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Corporate America Not Ready For Vista
thefickler writes to point out a TechBlorge article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista. The article says that the study, by Softchoice, will be released next week. The study found that 50% of the PCs inventoried (from a sample of 112,000 from 472 organizations) are below Vista's basic system requirements. Roughly half of those PCs will need to be replaced outright to run Vista. 94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition. The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh," as some analysts have been saying for a while now.
Corporations aren't ready for IE7, either.
This stuff takes time. Let's do IE7 first, Microsoft. Then push Vista down our throats.
I'm a 2000 man.
...and the workplace is really Windows' main market. I'm willing to guess that at least half their profits come from corporations. The question is, why do they seem to be switching targets?
Why do Microsoft always release to businesses first? I know that businesses will not use Vista until SP1 at the earliest surely one of the worlds largest companies should know this. I would imagine with their inside knowledge of Vista they will be staying away until SP2 anyway.
Surprised? I sure am not. I don't think a lot of corporate PCs out there have 1Gb memory -- let alone half a gigabyte. Heck, most computers out there probably struggle just to run Fisher Pri^W^W XP... At least Dell/Gateway and the memory makers is going to (eventually -- i.e. when MS stops support on 2k/XP) make a killing off of that OS.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
They are like corporations, size-wise. Heck one of my last schools just recently made the switch from Windows 2000 to XP SP2. I begged them to get rid of Netscrap and use Firefox on the computers, but the IT department said no. I don't know why Universities want to hang on to Netscape so much. Nescrap and new Win XPSP2. That's the computing life in public US Universities. So it will be at least two years before Vista makes it to computers there.
it always amazes me how Microsoft stays relevant just because it's Microsoft. they can throw money at any problem, Vista, the Zune, whatever. Even if the problem is lousy design and consumer consideration.
"article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista"
That's exactly the point. They want businesses to toss away the old computers and buy new ones with Vista. The know that if they try and release Vista into the public market first, it will flop as badly as ME did because it brings no significant improvements over XP, while it takes away features, and adds bad things like PVP DRM.
Oh You POS
How's that different from Win2K and WinXP? Same thing happened then. Microsoft's monopoly isn't on good software it's there ability to tie up all the major hardware vendors into all or nothing licenses to push Windows on new computer sales. It must be another slow news day.
The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh."
... duh.
Well
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...ever a new version of Windows was released. Always the self-proclaimed experts with the "nobody wants it!" comments.
Yet each time we saw people and businesses scurry away to their nearest PC dealer and upgrade for the Must Have new version.
It'll be exactly the same with Vista too.
... that I have worked for that has changed operating systems on anything besides their servers except when they did a hardware "refresh" (read: PC broke). I know the company I work for is getting ready to start using Vista on their new PCs that they order when Microsoft stops letting HP put it on their PCs but until then it's XP.
Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago. Unless your corporation is very small you keep PCs around until they die or become so obsolete they can no longer run the programs you need them to. In this case we had an active directory upgrade so we had to get rid of all the NT 4.0 machines as they were no longer going to work with the upgrade.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
"94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition"
This analysis must be right, because there is no Vista Premium Edition. Outside of Home editions, there's only Business and Ultimate.
I've been running Business and Ultimate for a while, on machines with 512M-2G of RAM, and haven't had issues on any configuration. I install it because I'm a chronic early adopter and because I work for a software company.
Anyway, like home users, businesses will upgrade as they buy more machines that have Vista pre-installed. No new news here.
1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.
2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.
3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.
4) I don't the the budget headroom for an off-cycle hardware overhaul.
5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.
6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.
Large/medium sized corporations rarely "upgrade" their workstations. They roll out new hardware periodically. I imagine that most will roll them out as Vista PC's.
Corporate Africa? Are they ready?
Dupe.
Is this like a daily feature?
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Upgrading to Vista from our current XP standard is a non-starter. There is no way that I'm interested in upsetting my worker's day-to-day productivity by having a desktop admin perform an upgrade. If my employees cost me $500/day each (with salary, benefits, and per-employee expenses such as office space), and they lose a day's worth of productivity, then upgrading to Vista is an extreme waste of money (since I don't see any benefit).
I'm sure I'll start to move to Vista once I start procuring new hardware. But I have good equipment now. The benefit of brand new Desktop PC's for my people isn't clear at all to me. I'll replace my old equipment once it makes sense to do so, but I'm not going to drop $2000 on a new desktop until I can see a clear benefit in doing so. I'd rather allocate that money to something that can make a real difference to operations (like bonuses).
Maybe I'll see a Vista productivity benefit in six months - or maybe in two years. But right now, I say "no way" to an upgrade - it looks like a money sink to me.
The OS itself is priced way out of line but then when you factor in all new hardware, it's insane.
I've talked to several customers of mine and many of them just bought new machines in the last 18 months.
They have no intentions of replacing them all over again just to run this new OS that's not all that revolutionary.
I'll bet that's the general consensus. In general of course.
Why is this even news to us? Of course current computers aren't ready for Vista. That's the selling point for OEMs. It's part of the endless upgrade cycle that keeps the OEMs in business.
Generally a business doesn't really need EVERY computer to be top of the line. It'll be perfectly fine to have a handful of low-end computers at a workspace, especially if they can only run basic programs like Word or Excel. (less distractions)
This is like going into a public school's third-grade class and lamenting on how many of the students will be passing Calculus on their first attempt, many years later.
A far more accurate statistic would be how many businesses can afford to have at least one computer running Vista. Then you'd get a much more accurate assessment of how well it will do in the marketplace, and how much of a splash it will have in the business world.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
The Linux crowd for instance. If this doesn't drive more companies to Linux, I am not sure what will.
$2000 desktops? Good lord.
Few organizations are going to go and re-image every computer with Vista. What's going to happen is that every company of significant size that regularly purchaes machines from a large vendor is going to start getting Vista LICENSES shipped to them with their regular purchases of hardware. Your large-organization IT staff is going to keep deploying the standard image while stockpiling Vista licenses and working on the "when the suits are ready" Vista image.
And, those $500 Dells that big organizations give to their employees - they're all quite up to snuff for running Vista. Optiplex 6xx series desktops have been good to go with Vista for while a while.
Oh, sure, some organizations might never move to Vista, but they're going to be buying Vista licences (and Office 2007 licenses) when they buy their machines. That's the nature of the beast for people far enough up the ladder to be VLA/Select. It doesn't mean we'll deploy them - but we're sure going to be buying those licenses.
Our standard will remain XP for the next, oh, two years. Then we'll start delivering new machines with Vista, and making an effort to retire any Windows 2000 machines still in service. Of course, we're still about 2% Windows 9x, but it takes time to change out 25,000 desktops running hundreds of different pieces of software at dozens of different facilities.
