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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?
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.
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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
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..
Of my company (~80K employees) about 2/3 have IBM/Lenovo notebooks. The other 1/3 are dell notebooks or desktops. A rolling three year window is used to determine upgrades, and yes it's required. 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).
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.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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)
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That is until you put Vista on it.
I tried RC1 over the weekend. With a 2 ghz processor and 1 gb RAM, at Idle I was pushing 70% physical RAM usage and a constant 10% load on the processor. I wrestled with Neverwinter Nights till it ran and the graphics lag was unbearable, not unplayable, but when it runs qwuite smoothly on the same system with XP or 2K3 server, there is an issue.
You say you want a revolution....
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
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.
Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of that.
Now who's exaggerating? As most coporate PC's are on a 3-4 year cycle, you won't be buying $400-$600 systems. The MS troll's numbers were about right. Look at a decent (i.e., will be useful in 3 years) Opteron or Latitude right now. Our picks were $1450 for the desktops and $2100 for the laptops. That's with a state purchasing discount (more than what private corps get). That's with 3 year warranties, gold support, etc.
There will be a significant cost for the Vista/Office2k7 upgrade, but mostly because it coincides with a number of other upgrades. If you factor in Vista Server (supposedly coming out next year, Enterprise Ed. for clustering), Exchange, SQL Server, and Sharepoint, CALs, the new Office Servers if you want them, I'd say $1500-$2000/client isn't too pessimistic for software alone. That's factoring in software assurance for Vista/Office.
Of course, if the submitter had used these large yet non-inflammitory numbers, we wouldn't be reading this right now.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
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.
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
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.
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.
I call FUD on this article as well; for a start most current hardware (above a midrange P4 system with half a gig of RAM ) will run Vista just fine- you might just want to drop the Aqua interface (though I *do* like the look of it myself). You can stick any version of office you like on the damned thing, and be done with it.
The article should read 'upgrading all your computers to brand new ones, trashing all your old hardware and putting Vista and (for some reason) MS office on them will cost $3000'.
Big fscking surprise there.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Hardware warranty on parts, one hour labor on parts replacement. Most business clients agree with my recomendations to purchase additional necessaries (i.e. on hand replacement of HD and DVD). In the event of HD failure, a replacement is on hand and the failed unit is then sent back for warranty replacement.
As I'm in a relatively small town, with a shop on Main St (literally), most of my business clients are within a 5 minute walk. And as such, if a business client needs me now. I place an "out of the shop for an hour" sign on the door and am at their disposal.
To answer the question above parent about undercutting Dell not being worth it:
It's funny. Everyone talks about how business need to evolve to make the required changes to compete. In my situation, it's actually very easy.
I don't sell computers. I sell a service. When a client comes in for a consultation with me, we sit down and map out their needs. I provide the client with a selection of hardware choices and include my recomendation. Once components have been selected, I provide the client with either Newegg or Tigerdirect ordering numbers (in the case of Newegg, I offer to setup a preliminary client account w/o financials, and fill their cart). The client actually orders their own parts and I assemble and provide a one year (hardware) service warranty on each assembled system.
My billing is very simple that way -- I don't handle inventory, so there's no taxable sales. I provide service only and charge flat rate service fees that are set as to complexity and provide scalable discount for quantity. i.e. Workstation builds are $150 a pop. More than three builds gives a 10% discount, five builds - 15%.
I sketched the initial idea and handed it to my accountant for refinement. I now have a very simple business model that is beginning (after two years) to show some real stability.
The majority of my PC business is walk in cleaning jobs and reinstalls for Mom and Dad. Occasionally I get to build cool stuff (high end gaming rigs and HTPC's), I've got 8 systems on the floor for closed LAN party gaming, a 12'x 10' chromakey green screen for novelty digital photo's, and now we're branching out to cover novelty karaoke recording and mobile garage band and gig recording on the weekends.
So, again, when asked how it's worth competing with Dell... because I don't try and rape each client for every last dollar they have. I offer advice and reasonable service charges.
Fortunately, my wife and I own our home. We have no children (or plans for them) and, generally value our friends, and peace of mind more than keeping up with the Jones family.
