the
I don't think it's going to be earth shattering or anything, and XP certainly won't stop working, but don't think there aren't some major changes.
I've found that hardware diversity is only a problem if you run Windows. A decent Linux distro (Ubuntu here) will autodetect all the IDE/SATA/Net/Audio/Graphics* drivers and take care of all that for you.
We've got a weird range of hardware here, and while I'm trying to push for a common hardware platform, it's less of a problem on Linux, because it's hardware detection doesn't suck like Windows does!
* ATi / nVidia not withstanding. However, once these are installed, they are apt-get upgraded along with everything else.
While Vista is certainly somewhat different to XP, this assertion is ridiculous. It's nowhere *near* as different as going from Windows -> Mac.
Microsoft keeps users because (among many reasons) their software's interface is consistent and familiar. I can't imagine they break that with Vista.
The UI is somewhat different in Vista, just as it was from 95 to XP.
But consider the larger item, Office 2007 - there the interface is VERY different.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But don't worry, they are working on other CPU hogs.
-
If the computers need upgraded, they will have vista anyway. So, how is this different from buying any new computer in a hardware upgrade cycle, you can not add on the extra cost of the OS, as its already there. If the hardware doesnt need upgraded, then the cost of the OS will not be that high when bought in volume license anyway. The other thing is, what kind of freaking computers are these people using that cost $5000!!!!! Are they getting 30 inch screens and Quad-SLI? This is NOT a requirement for vista. My guess is any old $500 Dell will run vista in a few months.
With Aero Glass on and especially using a flash drive as a ReadyBoost cache, it's considerably faster.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
- replacing/training desktop support?
1.5x the annual salary of the employee to be replaced. That's an average number for workforce losses. Figure $80-100k per IT person to be replaced, on average.
- training the rest of the workforce?
Basic Linux skills - 1 "extra" day over a version upgrade, presuming they're not going to be actually proficient. Add 2-3 hours of complaining, and an hour lost to scheduling. Opportunity cost (billable hours lost) for an office gnome: $50/hr*12 hours = $600
- lost productivity due to the above?
Ooh, that's a hard one. I can see a week's lost effort in the first two years of switchover, on average. Simple tasks aren't a biggie, but stump a low/mid-level exec working on a sequential-time critical app and he'll sit around useless for 2 days on a single issue. 40*50 = $2000.
This, of course, ignores the custom in-house apps that might need to be rebuilt to work with Linux that would have otherwise been backward compatible with Vista. The subsequent debugging downtime and lost productivity could double or triple the total time loss and training numbers.
It really is case specific, but you're likely to lose money in this comparison. The other thing is you will likley decrease morale. It is probably assumed that you'll skip the hardware upgrade for the more efficient system, but that means your employees are going to be stuck with that "old" machine for the next 2-3 years. Also, they'll have to change to a "different computer system" instead of getting the "upgrade" that all their cronies at other businesses are getting. They will feel like they've been shafted, even if they eventually learn to like the system. That down-tick in morale should not be underestimated.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sounds about right. So what?
Not that I wouldn't recommend more in an office environment, but making statements like:
is just plain false.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The more you talk, the more it sounds like you've never actually met a "professional coder". Just like with any college degree, some schools are better than others. I hope you take this into account with your recent decision to attend Law School.
Actually, Law School should do you some good. You'll eventually learn not to make broad assertions about things you know nothing about.
I decided not to go into programming for any company years ago due to the fact that it was obvious that programmers are not a machine that pumps out an assembly line item like you would find in a factory. Tremendous fortunes were made on programmer's knowledge that created a tremendously diverse industry. Few of those programmers made a fortune where as companies that they worked for made so much money it is hard for us to fathom.
My abilities, my knowledge, my talent is what made the product. It was my ability to make something from nothing that is key. Your opinions can and will vary but I think mine is most valid.
I now own my own business and I do very well. I will never program for anyone other than my own business. Any project I worked on in-house had to benefit me and I made sure that I retained all rights to any and all projects I worked on. I usually got an OK. I did not work as a professional programmer ever but I had various projects where I needed to code things to get the job done. I didn't want the company taking what I created and using that to make profit.