Our company isn't in any hurry to upgrade, nor are a lot of companies I talk to. Most like ours, have spent a lot of capital in the last 24 months upgrading from NT4 to XP, from Office 2000 to Office 2003. We have XP tweaked out, locked down, patched up and running perfectly, sort of the way we had NT4/Office2000 tweaked. If we were to upgrade to Vista, to get the same performance, we would have to dump an extra 512 meg of ram into every box, since we have them running 512meg now. XP for our purposes runs pretty well with 512 meg of ram, but on a couple of test boxes, 512 meg with Vista is like running XP on 256. Yeah it runs, but you do a lot of swapping. For now, we are holding off on Vista/Office07, until at the earliest Q2 of 07. Any NEW computers bought/built, will be built with an OS update in mind, but will come configured with XP, NOT Vista.
As we are looking at moving to a 3 year rollover on hardware most of the hardware will not be Vista ready for at least the next two years, by which times there will be at least 2 service packs and numerous packs for the inevitable MSism in the OS.
If your employees are losing an entire day to an upgrade then you need to fire your IT staff and hire some people capable of deploying software in general.
With a basic RIS setup and SMS you can have the machines upgraded including the new office and whatever custom apps you have in an hour completely unattended in the middle of the night. So your employees don't lose any work time and immediately can enjoy the advanced search capabilities so finding files is much much faster which saves your workers a measurable amount of time. In addition to this you have one search interface for email/files/music/web so they become familiar with one tool instead of trying to learn 4 different tools.
I wouldn't drop $2000 on a new desktop either unless I'm doing some video editing with it. You're right though, if you don't see a clear benefit then there is absolutely no need to upgrade. The new features won't help everyone but at least in my organization the advanced remote management and diagnostic tools will save me tons of man hours and the granular group policy changes will help me make sure systems are locked down properly saving me tons of time during my next security audit.
Of course I haven't deployed Vista yet and I won't until it's hardware refresh time but there are very real reasons some may do so. For now I'm focusing on growing the network infrastructure since the company is small enough that I can put a certain level of trust in my users. When the next refresh comes around I will remove the chance and move on to my next project relying on the content management system to ease the file search nightmare.
Lucent (now Alcatel-Lucent) is in the middle of a hardware refresh. I still have a 5-year old laptop running Win2000. The current refresh will run thru about March 2007, when everyone has brand-new Thinkpads with WinXP.
Vista will, most likely, come with the NEXT hardware refresh -- 5 years down the road. Big companies don't give a damn what OS comes pre-loaded, because the first step on all new hardware is to install the approved image.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
At the behest of riaa members, universal and other crap, microsoft pumped vista with so much drm crapola that it hogs memory and cpu.
now, to appease 3-4 corporations, they will not be able to sell their own product to many of the world's corporations.
no corp. would like to upgrade their WHOLE pc infrastructure in order to run something that offers almost nothing new to the office, but loads of drm.
Read radical news here
I have not looked at anything Vista (well I just found this on youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=d2gswXCAw_I)
Viva la pingüino
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
If your desktop admin had or knew how to use readily available tools, you could upgrade hundreds at a time (limit of network and temp storage for personal settings) with no physical contact with the user or the actual PC hardware.
A few years ago, we upgraded over 500 users from W2K to XP in three nights with 3 techs. The users had all of their personal settings (desktop layout, resolution settings, outlook toolbars and signature, MS word toolbars, printers, icons, and applications etc..). Scripts, scripts and more scripts along with some MS and third party software make it possible. Have your desktop engineer test and get everything ironed out and the rollout will go smooth and quick.
Just last week we did about 500 people from MS Office 2000 to 2003 (yeah, Office 2003 is already dated) in two nights and we have a LOT of customizations and third part office addons (Hummingbird Document Mangement system, Softwise suite, document scrubing tools etc.. Very few problems.
Personally, I think the Vista requirements are insane for business machines. They are pretty stupid even for gaming machines. I have no idea how they are going to build Vista-ready laptops that actually get some hours of battery life. There is no need for these specs, except that MS needs to give users a ''new experience'' by any means necessary, since theri business model is fundamentally flawed.
What MS forgets, or has to ignore, is that a PC is a tool. A tool schould behave the same over a long time. You don't want a new ''experience'' every few years. You want to mater the tool once and then keep using it for a very long time. Hence you want it to work the same over a very long time.
This will prompt more people to look for alternatives to MSes greed and insanity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hell, our CIO has just slammed the brakes on hardware refreshes. Now instead of every three years it's every 4 years, and every machine gets a Win2K image on it.
When people start using Vista in droves, we'll be the ones that will be dribbling XP onto these boxen. But I don't see us making any quantum leaps to Vista.
Of course, I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
The very LARGE corporation I work for is still running more than 20K windows 2000 machines. We've found ZERO reason to upgrade to XP much less to consider Vista. The ONLY upgrades we've done is 2003 server on certain backend machines that can take advantage of the 64 bit architechture. For business XP and Vista are USELESS expenditures that provide nearly ZERO return for the dollar, while increasing operating costs by more than 20%.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition
1. There is no such thing as a "Vista Premium Edition".
2. If they mean the closest -- "Vista Home Premium Edition", that's not supposed to be a common Vista edition for corporations.
3. Are these talking about meeting recommendations or requirements? I see few corporations being willing to run Aero Glass, and without that, you can easily get by with 512 MB or 1 GB RAM and no special graphics card to speak of (assuming it meets XP requirements).
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Check out corporate wrongdoing here: http://malfy.org/
Why would a company need to upgrade at all. PCs as of now, are able to do EVERYTHING that most companies need. Why do you need a faster CPU to do excell or word? It would be irresponsible for any company to upgrade to VISTA as it offers NO added functionality to the current windows OS in-terms of productivity. There is no reason for a hardware refresh in most cases. I can run most corporate SW on a P2 running xp with 256 ram. There is no need for dual core ect ect ect in the office. I am speaking in most cases.
Granted, they are only RC1 (us tech support folks have to learn the ins and outs before we push it on the end users), but we've got several in the environment. We're looking at a major deployment in mid 2007. I mean, we've only got 65k end users, so we're not the largest kids on the block, but we're a chunk - and we're moving to vista, like it or not. We've also started to introduce some linux servers into the environment. Whee! I think we have 4 out of 2000 or so. But it's a start.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
It kind of cracks me up that all of these analysts act as if corporate America operates on some sort of lunar cycle for updating hardware. The CEOs are all hanging out at the club, and they all decide, "Yep, it's been three years since ALL of us upgraded our hardware. We'd better all go down to the mall and buy a few million more machines now."
Seriously though, I do wonder if many companies gave up on waiting for Vista, and have been replacing older hardware for non-OS reasons. We tend to think of all hardware replacements as being driven by OS upgrades, but there are plenty of other reasons companies need to upgrade hardware. It could be that because so many business apps are web-based now, Microsoft's ability to turn OS upgrades into a major event may be fading.
It's so handy to be able to DeActivate your XP license at will...
A.k.a. "subscription" model, or as Al Capone might be paraphrased, "you get a lot further with a new product and a dead license for the old one, than just a new product."
you had me at #!
That is a lot like getting comfortable with a thorn in your foot. It is not comfort; merely numbness.
