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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?
Honestly, I do have to give Microsoft a bit of marketing credit for using years in their product names. When machines were refreshed around my office last year, a coworker of mine started hemming and hawing about how he needed an update to Office 2000, because it was 5 years old. The thing is, he has absolutely no problem using the other programs that he does that are 5 years old and 2 versions out of date. He doesn't think of it in terms of "I'm using version 5 when version 7 is out there." But he does notice that he's using Office 2000 in the year 2006...
This guy's the limit!
Because we need to keep a number of machines fairly current, I can spread around the older machines to places where they are useful two or three times until they are either no longer useful or have been supplanted by something better.
For the record, I've still got some PII-233 machines out and about - I don't believe in upgrading for the sake of upgrading!
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Of course, the average cost of a good developer, total to the company, is around $60-90 per hour. That's $500-750 per day. If having the latest hardware around makes them even slightly more productive, or gives them a reason to work an extra hour per week (not day, week), that pays for a new, kick-ass system every six months or so -- and that's assuming that you just shred the old hardware.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Vista seems to do that to a bunch of people. I downloaded it when they released the beta to the public a few months ago. It proceeded to set my system clock 40 years ahead, rendering the Vista install worthless and unable to be accessed. I deleted that partition and went to Ubuntu because of my disgust with the M$ 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.
Not exactly true.
Many small to medium size companies choose not to lease or buy "Big Brand"; meaning, you don't always get a new Windows COA on a piece of hardware.
I just finished a new business install w/ a dual xeon server and 6 workstations. My build estimate was substantially lower than Dell and landed the job. (Specifically, my server build was lower than Dell by nearly $800 for the same hardware -- neither of us providing Win2k3 SBS. The workstations, also beating Dell by nearly $200 per box, all used recycled Win 2k Pros -- COA's pulled from retail, not OEM, licenesed systems that the client provided from their last business).
End nut? New hardware that did not come packaged with new Windows.
Had the client been forced to buy new licenses for the workstations (and not recycle existing, valid, licenses), the cost would have been an extra $870 for OEM XP Pro's.
Now, the client has a rock solid workstation using an OS that is already proven with their OS/Software choice. And they are thrilled.
Any reason to move forward to XP (with another OS migration in the next 1-2 years)? No.
Would the migration to Vista have cost this client more if they had chosen big built OEM? Absolutely, especially when one considers the cost of the new equipment (Microsoft Tax included), and then a secondary migration to Vista a year down the road.
Remember, not everyone leases with a dollar buyout to ride the write off. There are many businesses that are working on a small(er) budget that will definately pay more for the transition.
The nitpicking line is now open... fire away.
#SickNotWeak