A programmer's job can be incredibly monotonous and boring and repetitive. It can also be very creative and rewarding. Those writing code in-house professionally are probably incredibly bored most of the time and the tools they use are the only things that may interact with for endless hours. Some variation on those tools and a sense of improvement are things that drive people. We can do alot of monotonous things if we feel thing are improving. Sometimes that is through salaries, other times through promotions, and other times through improvements in our tools, and most of the time all of that.
I could not imagine being a programmer where I had to get permission to view a web page or download a zip file or had some manager tell me my equipment is all that I will need. I would want the best tools. Working now I love to have my computer systems upgraded and I do so at every opportunity. I purchase tools and other nifty ideas just to try them out. I found one the other day that was a simple $30.00 item that has made working significantly easier. I didn't buy it for that purpose I bought it because I thought it might come in handy and looked nifty. Sure I have little things laying around that I will never use again or that have limited scope, but I love knowing that when I need them they are there.
Give them that extra 1 gig of ram. Prepare in advance and give them 3 or 4gigs. Give them solid music, a good bit of treats (sodas, crackers, chips, etc) and chock it up to oiling the wheels of the machinery. If they want a core 2 duo get them a quad core. If they want Vista basic get them Vista Platinum Plus Version 21. They are, after all, the people that produce the product that makes the company money. Without them you could not survive. Try producing that software product and having no programmers. It isn't like a where house where a manager can fill in if you loose key people.
This isn't to say that you give them everything. Just be prepared for what they may want. Don't be stingy. Those few upgrades without bitching and without the infighting could result in significantly greater savings to you in the long run and maybe you'll have programmers willing to put more into the product for you, since you are, afterall, making money directly from their labors.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Weird little article. Somehow it's lumping Vista and Office 2007 into one beast. While there will be some benefit to having Vista and Office 2007, neither is required by the other. Also in these numbers are backend services utilized primarily by Office, not Vista itself. It's really not correct to combine all Microsoft software into one cost, and then call it "the cost of running Vista."
The article also assumes that organizations upgrade operating systems. These are the kinds of assumptions that are easy when you're trying to come up with a high dollar figure. Perhaps some organizations do keep all of their operating systems at the same level, but really most outfits can operate just fine with a mixture of Win2K, XP, and eventually Vista. While each OS adds a little something handy from an administration point of view, the basic required GPO structure exists as far back as Win2K. Thus, in organizations like mine, OS upgrades simply do not happen.
Without any actual need to upgrade or mass-migrate to Vista, there is also no need to purchase new hardware soley for running Vista. Machines have an anticipated lifecycle, after which they are replaced. Additional machines are added as necessary. You put the current operating system on the new machines (well, you might wait for a service pack before deploying the latest OS, but that's besides the point). So the difference between buying a new or replacement machine that will run XP or Vista is nil. This was a cost you were going to incur and were planning for and has nothing to do with Vista.
The prices mentioned in the article are a bit out of whack, too. Firstly, a new machine is not $1500 - $2000 unless there is some specific need to purchase an expensive machine. Listing Vista's requirements as a means of jacking up the cost of a PC isn't appropriate because VISTA DOESN'T EXIST. Perhaps Microsoft was counting on the "average" PC being capable of running Vista by the time Vista was ready? No, they're dumb and they never think about things like that. Well, guess what, standard PCs now come with 1GB of RAM. Standard PCs come with 256MB video cards. Standard PCs come with giant hard drives. I've been paying almost the exact same cost for new machines in my organization for about 8-9 years. Between $900-1100, monitor included, will get you a machine that will last for 5 years of business use. Right now that machine happens to be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB PC4200, MSI nVidia mobo, Geforce 7300GS 256MB, DVDRW, 120GB SATA, wireless keyboard/mouse, and 17" LCD monitor. And that includes Windows XP, BTW. That's coming in at *under* $1000. This machine will be retired in 2010 or 2011. Five years ago I would have paid the same price for what was a good machine five years ago.