They are going to have to switch to Linux at some point. There is no time like the present to start the process.
Why, it will run the very latest spyware and viruses, of course
Even with the budget, why waste the money? Switch to Linux. Lower TCO. No need to waste money on new hardware.
Clearly your CEO is not a hot babe
We are not deploying another Windows O.S. ever. We would have to be fools to move to Vista rather than Linux!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm so used to seeing the phrase "not ready" after the word "Vista" I had to read the headline twice to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the story.
Wow, another day, another Slashdot "article" sniping at Microsoft and Vista. This is getting very tiresome. I'll bet there are more people running Vista already than Linux.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
As someone who has done corporate programming I can assure you work will be lost when anything is upgraded. People will waste time playing with whatever was added. Vista would be an easy week on the go slow.
Seems to me Corporate America is perfectly ready for Vista. It's just going to mostly ignore it for now. That works. It's not as if the release of Vista destroys all other currently working operating systems or anything.
Bet you wish you have gone for the Cray laptop now.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Let's start with some facts:
t ml= /library/en-us/wmpsdk11/mmp_sdk/glossary.asp Search the term "component enforces those rights." on the page.
Vista's *six* SKU's are sold in various states of disabledness. For example, if you want to use a DVD burner, you must upgrade. Hmmm,.no matter the version of XP you could use a DVD burner... That's just one of many restrictions.
Let's move to your clearly uninformed question: "Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?"
Why, yes there is! The latest WMP phones home to MS when you play a song and catalogs your content. When the inevitable OS reinstall happens and you attempt to play the same songs you get some bad news. It seems it's okay to play the music on that "other" OS install, but not this one. You agree to this when you click-through licenses. Here's a link to a guy that experienced it. http://www.bandddesigns.com/blogger/arch/002942.h
Here's Microsoft's SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
Now, Microsoft and their media friends are taking away your right to first sale as secretly as possible. Vista will help them meet that end very nicely. Set top boxes and a variety of media subscription models will help greatly as well. Add in dragging some children into court and consider it done.
I assure you, this is only the beginning. Please consider using another OS that ensures your current freedoms. Many Linux distros are good,
I'm sure the above-average PHB senses this anyway. Which is part of the reason the Vista uptake will be so slow.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
What the hell's the difference between 2K and XP?
Don't give me technocrap spewed by Microsoft - tell me, what the hell is the difference? Where is it? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
The answer is, there isn't one.
2k has a web browser, office suite, calculator and e-mail.
XP has those things.
Vista has those things.
The only difference between the operating systems is they continually look more and more like a child designed the interface.
"Hey, let's spend $1500 on a computer that can run Vista, and $200 on Vista itself! That's $1800, so we can continue running all the software our employees need, like they.. already.. do."
The fact of the matter is, Vista does provide nothing in return for its cost.
Proposed justification of Visat/Hardware purchase:
How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor.
"Vista Ready" machines are going to suck more power, not less. The demand much greater clock rates, video support and RAM. Compare this to the average coporate network full of PIIIs more or less. "Vista Premium" of course is much worse.
I'll believe the better power management hype when I see it in operation. If M$ cared about your electric bill, ACPI and WOL would already work. When I can buy a desktop from Dell that works that way, I'll say it's about time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There are some things Vista could have that would really draw me in. Sadly, I can't seem to find out if any of these are part of the product or not. In posting this, I'm hoping someone can either answer or point me to an answer for some of the questions.
Number one on my Windows Vista wish list is that they virtualize the screen more.
What I want is actually very simple. I want to tell Windows - in one place - that my screen resolution is not 72dpi, but is in fact 125dpi. Once that is accomplished, all Windows elements should be scaled to that result.
For any application which does not specify drawing size, but rather specifies pixels - the new AERO graphics engine should do a simple calculation "X pixels * (125 / 72) = Y pixels" and draw it as Y. For fonts and other "vector" based drawing objects, this should be even easier as the curve calculations are already based on this kind of math.
If this is done properly, an 8pt font will take up the same physical area on a high resolution monitor as it does on a low resolution monitor. What's more, it will fit properly in buttons because the number of pixels on the button have been properly sized and should match.
Some people may WANT that optimized screen real estate. That's easily handled. They just need to set the DPI setting on back to 72, and their ultra-sharp tiny little fonts will be right back again. The only thing that could suffer - in theory - is looking at pictures. If something is supposed to be 10 pixels, it ends up being 17.36 for me. Rounding is where you get the "fuzzy" aspect.
Why does this matter? Right now, I'm looking at a 19" monitor which is optimized for 1280 by 1024 pixel resolution. The laptop is more extreme. It's a 17" monitor that is 1920 by 1080. Making some simple assumptions that the pixels are square and aligned uniformly (which they are not, actually) the two monitors come out to about 86 and 125 pixels per inch respectively.
LCD screens are not like the bulky old "tube" based screens. The pixels aren't projected onto a phosphor screen; they are actual hardware - like little light bulbs. If you decrease the display resolution, you're getting less crisp representation at each point than you would at the optimize resolution because the dots themselves cannot change size. They must therefore be approximated.
Where this becomes a problem is that many aspects of the Windows screen are designed to be a set number of pixels in height or width. The unit of measure is in pixels, not inches. This includes fonts, title bars, buttons, icons, and all kinds of other things. Much of the time, Windows doesn't know how many of those pixels fit on a linear inch of screen space on my screen. What people don't realize is that the old standard has been to assume about 72dpi for screen resolution. That means on my laptop, with nearly twice that resolution, things tend to be on half the ideal size.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
Considering Windows 2000 will continue to receive security updates through July 2010, I can't think of anything.
You've got to be kidding. Considering the money and time to (1) buy a machine, (2) install it, (3) migrate a user's data from old machine to new, and (4) addressing any issues the user has with the new machine, $2000 is very much in line with reality.
If you think a $700 PC is the sole expense of buying a desktop machine, you have never had any financial responsibility other than your own checking account.
Microsoft isn't ready for Vista, let alone corporate America.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Power use is not really an argument to upgrade a desktop. Just calculate how much an average desktop actually consume: with 70 watts for 10 hours a day, you are at 700 watt hours per day, or (taking 260 working days a year) 182 kWh per year. I don't know what you pay per kWh, but I guess that even if the new computer doesn't take any power at all, it takes years for the investment to return in terms of money saving.
What a bunch of fluff.
...except that it isn't.
2 points:
1) You don't need much in the way of hardware- just half a gig of ram and a ghz+ processor.
I'm running Vista on a 2-year-old laptop, for God's sake. It works fine. All my drivers were in the box, and of the dozen or so machines I've tried (all in the 2ghz/1GB/random vid card ranges) every single one has worked out of the box except for a high-end gaming machine, for which I had to go get a beta SCSI control driver. This took 5 minutes at dell.com.
