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?
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 The thing is, he has absolutely no problem using the other programs that he does that are 5 years old and 2 versions out of date.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!
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!
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