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Now Is Not the Time for Vista
narramissic writes "With nearly a month of Vista availability behind us, businesses don't seem to be in any rush to take the leap. An article on ITworld cites two significant reasons for the foot-dragging. First, Microsoft's case-by-case approach to Vista patches, which is leaving some problems unpatched until after the consumer release in January. Second, application (in)compatibility. From the article: 'Some of the applications that still aren't compatible with Vista include IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes e-mail and collaboration suite; Cisco Systems Inc.'s and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.'s VPN clients; Intuit Corp.'s accounting software QuickBooks 2006 and earlier versions; and anti-virus (AV) software from Trend Micro Inc.'"
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Seriously, what reason is there to upgrade right now? You don't need to have a reason NOT to upgrade. When businesses eventually need new machines and Vista is the OEM OS, then businesses, and for that matter, academic institutions, etc., will start using it. This will be true if it turns out to be the best OS ever or a complete piece of unnecessary bloatware. It's strange to me that this continues to be brought up on /., it seems so obvious.
I'm just sayin'.
I have a small client (75 users) and we are on a five year plan for new hardware... it was up in October. We bought new Dell's and Vista Business in November, and rolled them out last week.
.dlls. The other problem was solved perfectly by running the shortcut in compatibility mode.
In the Ad industry we have to use lots (7) of custom apps for Media, Accounting, and Shipping. We had 2 problems. 1 wasn't the program but the installer didn't detect the correct OS. It was a small app so we just copied it over with its
As for the users: very happy with Vista and Office 2007. I mean, really happy. I'm sure it helps that they now have big flat screen monitors and faster computers, but we are getting lots of good feedback at the agency.
The OS: We wrote a few custom gadgets to automate a few tacks in about 10 minutes a piece, and people love them. We don't do the indexed search for network shares so people really aren't talking about that, but believe it or not, they love the animations and the "pretty" stuff. We never had a problem with XP crashing or anything so the fact that Vista is stable doesn't really change much for us.
For anyone thinking about Office 2007: It went over huge here, between the ribbon and all the visual additions (especially smart objects). Actually our Accounting department is loving the new excel, and our president is pretty excited about the toys in powerpoint. Word seems to be liked but that is the one we hear least about.
From my perspective: The Vista imaging software and new group policy is awesome. We did the rollout over the weekend, and it went off without a hitch. I'm not really giving MS credit for that, we worked on the image for a few weeks, but we are very happy so far.
Seriously, what business has a testing cycle for an OS that can be done in a month? I mean where I am we're JUST NOW getting ready to go XP, 5.5 years after release, and nearly half of the machines will stay on Win2000 indefinitely. A month (or even a year or two) is not foot-dragging, it's responsible business use of IT.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Hardly news. This should not be read as a mass rejection of Vista, just an indication that corporation IT departments do their job in a reasonably competent and responsive way.
It takes about a year-and-a-half before a corporation that fully intends to transition to the new OS is ready for the "rollout." Typically this involves a good deal of preparation so that everyone in the company gets their new PC, their training classes, their new application versions, and their direction for migrating at about the same time.
At the introduction of every major Windows upgrade, the same things have happened: Gartner et al have told corporations to take their time adopting the new OS, and corporations, whether because they listen to the analysts or for their own reasons, have done so.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
With the support of the CFO and CEO, I've developed the policy that we won't even entertain Vista until a minimum of SP1 and a year of full release has passed. In other words, we won't even begin testing until January 2008. I doubt our company is alone.
I don't doubt Vista will make some traction, but it seems to me that the likelihood is in a very slow adoption rate. By the time businesses are ready to take it seriously, many companies may be very open to alternatives that will have matured quite nicely. After all--with quite a few perfectly good computers sitting around that won't run Vista either at all or very well, why should we ditch those resources when we can reallocate them as a Linux desktop?
Regarding application compatibility, this is the fault of the vendor, not Microsoft. The vendors had well a year or more to get their stuff working with Vista while it was in beta.
According to several vendors, the IP stack kept changing throughout the beta process. After several futile attempts to write code against the stack, most vendors have had to wait until final release before building their products. Novell coems to mind, I'm sure Cisco and others are in the same boat.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
MS-DOS 4.0 wasn't even a Microsoft product, it was developed at IBM and rebadged.
/F switch to FORMAT, and the DOS Shell, and the latter was also a steaming pile of dung. (From my experience I can tell you Start Programs is not all that different from IBM's FIDO shell of 5 years earlier, in terms of how it worked - just with a little more spit and polish.)
That said, yes, it was a steaming pile of dung, and about the only documented features it had over 3.3 were large disk support (which Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 had too), the
Then there were the undocumented features. Oy.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Outlook Web Access under IE7 requires a patch on the OWA web server so that the ActiveX control works in the new browser's security settings. Otherwise, the user cannot edit or write new mail messages.
Firefox under Vista works fine (in Basic mode, of course), as does any other web browser.
This is true. Ford Motor Co. is just now finishing up their XP migration. Current Vista plans are for 2010 or later.
I have a Vista RTM notebook running Cisco 4.8.1.0590 and I can connect back to my office with it just fine using RSA SecurID. It has worked for 2 months at least. So maybe the data is old?
There's no troll like an old troll ...
Windows has a loooong way to go to catch up to functionality that is available "out of the box" with almost all consumer linux distros.
I don't know anyone in the mid to large corporate environment planning to migrate to Vista any time soon.
Reasons given why not to migrate:
1) Vista requires faster hardware to get the same results as XP, and many IT departments have been given a mandate to run lean. It is no longer the 90's where corporate executives are mesmerized by technology. Today exec's are tech savvy and see IT for what it is...a cost center.
2) Vista has backwards compatibility issues. I wouldn't want to be the CIO that gives the green light that breaks numerous internal systems, productivity software, accounting software, CRM systems, logistic systems, etc, etc. They will wait until Microsoft and the major software venders are in sync.
3) Vista doesn't deliver any significantly new or exciting features.
I've been helping to evaluate Vista for my employer since the first betas were available and I fully agree with these points. There is no reason to migrate immediately.
It's been copied-and-pasted millions of times all the way down to the mistake with the angle bracket. Before the invasion of what I call the "new Slashdot" it would have rightfully been modded down to -1.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.