2) This is an opinion piece, based on dubious assumptions. If you look at TFA's linked opinion pieces, you'll see that he's assuming that because 1gb Ram is recommended, obviously you'll need 2gb to do anything useful- which is bogus. Vista's extra-fancy features turn themselves off if your hardware doesn't meet the bar, leaving you without the eye candy but giving you all the UAC/Protected mode browsing/security updates/etc.
If TFA's linked articles are as authoritative as they claim, there's no need to try Vista because nothing will work, drivers don't exist and won't for years, and all for no new features. If all that was true, you'd have to be stupid to upgrade.
Nikon CaptureNX for Win is a .NET app. Crashes, won't save files, dog slow, file browser can't see files.
The version for Mac Tiger works like it's supposed to.
$500 for a complete PC system installed? Your $500 machines aren't nearly as powerful as my 2.5 year old equipment! Why should I upgrade for $500 if I end up with significantly lousier equipment? Such a strategy will not improve my software developers' performance.
I need something that will last for several years with near-zero fuss. I really can't afford to buy equipment that was obsolete last year, or that needs constant tinkering and upgrades and support.
Plus, your $500 fails to factor in any other costs.
Try this: procure a software developer's desktop through your organization's IT department, and factor in installation costs, data migration, and normally required periferals. Assume that this machine will be in service for at least 3 years with near-zero maintenance.
I agree with almost all of what you said, but linux video is a big cow pie. There aren't even good browser plugins for some basic content types- and that's not even really video. Go to CNN.com on fedora core 6 (relatively leading edge linux) and try and play a video. Linux is great for some things, and not for others- which is why I dual boot (not that CNN is the deciding factor or even close). Try playing a DVD. Even simple mpg video doesn't work without effort in a lot of cases. Just stick with XP and Linux dual booting or go to OS-X.
I'd have to agree with the gist of your statement: graphics hardware has definitely not been a high priority for corporate desktops. I wonder if that will start to change as the GUI's grow more resource-hungry.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
"$500 for a complete PC system installed? Your $500 machines aren't nearly as powerful as my 2.5 year old equipment!"
A new Dell GX6xx in quantity is about $500. I'm not sure what machines you were buying 2.5 years ago with core duos, but, I'm sure you might have been buying things that powerful. In our environement, a box from Dell shows up post-sysprep with our enterprise standard image on it (imaged AT Dell from our prepared image). A technician takes it out of the box, types a machine name, it auto-joins the domain, and policy (through BMC Configuration Management / Marimba) deploys any extra non-standard software for the users based on geographic and user-specific identifiers.
"I need something that will last for several years with near-zero fuss. I really can't afford to buy equipment that was obsolete last year, or that needs constant tinkering and upgrades and support."
Which is exactly why turning over a brand new Dell every 3 years (which matches the warranty period) makes sense for us - and for many, many, other large organizations. No tinkering -- we made the image. No upgrades needed -- it's new. And we're already the support. No fuss, no muss.
Also, as an added bonus, since the process we MAKE our enterprise standard image comes from a single unattended DVD (with a plethora of driver support, updated by us), when my "Developer" system was deployed, in dual-proc, 15k SCSI glory, it too ran the standard image, and got non-standard software deployed automatically.
"Assume that this machine will be in service for at least 3 years with near-zero maintenance."
From a hardware standpoint, we do. A rotating stock of 0-3 year old PCs is greatly cheaper than trying to stretch them beyond that age with upgrades, or to try to over-buy them with bleeding-edge technology at purchase time. We have similar support to our machines in terms of upgrades and maintainence (low), and I pay [for hardware], under $200 a year for PCs. If you're paying 2,000 but can stretch your PC lifecycle out, you'd better be getting 10 years from a PC without any upgrades. I assume you splurged for 64 megs of memory on the machine you bought in 1996? $200 is *nothing* for a productivity tool for an employee for a year.
This is pointless, of course. This is HOW large enterprise organizations are going to acquire Vista licenses and O2007 licences. Select agreements work that way. You can't buy a Windows 2000 license with your new PC - even if that's what ships on the disk. You just maintain enough OS/App/CAL/Exchange/whatever licences to match the NUMBER of machines that you have. Someday we'll have enough licences, and someday the suits will want to change the standard...just like we did from 2000 to XP a few years ago.
[For what it's worth, we embrace open source and open standard initiatves at our company. They honestly aren't mature enough yet, and the programs available aren't specific to our industry yet. We keep moving closer and closer, and someday, we'll divorce ourselves from Microsoft -- but that day isn't exactly tomorrow.]
This shows how deeply embedded M$ spin is in the memes of the masses. For years evryone asked "Is Linux Ready for the Desktop", not "Are Desktop users ready for Linux." Now, M$ releases Vista, and the question is reversed?
Is Vista ready for Corporate America? No, it never will be! I am a Vista Beta Tester, and I can tell you that Vista sucks wind. It is garbage. It offers nothing that Linux hasn't had for years, lacks some important features Linux has had for years, forces DRM on an unwitting public, and requires a hardware upgrade in most cases in order to be marginally useful. The new approach to security is to exude the appearance of security , rather than simply ignore it per the old policy.
I have one question for M$ execs. Linux is secure without having to ask the user "are you sure you want to do that" ever. Why does your "wonderful new OS" have to ask the user 752 times a day? It is no longer good enough to do the spin in the press. Now the OS is doing the spin as well. If the user can use an "OK" hotkey to authorize an action, what stops a virus from emulating the hotkey-press? Answer: It does exactly one thing. The same thing M$ always has done. It gives the uninformed user a false sense of security.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
good to go
I cringe every time I hear this phrase. Also, I haven't heard "boxen" used lately here, can it be used more often just to annoy me? Thanks.
Microsoft already plans on companies not being fully upgraded for another 5 years. It was the same with Win2k and WinXP. A few years from now, they'll have new machines and the issue is moot. This is not news.
-Shippy
" For example, if you want to use a DVD burner, you must upgrade. Hmmm,.no matter the version of XP you could use a DVD burner... "
for someone stating "lets start with the facts", you then go and start with a big smelly lie or perhaps it is pure ignorance on your part? you can use a burner in ANY version of vista, just the lower ones don't come with free burning software included, there is no restriction stopping you using a burner or burner software.
I hate Corporate America more than the next guy but malfy.org makes me want to become a corporatist. Seriously, if that's the best they have than corporations are fucking benevolent.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Guess that makes me fairly odd.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Biggest questions with switching to Linux, from a firm of 3000+ computers. This is all written from the standpoint of a discussion I, the IT director, has had with my current staff and my direct manager, the CFO. These are honest questions raised by the CFO and myself, who don't know enough about Linux yet to answer them.
Application compatibility - Most applications that our users currently run have been written for Windows. How do I run those inside Linux, without resorting to a Windows emulation program? (Not just talking about Office, but also about client-server accounting/payroll program from a vendor, HR software, federal and state government tax and retirement plan submission software, video editing, photo editing, and more). If I have to use an emulation program, how seamlessly does it emulate the speed and functionality of the real Windows application? (If we have an attendance secretary who inputs 2000 students attendance a day, and each entry takes her 2 seconds longer to do, that adds another 5 hours to her work week... Expand that across the board to the other positions, and I start having a lot of decreased productivity)
Do I still need to pay Microsoft for the yearly licenses for Windows, or is the emulation program running on just a emulation layer that does not require a full install of Windows?