The licensing costs from the article are a bit more on target, but again they assume that you're buying retail Vista and that you're suddenly switching over to MS Office. If you're getting your OS pre-installed or under corporate licensing you're not paying nearly that much. Assuming you're already an MS Office organization, then you're paying software assurance and you come out in a similar position as when you used to be able to buy upgrade versions (although with SA you tend to pay more than the old system).
So let's see here: replacing aging machines with new machines, which you were going to do anyhow, costs you maybe $150 in new OS costs if you're going the OEM route. It costs you nothing in additional MS Office licensing, because you were already paying for the seat. You're going to get MS Office 2007 as part of your SA, but let's assume it costs you $350 per seat over the long run, because I like making shit up. I'm coming up with $500 in software costs, of which only $150 has to do with Vista, although you would have paid roughly the same amount for Windows XP, which you would have needed anyhow. Even if Vista costs PC manufacturers more than XP, I'm not coming up with a figure anywheres near thousands of dollars.
Ok so the ar
I always love these type of windows bashing upgrade cost that end in "this will only encourage more people/business to switch to Mac". Why so the can run less programs? So they can spend more for the same PC hardware? So they can run boot camp to have a worthwhile system? So they can pay for service packs that Microsoft provides for free? I have friends frequently ask "Should I buy a PC or Mac" I always tell them if you have some specific need then buy a Mac. Owning a Mac is more expensive. Yes the numbers above might be true if you had an 3 year old PC and were going to upgrade but if you PC is relatively new the only cost you will have is the OS. Which is only the cost of 2 Mac service packs. How many have they had on the last OS now 4 and don't forget the initial investment for the OS nothing like paying for your OS 5 times just so it can have the features it should have had the first time or at the very least for free.
Just to pick up on one of your points, the in-house applications. Not only would those be a huge problem for companies wanting to switch from Windows to Linux, but it would also be a huge problem when it came time to give up the desktop and switch to the Microsoft approach in the article.
My first thoughts were that this system could actually work out quite well for a company, but what would happen to all of the custom systems they were running? Lets face it, a company with 45,000 employees is almost guaranteed to have some COBOL or FORTRAN somewhere. I have personally seen some very large companies with billing systems written 10 to 15 years ago, the reason they havent updated them, simple... They work. And companies like things that work.
The other problem is that most people are still on modems if they even have an internet connection, and the fact is, that isnt going to change any time soon.
This sig is licensed under the Free Sig Foundation License, you may re-distribute it as long as you retain this notice
Funny... I went and downloaded Ubuntu and after 4 hrs of ripping various hardware in my server (all the way down to a barebones configuration), I decided to try Vista RC1
since I was redoing the system any way. Worked fine for me. That being said, I'll give linux another chance again....in 4 years.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
Wow, I totally screwed that up. Serves me right for having two /. stories open at once.
My comment actually relates to the article about Ray Ozzie.
This sig is licensed under the Free Sig Foundation License, you may re-distribute it as long as you retain this notice
His resume is on his website. Decide for yourself whether the company he most recently worked for has any real coders.
Does it make you feel better to belittle people as an AC? The more you talk, the more it sounds like you're a twelve year old who has never tried to code, let alone met a real coder.
Hey, I guess it does feel pretty good.
HP is a bit less bend over backwards for corporate customers, but their hardware was pretty robust. However their software is written by drunken monkeys with bad attitudes. As long as you could use general microsoft stuff hp was great, if you had to use HP drivers for an officejet multi-function it was horrible. Add in a switchbox that would swap the parallel port and blue-screens were bound to occur. And their was nothing legitamate that HP's tech support could offer for advice.
Storm
Sure, vista needs decent hardware, but any company with more than say, 50 desktops is going to upgrade to vista when they do hardware replacement due to warranty lapse/hardware failure anyway. In my experience, hardware either dies or is unusable for most users in a business environment after 4-5 years.
If they don't upgrade to vista, they'll still replace hardware regardless - i.e., continuing to run windows XP will incur hardware costs as well.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
So wait, you expected Google or Microsoft or some such? Wouldn't they actually be better coders at those places, with a broader knowledge of hardware and software? Wouldn't that by definition actually make the Desktop Support job more difficult at Go Daddy?