Also -- we try and incorporate our own personal interests into our business (I'm a musician, therefore: recording, she's an artist and photographer: so, greenscreen photography. We both like gaming - so, closed LAN parties on Saturday nights).
The last part sounds a bit preachy, sorry. But after the article yesterday on dwindling IT jobs in the country (and a few very solid reader comments about hardware support and instllation), I just felt verbiage heavy.
It's easy to compete, when you don't. Use the current market as an advantage and wipe away your inventory. If you don't have the pockets to compete with Walmart, Circuit City or CompUSA... don't. Use online sellers to your advantage and build off their lower prices.
Works for me.
#SickNotWeak
Bah! Just scribble all over the mouse with a 6B pencil (or gently toast it with a flamethrower) to give it an even coating of carbon all over. Now suspend this in a tank of any dilute acid. Connect this to the negative pole of a high-capacity rechargeable battery. Connect anything made of gold (stolen jewellery, unreported Treasure Trove or anything without a hallmark, is ideal for this purpose) to the positive pole, via an ammeter, and suspend this in the acid bath. Adjust the positions of the two electrodes (mouse shell and gold) until the meter is reading at least 5 amps or as high as it will go. (Add more acid to increase the current, if required).
There's your gold-plated mouse, and you're rid of that hot gold into the bargain!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The whole idea of attrition upgrade is untenable when a MS OS or Office upgrade is involved. The two overridding issues are compatibility and supportability.
Compatibility issues arise due to such things as new features of office version not being usable by older versions, thus, eventually forcing an accross the board updrage. Also, there are often changes in the way that the new OS networking integrates with the existing infrastructure. This can cause hard to find issues cropping into the network. These types of problems can slowly build up, and eventually force an accross the board upgrade. Also, simple changes in the user interface create innumerable support headaches when there are more than one OS/Office version floating around on the floor.
For large organizations, the only tenable solution is the Enterprise or Site licensing clauses that allow them to continue putting out PCs with the existing standard (such as XP & Office 2003) until they are forced to upgrade. In this way, they can slowly (with attrition) buy hardware that will support the new software without yet deploying the new software. When all the support pieces are in place and enough of the hardware has been replaced, then a large project can be launched to upgrade all the users to the new software, replacing the remaining low-end hardware at the same time. This also entails internal and commercial application upgrades to take care of compatibility issues. With a well thought out plan in place and no hitches in rollout (which always occur) the low end price per PC might be attained.
Smaller organizations do not have the leverage (or deep enough pockets) for the site licensing. This forces them to go with a mixed environment as they buy new or replacement PCs. For a while, such changes can work, until the level of pain forces them to do more aggressive upgrades. Since they don't have the ability to do things on a mass scale to reduce per PC costs (upgrade and rollout labor, hardware costs, and licensing), they are forced into the eventual high end cost, as noted in the article.
In reality, the quoted costs for upgrade have been fairly consistent over the years. These issues have existed since the beginning of this industry. Although hardware costs have generally decreased, software has gone up to fill in the gap.
What never ceases to amaze me is the fact that these figures still suprise people. This is very, very old news.
As an aside, if I were given carte blanche with the IT direction (and budget) of a large corporation, I would use the upgrade budget to:
No, I'm not ignorant of the costs. It will initially be a larger cost than the upgrade to Vista, without question. Long term, however, support and upgrade costs become much lower. I would rather spend a bit more now to save a large amount over the long term. Strategically, it makes for a more agile IT department that has the ability, because of its investment in good programmers, instead of commercial software, to adjust quickly to new needs or challenges.
There will always be a need for commercial services (spam black listing, virus definition updates, specialty programming, etc.). The OS and, for the most part, office productivity and databases, however, have become simple commodities, and should be treated as so. High-end databases, such as Oracle will still be needed, at least for now, as
Ghost 9.
Mostly because I wound up with a lot of 12 unopened installs in a closed auction. I'd originally tried this with Acronis TI 8, but kept getting errors during the reinstall. With the mobo's I've used with this procedure, I've not had any problems.
#SickNotWeak