If I have to look at conversion to separate packages of software, including retraining of employees and support staff on new packages and dealing with missing functionality, that severely impacts the morale and productivity of employees in company in supporting the new software.
Training of New OS - How high is the learning curve (and by that, I mean users who are very reluctant to major software changes, such as most secretaries of executive-level officers) of switchng from a Windows 2000 to Linux, as opposed to the learning curve of switching from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista? How much will I need to do to retrain my support staff to handle these issues?
Support by established company - There are multiple brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, and many more). How many of the brands offer same business day support via call-in phone number, similar to a Microsoft support incident contract? Is there a single established site that contains an exhaustive knowledge base for incidents?
Upgrading of new OS versions: How different is the versioning of OS's like Redhat, or Ubuntu, or SUSE, from that of Windows? Is the Redhat of 3, or 5, or 7 years ago essentially unchanged from that of today? Could the Redhat of today run on a computer of 5 or 7 years ago without the disabling of any functionality? Can the OpenOffice of today run on the RedHat of 5 years ago? We're looking for uniform versioning across all our computers. One of Linux's big points that we keep seeing toted, anecdotally, is the ability to run it on a P3-600 without any degrading, and we need to know how true that is. If we're making a decision to install an OS that will run for the next 5 years with no upgrade, we need to answer these questions now.
Peripheral compatibility - Yes, Linux supports printers. But does it support existing and future peripherals, (such as Paperport single sheet scanners, business card scanners, PDA synchronization, digital camera synchronization, dv camera importing and editing, etc) for peripheral companies that do not and will not provide Linux drivers, and are in some cases the best of breed or the only company that supplies these peripherals? I do not want to hire on an additional staff member to program drivers for these.
Employee Use at home rights: How much of this software is available under use at home rights? How will an employee purchasing a new computer for home get Redhat, or Slackware, or whatever, installed on their new computer from Gateway, or HP, or Dell?
And since our company is also in charge of supporting computers inside a college computer environment:
Application compatibility: Many educational CD's
Who cares about the fact that so many corporate PCs are not ready to run Vista? Have you worked in a large IT department? Many of them take _years_ to roll a new version of an operating system on the users' desktops, be it Windows or some sort of Unix. I work at a large public university, and Vista hasn't even been on most of IT department radars because there are more important things to worry about right now. I guess that it will take at least a year before the staff feels comfortable with the new OS to start ordering new PCs with Vista pre-installed. By the time they decide to upgrade the OS, most of the problematic PC will have been replaced by then.
You can do step 2 and 3 to many computers simutaniously at one time without actually visting each computer with IF you have the tools and know how in place. If your planning and testing from your engineering staff was adequate before doing step 2 and 3, you can eliminate step 4 with the exception of a very few isolated cases.
The concept of performing mass distributions and upgrades from a distance with a high success rate is a reality and quite common place in many organizations. If your IT staff does not have the ability to do this, it is because they are not familiar with the tools and the process, or the IT manager is not familiar with process and never pushed for such a system to be in place. Blaming the lack of such a system on lack of money or funding is not a valid excuse either. You can do your own ROI study but I'd bet any organization with more then probably 30 computers would SAVE money by having such a system in place even after only one or two times of using it.
Every time I hear complaints about excessive work load or user down time, or how hard it is to upgrade a MS OS or a users PC applications, I do NOT think, wow, MS is at it again, poor IT department. I think, wow, there is an example of a poor IT manager.
Jeff says it all.
Netscape, Firefox, what's the difference anymore other than that Netscape 8 includes a preinstalled "view tab in IE" extension? Or are universities still on Netscape 4?
2. If you emulate windows in linux, you still pay the microsoft tax.
3. Too high a learning curve for what you're doing.
4. Many different distros make their money on support. Fedora, Suse to name a couple.
5. I've used many different flavours of Linux. The faster the computer the better. Linux just never seems to be as fast as I want. It's not really the linux but the desktop (KDE or Gnome) that are the processor hogs.
6. Printers.. good luck.
7. Windows Apps.. good luck.
8. Real World. Windows on the desktop, linux in the server rooms.
Honestly, I hate Microsoft the company with a passion. I'm currently using the best thing they ever made and that's windows 2000. I've tried, Lord knows I've tried to use Linux. I have 10 computers at home and probably 50 Linux distros on cd that have made it onto a machine at one time or another. I have yet to see one distro do everything I want. I either get printing problems, or it doesn't want to play with my windows network, or it's slow or it crashes. You'll hear tons of fanboys in here probably mod me down for such remarks but the cold stark reality is that Linux right now is only good for home users who want to surf and check email or as a server platform. None of those dumb Windows screensavers, games, apps etc. that users like to download will work. Very few games will work and not many home users are proficient enough to play with emulators.
Linux is remarkable in the server areas though. They just blow windows away. I'll never use anything else for a webserver again. SME server is an excellent replacement for a windows domain controller.
Bottom Line: Most businesses use accounting software that is not compatible with Linux. That reason alone is enough to seriously curtail any large scale Linux adoption. Therefore, since it's gonna be a while before Linux really makes it into the real world, and your students WILL be using Windows when they leave school, and it's a fair learning curve to administer Linux machines... forget Linux on the desktop for a while. When software companies start writing their accounting software for Linux, then it's worth it to start.
Disclaimer: All the above is only MY opinion. You may not agree. Use at your own risk!
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
circa the 200MHz era. Except for gaming, these CPUs were quite fast enough for word processing, accounting, internet access, email, etceteras.
Faster CPUs have given us more glitz. I'm not convinced they've given us more functionality: Word 2007 doesn't do a whole helluva lot more than Word 6, MSIE 7 doesn't do a whole lot more than MSIE 3, not in terms of true-blue functionality.
So I can easily imagine most businesses are in no rush to upgrade their machines en masse. Why should they? They're just gonna end up spending thousands of dollars in new hardware, software, re-training for the new software, and endless technical support as the bugs are ironed out of the new network and installations.
Vista is rightfully regarded by most businesses as an obvious case of a high-risk foot-meets-bullet fuckup just waiting to pounce on the dummy who decides to champion the idea of upgrading.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
So, remind me which corporations of notable size are known to be early adopters? And even among early adopters do ANY roll out (ie "are ready") brand new OS versions as soon as they are RTM?
So the fact that companies aren't ready for Vista really isn't any different. Most companies aren't ready for a new version of any type of software when it is relased. They are wise to give it some time on the market and let the early adopters test the water first.
Microsoft is touting an OS for XP replacement on systems that can't run Vista. It's called Windows Fundamentals - it is essentially a version of XP Professional that they will continue to support long term.
I haven't really seen any of the "analysts" mention this, perhaps because they are not aware?
