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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?
$2000: New Hardware
$ 900: Vista License
$2100: Solid Gold Mouse
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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!
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
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
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.
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