No further comment needed.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
If you are running a major corporation's computer infrastructure, you should forget Linux, Macs and Windows (at least as much as possible). Use big iron servers and give your users X Terminals. X Terminals are really cheap. If you can't find a good supplier, all you need is a box (with powersupply), motherboard/ram, network adapter (many motherboards come with those nowadays), video card (integrated is fine), something to boot from if needed (most bioses boot from network now, and I think all are flashable) and obviously a monitor. All that won't cost very much. Certainly less than a full blown computer. If a user really needs a Windows computer for that special app or a terminal doesn't cut it for them, then give them what they need. There are X Servers out there which will run on windows, and real OSs already have them, so you won't need a second box.
I haven't run enough big iron to know which OS is the best, however I'm certain it isn't a piddly microsoft one. In fact, I never heard of anyone using a MS OS on big iron.
For smaller companies/locations, a regular computer running one of the BSDs would probably be fine for your server(s).
Corporate support is A) US based and B) they give a shit about you as a customer. Consumer support is A) off shore and B) they already have all the money you're going to spend on a computer for a while.
I'd like to say that it's B and not A that's the difference. Unforunately I rembember when they offshored the corporate support, it was just as bad. The corporate customers bitched and moaned about how horrible it was and they brought it back.
"but a brand new pretty high end dell laptop for business purposes will run under 900 and that WILL include vista. That IS using core2 duo...anything extra is just smoke and fluff."
... but your pricing isnt really right.
Not that I agree with the insanity of TFA
I just recently ordered some developer laptops, and they run ~$2500 _without_ a bag or docking station (since we already have those).
Dell Latitude D820
Core 2 Duo T7400 (2.16 GHz)
15.4" WUXGA (1920 x 1200) screen
2 GB memory (2x1GB DDR2-667 DIMMS)
Nvidia Quadro 256MB card (only one they offer, other than integrated)
80GB 7200RPM harddrive
DVDRW/CDRW modular bay drive
Intel a/b/g wifi card
9cell battery
6cell modular bay battery
And these arent even the workstation-class laptops, though they are more expensive than the crappy consumer equipment.
This is with WinXP, so I dont know how much the premium will be for Vista Enterprise. But Office 2003 Pro runs us $100 per seat, so that doesnt add too much.
After playing with macbook pro in some Apple-shops, I must say there's really not much competition in terms of quality. The only thing MS has going for it, is backward-compatibility, games and marketing. Why should that win? We're living in 2006 and pop-up dialogs with one error after the other, is simply not acceptable. We don't rely on DOS games anymore either, so backwards compatibility is out the door already. We're relying more and more on the web.
Games.. I dunno. I want to play a few now and then, but my computer is mainly a tool and entertainment center, something Mac can deliver much better than Windows. Anyways, with the Intel Mac, you can always dual-boot for the occational frag-fest.
OS X is a product of many generations of refinement, and understanding of design, user-friendliness and quality. It is made to work. Something Windows always has been sorely lacking. Good riddance to Windows!
So next laptop I'm buying will be 17" Macbook Pro. I don't think I will ever look back.. Backward-compatibility is simply not an issue anymore.
You mean all those jobs for all those sons, daughters, brothers, doughters-in-law, nephews, ... and other faminly members, close or distant friends, friends of family, family of friends, ... which performs this support and maybe sometimes even get something for it (except of ussual psychological problems, if they do it for too long)?
:|
hany
No.
Let's take a chunk of time from 2000 to 2006 - we upgraded from Windows 98 through Win2k to WinXP and from Office 2k through Office XP to Office 2003. That's two OS and two office automation upgrades in six years.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
They would probably start out with beefier hardware to begin with.
So why not switch to real thin clients (preferably with X)? Much cheaper than running Windows, particularly as your user count goes up.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I love Microsoft, I program in VB, C++ and C#. I have used every version of Vista/Longhorn as it came out in various forms. I hate to admit it but it is a bloated pig with no redeeming value that I can discern, the reovolutionary technology is slowly but surely getting dropped as release dates approach and then recede. Most new features of Office since Office 2000 was released are not used by most users hence unvalued by the market, people upgrade for bug fuxes not new gizmos.