Oh, another M$ shove it down your throat style move, this is only available to business that have an Enterprise Agreement. Windows Fundamental won't be available to the majority of the customers out there even when Vista launches.
wow I have never bothered to post on slashdot before but this post being modded as insightfull for lies, inaccuracies and well total ignorant bullshit persauded me to make my first post.
"Vista's *six* SKU's are sold in various states of disabledness. For example, if you want to use a DVD burner, you must upgrade. Hmmm,.no matter the version of XP you could use a DVD burner... That's just one of many restrictions."
this is just plain misrepresenting the truth, the lower end versions of Vista simply don't include burner software by default, you are free to use your own and burners will work and DO work just fine.
Let's move to your clearly uninformed question: "Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?"
Why, yes there is! The latest WMP phones home to MS when you play a song and catalogs your content. When the inevitable OS reinstall happens and you attempt to play the same songs you get some bad news. It seems it's okay to play the music on that "other" OS install, but not this one. You agree to this when you click-through licenses. Here's a link to a guy that experienced it.
well that is just plain ignorant Bullshit. WMP phone home is OPTIONAL and OFF by default. not only that you DO NOT have to add licenses to your unencrypted content. You can optionally do this but it is not required or forced on you.
now then I use both vista and linux at home, and for gods sake I hope ignorant people like yourself stay away from OSS as you are the type that will likely spoil it for everyone with your FUD.
Replace "Vista" with "XP" and "2006" with "2001" and the article applies just as well. It's a fact of corporate life that there is a big delay between the release of a new OS and its adoption in the corporate marketplace.
Win2k SP4 runs solid... But for Multimedia crap, folks are starting to complain.. they want XP... We started new images of XP this past summer and are SLOWLY rolling it out because it means new Group Policies, New Software Distribution packages for APP + XP, New Drivers for some hardware that may be legacy... License and software reinstalls on XP systems, etc.. etc.. out of about 4k computers, only about 150 - 300 are XP at this point.. Rest are 2kSP4 and will remain as long as possible. AND I think we are doing well. I have a brother-in-law that works in Public K-12 EDU Sector in MAIN (the State for those out of the US Border) and he still runs Win98 on A LOT(!) of his machines. I don't know his counts, but I know that he's using Linux on as many server as possible and Open Office on desktops because of funding issues. Lets see Microsoft Push vista, just as lickly as Congress Pushing HD. RIGHTTTTTTT....
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
It'll feature resolution-independent graphics. It'll take Microsoft about 5 years more to match that.
Here's the information according the one of the developers.
0 2/dpi-scaling-in-windows-vista.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2006/12/
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Desktop Linux works in highly vertical applications. Like car rentals or reservation centers.
The holy grail is Browser Based Apps. Once EVERYTHING runs inside of firefox, then you can deploy a thin client center, and NEVER have people fucking up their desktops.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "Vista isn't ready for Corporate America?"
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
I'm running ubuntu dapper - other than a 'you are not running windows media 9 -try anyway?' message the cnn video works just fine.(mplayer plugin)
About the only trouble I've had with multimedia on linux is gettin it installed in the first place. Those are legal issues, and the installing keeps getting easier. Takes about 10 minutes now (find which packages I need, apt-get install...)
DVD's work just fine - easier than win2k. - What are the kind of troubles you've had anyway?
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Does Gentoo count? cnn.com videos play perfectly for me after telling them that no, I don't need to "upgrade" to WMP9.
What about it? I put a DVD in and it plays.
I've never once seen an mpeg not play before.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Maybe the problem is that I'm on x86_64. I'm not a novice linux user, but linux is for work stuff for me and I've never taken much effort to get the multimedia working.
Will this finally wake people up? "People" being corporate management. So now the upgrade isn't going to cost two hundred dollars, it's going to cost a thousand. (The numbers may not be accurate because I didn't look them up, but the point stands.)
I just installed Kubuntu on an eight year old system with 128 meg ram, 16 meg video ram, and a 6 gig hard drive. No problem. And thanks to shipit, it didn't cost me a dime. Or even a red cent.
On a side note, what do you think Microsoft gets in kickbacks from Dell for every new PC sold? After all, they're driving Dell's customers.
You talk as if there is a hairy spot!
and I am not sure why the heck Windows Firewall does not warn when WMP or IE tries to access the internet. i can understand if the firewall does not block itself but, for god's sake, we are talking about completely independent applications.
Its the management that get the new, big muscular machines. Then the customer facing sales staff get the sexy looking new laptops.
All their kit then trickles down to the rest of us.
One word:
Citrix
Though it is optional, I had to set that "feature" OFF in the latest updating of XP I did: a Toshiba notebook, 2 days ago. Might have been Toshiba's settings, not MS, but I seem to recall having to turn it off in my own XP install from scratch on my own computer.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Because it only listens to _incoming_ applications and packets, not _outgoing_ ones. After all, if you install the free version of ZoneAlarm you immediately get warnings when you open IE and Firefox, because they are trying to "get on the 'net".
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
The argument would be a lot easier if I didn't actually run RC2. Applications not compiled with DPI-aware manifest look like a steaming pile of shit when scaled due to blur. And that, of course, includes the vast majority of your "old" apps, and even some "new" apps as well, even the ones that ship with Vista - e.g. Calendar. Even apps that _are_ compiled as DPI aware show broken UI and ugly icons in places. I didn't even have to dig deep for this. If most of your apps are not DPI aware, you'll probably be better off running your LCD at a non-native resolution. Which kinda defeats the purpose.
It remains to be seen what Apple's implementation will look like, but if you know Steve Jobs at all he'd rather eat broken glass than release something that doesn't look good.
It should say "Vista still not ready for the desktop." exactly like you would report the story if it were a Linux distribution. Include several worst-case interviews with people harping on how difficult it is to use, fault the elitist Windows fan base for excluding Vista newbies from the community, and publish three blog rants on Microsoft's disappointing failure.
If any other system has a problem, it's the system's fault. But Vista has a problem, and all of a sudden it's the CUSTOMER'S fault!
Never mind, I'm sure the usual mixture of blackmail and bribery will see vista deployed in some high profile corporate site before too long.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Y know, the old and busted X protocol had 100dpi fonts and scaling as well as 75dpi fonts and scaling and has had it for YEARS.
Not so old and busted now, is it?
Should you decide that keeping a mixed environment of computer OS is adequate, for instance, to provide "real world experience" to students, or to benefit from some superior aspects of the Linux or other OS, your best option may be to use Remote Desktop to allow your users to access their Windows-only applications from the other OS. Keeping Windows inside virtual machines and then accessing those with Remote Desktop is also an interesting solution in terms of cost and performance.
Similar articles were written for the '95 release and for the win2 release (I saw less of them when XP was to be released). The reality is: It doesn't matter at all. In time new machines will come in and the new product will start to be used.
Most large companies don't care either, they'll get a project going and they'll change over when hey're ready.
I's no news, and it's really not relevant (allthough I expect once again people to come up with anecdotal evedence for the opposite, anecdotes support anything).
