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?

Comments

FUD

[networkBoy]

Most of the hardware costs would be there anyway as part of a normal IT refresh cycle. So I call BS.
-nB

Re:FUD

[goldspider]

I think an interesting analysis would be a comparison between the cost of upgrading to Vista and switching the entire office to Linux.

What would be the cost of:

- replacing/training desktop support?
- training the rest of the workforce?
- lost productivity due to the above?

Re:FUD

[AviLazar]

How will the hardware cost be 1/2 the cost when you factor in vista/office. At 3-5k...50% of that is 1.5-2.5k. Vista/office for business is not going to cost that much.
While many desktop users "are still fine with machines purchased 3-4 (or more) years ago" that does not make it a good thing to do. I know desktop users who are fine with win95/98....do you recommend they stay on those platforms? I sure don't. While users who are using winXP are going to be fine for the next few years, they will eventually need to upgrade. Nobody is saying run to the store the moment vista hits the shelves (well except MS and people who will reap some benefits from those sales) - most people will say wait until SP-1 (/. people will say wait until SP-3552352).

The cost to upgrade will be there, but for organizations who have been using XP for a number of years, they have gotten their use out of it. They can stay on XP, but it will not cost 1.5 to 2.5k to upgrade.

Re:FUD

[notnAP]

Not really true; the hardware will come with a Vista license when you buy it.

So the requried hardware for Vista didn't really cost me anything extra because it was I was going to buy it anyway as part of my system upgrade cycle (I have a system upgrade cycle?!?), and Vista didn't cost me anything because it came "free" with the hardware.

Well that's a relief. I thought that money I was going to spend was real. I can't wait to tell the CFO the money I'm telling he's spending doesn't really cost him anything.

And I guess the good news is that I'm no longer paying this same nothing twice, too.

Re:Huh?

[91degrees]

But if you'ree using Office 2000, you don't need Vista. The OS on its own is useless for a business. In fact, so is the PC. People are spending that much just to run office.

Moo

[Chacham]

Any sense of how realistic those figures are?

Sounds to me as realistic as the numbers in this story.

OK, some details.

New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.

Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of that.

Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero

Methinks this person knows not what he speaks of. My "corporate" computer is more powerful than my (admittedly older) gaming PC.

Vista's primary upgrade inducement.

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".

You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says.

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.

I don't know of any motherboard-based video chip sets that include 256MB of RAM.

Even if that was true, why does that affect corporate PCs, which are usually higher quality.

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.

Actually, if we're talking corporate, upgrades are rarely done for a variety of reasons.

If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista,

I assumed this meant "existing". Exiting is a different word, having nearly the opposite meaning.

I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.

And sarcasm? *This* is an article?

The rest of the "article" is worse FUD than MS puts out.

App upgrade cost shouldn't be counted

[davidwr]

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.

No reason to upgrade

[AK76]

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.

XP will stick around

[ArbitraryConstant]

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.

heh

[Phantom of the Opera]

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.

Keeps IT employed - No joke

[Danathar]

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.

It was hugely expensive to move to XP...

[csoto]

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.

Re:Exactly...

[ajs318]

So just get two or more spares ready for deployment in an emergency! If you need 50 identical desktops, buy enough bits for 55 machines. If one goes down, you bung in a spare while you fix it -- substituting parts from another, known good machine. The original spare stays put and the fixed machine then becomes another spare.

Installing identical software on many machines is easy too. Either use dd to copy an entire drive (BTW, this even works with Windows: boot from a USB device if possible, otherwise a DVD+RW drive [DMA-capable, won't slow down the bus] on hdb and have hard drives on hda and hdc); or set up your own local mirror of your favourite distro, and install over the LAN via http or ftp.