I see this as their first big failure. Yes the DRM software will make it difficult to steal audio and video, anf will probably rat out bootlegs that ot findsa to the appropriate it authority, but if that is their strategy propping up hollywood and music business (only slight more crooked than the mafia) they are in trouble.
Sometimes big companies run out of good ideas. That's why every hunderd years orso 90% of the Fortune 100 drop out of sight.
I ran this hog on a dual Xeon XI box with 2 MB of RAM it is still slow and will not always copy files properly. After 2 years I gave up and made it into a 2003 web service provider which it is very useful at.
I'm a windows user. I have no exploits or weak security, not using IE myself.
:D
I don't think security is a big concern (at least to me) regarding a migration to OSX. That's just a non issue. I have Opera on both platforms
Things that would piss me off? WGA. DRM. Lack of compatibility with windows software I like. A randomly expiring OS (we lost your key, and you have to pay for another one). Losing my data because of that!
And things that I would miss? Games. Tons of games.
That's the windows situation: Games vs WGA/DRM.
Anyway, I think that I will buy a Macbook Pro as soon as I get the money, and keep a WinXP partition on it for the games.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
The transition was from Win2K, Netscape 4.5, Office 97 to WinXP, IE6 and Office XP, plus the email system was migrated to Exchange on Win2k3 servers. Everybody got mandatory training. Many Intranet applications which were coded around Netscape 4's layers had to be migrated too, IE could not handle them (rightfully, as the W3C moved in a different direction).
For Vista we are extremely cautious. There is no business reason to switch. Nobody wants to be the early adopter, and enjoy bleeding edge computing.
At the same time we also monitor the alternatives, because this time we have a choice. Firefox and IE7 are functionally equal, so are Evolution and Outlook, Nvu and FrontPage, OpenOffice and MS-Office. Alongside our SUN servers we introduce Linux servers, containing popular Linux software like Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, ImageMagick, Nvu. With thin-client architecture we run those applications on the SUN and WinXP (fat) clients, stretching their lifespan. By switching to Open Standards, we free ourselves from the MS-directed upgrade cycle.
Vista itself we don't need, it's a solution looking for a problem. Why spend money on eye candy? My company needs the applications that now run on WinXP. As soon as these applications require Vista, we need to switch only those users that really require those applications. The rest stays on WinXP.
So Vista will not require that much money. Our leased PC clients will slowly be replaced with Vista-compatible hardware with the normal replacement cycle, so no extra money there. When we switch, it will be a partly switch as-dictated-by-applications, so max 20%. In that case we need to freeze the Office version on OfficeXP (even on Vista), or switch to OpenOffice.
Once again I posted with a case of "tunnel vision", being a geek of all trades myself I am equally gifted in both software and hardware, and I often have a hard time understanding how a software dude can be so oblivious to the hardware that actually runs his/her code. I started back in the day where the brilliant developers were those who could realize the impossible, thanks to deep knowledge of the machine and clever optimizations. I remember ripping my brain to shreds writing the smallest, fastest assembler version of Tetris. It ended up being 254 bytes. Nowadays I'd allocate that much to a freakin' filename buffer "just in case".
What I should have said is that if there is even a faint business justification for an upgrade or purchase, when it comes to your coders GO for it. Of course, a 750gb drive on a code machine is just fluff.. but what about four 10k rpm drives in raid-0 just for crazy-fast access, without neglecting the nightly backup of course. And so what if your coder wants to collect his favorite music ? They're going to spend at the very least, 40 hours a week at that machine. For me at least, music helps to block out the other distractions and lets me focus on the task at hand, making me vastly quicker and sharper.
The important thing is to not choke your employee. If there's something they feel is holding them back or slowing them down, it is your job as their boss/manager to fix it. If the fix means dropping 200$ on Ram, that's gotta be one of the cheapest solutions ever.
-Billco, Fnarg.com