MS understands very well that a PC is a tool. That's why hey sell the OS they do...
People that have been trying to put Linux on the desktop never got hat, they went for a prettier/moreadvnaced/more thing and never gave the user a propper TOOL....
...I turned on the feature Kam recommends in XP SP2 -- took a bit to find it, as I had to dl a monitor definition for my laptop first -- and set at 134% (something like 120dpi) it works nearly perfectly on my laptop. The only application I've seen that doesn't handle it well is Trillian -- and graphically that thing is a pain in the ass. Firefox doesn't adjust its font size, but looks fine. I think it has its own setting that I just haven't remembered where to find.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
when my "Developer" system was deployed, in dual-proc, 15k SCSI glory, it too ran the standard image, and got non-standard software deployed automatically.
Awesome - for $500! Gotta get me a Dell!
I think Vista will flop in business. They'll be promised intangible incentives, so the naïve will chase after the pied piper, only for any gold to promptly dissapear to be replaced by the thousands of shitty problems such people deserve for digging themselves so deep into being dependant on a single product you don't control, and coding with no reserve for compatibility and portability.
Wiser businesses will be scared shitless and carry on business as usual with XP, until a service pack has been released and Microsoft are willing to *pay* to send in their ninjaneers to convert all their computers and other free support. Of course, most the shitty problems will still remain.
Few home users except some very ignorant users will *upgrade* to Vista. Those buying anew from Dell won't have any choice. I think a lot of ppl will choose to buy anew rather than upgrade, simply because upgrading is rather scary to them.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. please. Of course for microsoft consumers, they don't know the difference, they don't really care that their XP takes ten minutes to boot (and why should they? isn't it like that for everyone) or if they have more pop-ups than my toaster. If Vista won't let them terrorise their friends computers on MSN by letting them send scripts, why get it?
Disclaimer: I have done lot of migrations from Windows to Linux, so I have experience to talk about. In short - Windows to Linux is doable, and it is not so nightmarish, as someone would like to paint it. However, it asks one thing from your IT departament - discipline, which is very rare thing to find among Windows sysadmins. So usually you should look for human factor when something is blocking your migration.
.NET enviroment then you should check out Mono goodies. All Novell/MS deal contraversy aside, Mono is really serious project. Also lot of apps can be ported via Python/GTK, which combo is very very easy to use and learn. For example, check out this project http://www.moeraki.com/pygtktutorial/pygtk2tutoria l/index.html.
1. Windows apps, custom apps - WINE simulator is aimed to be fully blown simulator of Windows libraries, are still in active development, but progress is made everyday. WINE also have two commercial offsprings - Crossover Office by Code Weavers, really good product, and Cedega, not-so-good, but still solution for lot of Windows software, mostly games. Any of these settings you can achieve that your apps run flawlessly in emulation environment. No Windows license is needed, unless explicitly cited in EULA. I would go with Crossover Office, they are not cheap, but not very expensive either. As side note, for advanced users WINE is a bless, because you can make actually work a lot programms with little or even no configuring or hacking. Use lot of small tools with WINE with default configuration (as installed) and I am fine. Of course, EVERYTHING must be tested, so there would be any surprises down the road. Also if apps are coded in
2. As I already said, emulation layer requires no Windows installation nor license.
3. Retraining - if your users just need to do a job what they should do, simple retraining will do just fine. Windows are still Windows. Web browsers are still the same browsers as in Windows, and OpenOffice is very similar to Microsoft Office, yes, there are differences, but if pointed out in retraining and later manuals, it is usually no issue. All is needed is good manual for most visible changes, and helpful admins. And no, you don't have to learn them how to thinker with console.
4. Support by established company - there are several ways to get support from commercial entity. First of all, there is RedHat with RHE and it's contracts, Oracle with RHE support (less expensive but still lot of money), Novell with SLE and Novell Linux Desktop (prices are more SMB oriented), IBM (big iron and large and medium corporations) and then comes Cannonical with it's interesting version of support - they provide platform for various support groups - local, noncommercial, user-based, commercial, group-based, etc. They have their register of commercial supporters of your area. Of course you can't forget Debian, which has community support, which is proven itself in action. Ubuntu is built upon Debian. So more or less, covered distros are RedHat Enterprise, SUSE Enterprise, Ubuntu Dapper (stable, 3/5 y support version), and Debian. If I have to choose from this list, I would go with Ubuntu/Kubuntu Dapper with local commercial support. Why? It is very strong and good community support + lot of references and kb collections. There are no one BIG place, but there are several big places - Ubuntu WIKI, Ubuntu Forums with HOWTOS and manuals, and more. There are also very friendly support ticket system in Launchpad, also IRC channel #ubuntu at irc.freenode.net will provide your admins (or your commercial supporter) with necessary info.
Go with Novell/RedHat, if you need heavy-weight support behind our Linux desktop (They are serious companies with smartest of minds in Linux/Free software world on payroll), or Oracle/IBM, if you are big corporation and wanna do "right thing" for your shareholders.
5. OS upgrades
SLES/NLD (Novell offer) and RHE (RedHat of
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It works largely the same on x86_64, the only difference is that for most WMV you need to use a 32-bit media player, on Gentoo, that means running gmplayer-bin rather than gmplayer.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
You need to have browser & media "chain" in 32bit..
- No 64bit Flash player (I recommend the new Flash 9 beta, btw.)
- W32Codes needs 32bit mplayer (or other player) - will not play nicely with 64bit.
Unfortunatly it seems the it is the proprietary software that is seriously lacking in 64bit support.
When I worked at a consumer PC vendor, along with the normal hard to fix incidents "sound goes off on mechwarrior on level 7", which take a while to replicate, those early adult DVDs caused a lot of problems on the first DVD-enabled PCS. These where the generation-1 DVD players, trying to render everything on a Pentium II/233 or maybe even a 266 MHz unit. Those adult DVD with their multi viewpoint features, and the need of the audience to freeze frames, caused a lot of problems. After about six months there was a shelf full of adult disks that were hard to play, alongside mainstream content that had high sustained bandwith, funny audio channels, complex menus etc. Funnily enough, the engineers were always willing to test the adult disks on new hardware and device drivers; it was the most thorough support team I ever knew. It was like they had a deep fear of regression failures creeping in. Word 97 not printing to postscript printers, AOL dialup failing, these were low priority compared to the different viewpoints in the orgy scenes working.
-steve
IT should get the best computers yet I worked for a large engineering company (NLK Consultants) where the head of IT insisted that we have the weakest computers so that we _wouldn't_ design bloatware. It was idiotic since it slowed us down by a factor of two or three but there was nothing we could do about it. This guy, by the way, was an Electrical Engineer!
I come here for the love
We've been helping our customers transit to IE7 - it's been a good excuse to get WSUS and full AD/GPO set up on their servers ( since they'd pay a shitload for manually doing all the patches, we offer 'em a better price for getting their domain in order than to run around and patch 50 desktops individually, and we can sell them on IE7 pretty easily once they try it ). Also lets us know when a computer has a bad Windows license - which is very useful in a business setting.
We're going to be purchasing a copy of Vista early next year to start evaluation of some of the software our customers use - even with our SMB client base, only one of our customers even asked about it, and that's because he needs more than 3 GB of memory for some apps he uses, and wanted to know if XP x64 was worth it, or if he should wait for Vista...
I'm not really impressed by Vista, from what I've seen - IE7 was a far more radical ( and useful ) change. OTOH, it also means there's going to be a lot of shake-up among small IT shops, as people jockey for advertising "Vista-capable" techs and whatnot. Also going to make a lot of money for trainers.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
... to die ! :o)
it would be called "lack of official support"
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
As has already been mentioned, the most important thing you need (particularly from your IT staff) is discipline. The scenario you describe would be major long project to migrate to Linux, not something you could do in a couple of months. I don't think it's necessary (or even desirable) to do a 100% migraiton, and trying to would probably cause more problems than it would solve.
Application Compatability: As others have pointed out, you can use Wine (either commercial or free versions) - but you'll have to test every application thoroughly. You'd probably have to do that if migrating to Vista, but the testing would probably end up being rather less formal. The generally accepted alternative method (and, to be honest, probably the best) is to set up a small Citrix server farm to handle the apps for which there is no Linux equivalent. If you find that you'd need an absolutely massive server farm, costing more in licensing and support than you'll save, perhaps the move isn't appropriate.
Training: Depends to a certain extent on your staff. In the UK public sector, staff can (and will) refuse to use a pocket calculator if they "haven't been trained". But don't imagine you'll be able to get away with none. A lot of it depends on your IT staff providing a sensible desktop that staff can live with - I don't know of anything Linux based which is analagous to Active Directory in terms of configuring machines for what's on the desktop, what's locked down across a large network.
There's a very real chance that your IT staff will need more training than everyone else, as IT operations work tends to be "jack of all trades" stuff, whereas a lot of the organisation's other staff are "master of one or two".
Peripherals: Rule of Thumb: The less common your peripherals, the more trouble you'll have. Business card scanners aren't terribly common, so you might have trouble there. Linux software doesn't tend to be as closely integrated as Windows software, so even if you can scan in business cards you might have fun importing the resulting data.
Application Compatability: This is going to be sticky. If it's necessary for some random person to be able to throw a CD containing educational software into a PC and have it work with at least a 90%+ probability, I would keep a lab of Windows PCs for that purpose. Otherwise the IT department needs to be involved every single time such a piece of software appears - and that will get very painful very quickly.
Real World: Here's a question you need to ask: Are you teaching people "this is how you use Word, click here, here and here", or are you teaching people "This is what a word processor is, this is what it does"? IMO, education should be more about the latter than the former, but IME the real world tends to disagree. And there's a very strong likelihood that the entire staff are more of the former mindset, in which case trying to force Linux down everyone's throat is probably a very good way to get sacked.
More Real World: I don't know about where you work, but in every place I've ever worked there's been a tendency for departments to go out and source their own IT solution for a problem, and not involve the IT department until they've already handed over the cash and taken delivery of the software/hardware. That is never going to work if they're running Linux on all their desktops - how would you deal with it?
~amd64 Gentoo user here.
Install something called nsplugin-wrapper or similar ('ns' for netscape - obviously, package names differ between distros). It allows 64 bit browsers to use 32 bit plugins. For example, my 64 bit firefox and konqueror both play flash videos fine with the Flash 9 beta 32 bit plugin (though konqueror did require a couple extra steps).
Oh, and please shut your bitch mouth and stop spreading Linux FUD.
You made my point for me- the fact that there are these little things someone has to tell you to do in order to get video working suggests that linux video just isn't quite ready yet.
Also, the CNN.com site doesn't give me the opportunity to say no, I don't need media player- it just gives me a download button and that's it. Sure, that's their developers problem- but before they had that on there, I'd click and it'd just give me the missing plugin icon.
I'm a big linux lover and am not spreading FUD- but my experience has been that linux video (especially on x86_64) just doesn't work out of the box, and until very very recently (I've been a RedHat/Fedora user exclusively- so at least until recently in Fedora, which is fairly bleeding edge) didn't really work at all (32 or 64 bit) for many types of video.
I think that Microsoft should be the first ones to adop this as a corporate standard across the board.
Not only will they gather valuable experience dubugging the problems first hand, with the actual user in front them, but they are costing everyonen else money every bug that stops some piece of business fulidity from happening costs the company that loses the advantage money. They have the joy of live data. What fun!
Microsoft is hoping to pawn off the cost of being the early corporate adopter because it would hurt their business to do so.
Now, who's business, then, wouldn't be inancially disadvantaged compared to a competitor who just... waited?
I personally couldn't recommend a comporation going to vista any time soon.
Most large corporations lease their computers instead of purchasing them. So by the time their leases are up, they'll be stuck getting a new lease with new computers running Vista on them. Isn't the point pretty much moot?
[1] insert "by the time it's finished (i.e. when the thing after the thing after vista comes out)"
[2] insert "might, if you're lucky, be"
[3] insert "than outlook express running on win98 with no firewall.".
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Application compatibility.
There is no application compatibility, you have to start from that hard fact.
Where you move from there depends of what you want to achieve. If your objective is to run as many Windows applications as possible, then I see little advantage in moving to Linux, where you will need emulation or remote terminal software (the only advantage I would see for this is that a tainted Windows Virtual machine is much easier to patch, throw away or redeploy, and you have a secure host OS, but tht would increase your support costs, so still I see little benefit).
If you want to save money in the long term and protect your company against forced upgrades and vendor lockin, then emulation or remote terminals should be an interim step in the direction of moving as many of your needs as possible to Linux, but you can't do a blanket migration of everything, most likely there will be residual applications that no matter what you do, won't be moved to Linux. You can "quarintine" them in Windows boxes that people could access when needed. There are solutions out there (Sun's Tarantella) that can unify your WIndows and Linux space in one desktop easy to understand for users.
Do I still need to pay Microsoft for the yearly licenses for Windows?
If you use virtualization, yes. I don't know if you use remote terminal software (Citrix, Tarantella, VNC). If unsure think yes, but this can only be clarified by your MS representative. Their licensing schemes are so confussing that you will need all the help you can muster to spell in dollars and cents what you would need to pay.
If I have to look at conversion to separate packages of software, including retraining of employees and support staff on new packages and dealing with missing functionality, that severely impacts the morale and productivity of employees in company in supporting the new software.
Retraining for the most basic applications (browser, office suite, email client) should be minimal or even unnecessary for any computer literate person, and in no way would be more onerous than the required in case of migration to new software.
For more specialized applications you will need to do retraining. The morale of your employees is a managerial issue, not a technical one. If you attack a major migration with a defeatist attitude nothing good will come from that, if in the other hand you explain the reasons, cost savings and benefits for all the parties involved and training is provided timely I fail to see how morale could be affected adversely.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.