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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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It's just not economic. It seems to me companys will not migrate to Vista until they absolutely HAVE to have Vista on their machines. That could be awhile.
The others I understand, and if Quickbooks in particular is broken I can't upgrade our machine (natch; I wanted the Media Centre stuff for my 360).
But why would you care that the XP version of an AV product doesn't work on Vista? Surely there are enough differences between the OSes that you'll need a new virus scan?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Especially the software incompatibility issues. What business will switch if their apps won't work properly? Not to mention the hardware requirements, etc.
I don't see how the slow adoption of Vista is any different from previous Windows releases, except that the consumer version is being delayed a month rather than be released in tandem. The DoD only truly migrated fully to XP early last year; no corporation with a large IT infrastructure is going to be eager to lead the charge without concrete proof that upgrading will benefit them in the long term.
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
Some corporations are still running Windows 98. Many are on Windows 2000. Very rarely will a corporation migrate to a one month old operating system - they'll trial it in very select areas to shake out the bugs and tech support issues they are likely to face and then deploy 6-30 months later (depending on the date of their upgrade cycle).
Vista *will* roll out to businesses, but don't expect it to overtake XP any faster than XP overtook 2000, or 2000 overtook 98, etc.
And Notes won't run? Damn - I'm upgrading NOW.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Notes is such a shitty program I'm surprised it's running in WinXP much less Vista....
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Anything that is incompatible with Lotus Notes is a step in the right direction. Notes email is unspeakably bad.
Because we all know that corporations love to throw out their existing infrastructure and redeploy with newly released software.
Well, the simple fact of the matter is that XP/2000 work just fine for a corporate environment. It's not like Vista will add any more stability over what's already available. When 2000/XP came out they were worlds beyond what 9x offered and a little better than what NT offered.
There's no need to switch when everyone's applications are running w/o too much issue and there are too many questions that need to be answered about how the new OS will operate.
That and I'm not sure people want to have to retrain their staff to use the "ribbons" of Office 2007 that Bill is so excited about.
IMHO, businesses aren't in a rush to upgrade to Vista because of the incompatabilities mentioned in the article, and the fact that upgrading costs a lot of money. Some of which, these businessess don't have, or weren't planning on using for a Vista upgrade.
If I may speculate on behalf of the businesses, with all the applications that they likely use on a daily bases not working, and the increased cost of upgrading (which you then have to pay off/make up in increased profits), they'd rather wait until most of these problems are fixed in the operating system they're going to pay for. You're probably thinking "well, there's no time like the present", and you'd be wrong. Businesses stand to loose a lot of money if the applications they rely on (and perhaps weren't mentioned in the incompatability list, but also have limited/no functionality) don't work until 6 months later when MSFT releases an update to fix all (nice dream, mind if I join?) the applications compatability issues.
Businesses would rather stick with what they've got right now for the next little while. It doesn't cost them as much to maintain an OS thats already been installed and is functioning, as it would to install Vista, and deal with all the resulting problems. It doesn't matter to them if they wait an extra 6 months to upgrade, because it will mean less loss in revenue.
Just my opinion.
And honestly, people can argue until they're blue in the face about how XP is fine, but the reality is that it's five years old, technology has changed and a new OS is necessary.
Does this guy even know what an OS is? There is no reason why new technology can't be supported in an "old OS". Especially if the "new OS" is basically an update of the "old OS".
Considering that you are in the advertising industry, I'm not surprised that your user love the "animations and "pretty" stuff. The ad industry is about images that portray something positive and desirable about the advertised product to the target audience. Thus, users being focused on the visual appearance of Vista and Office 2007 is no surprise.
It's not a criticism, just an observation.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
so you are stating that you rather be a hypocrite and switch over to a compeltely brand new operating system and have compeltely new programs and everything else faster then vista where alot of drivers and programs still work under compatibility mode in vista? Yes I am stating this because of your linux comments.
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.
.NET 3.0 applications up and running and enough new machines with Vista pre-installed, that would be the time to upgrade.
That said, I'm not upgrading essential work machines to Vista yet either. Once we get
Many of our servers are still running NT 4.0. Large corporations don't always upgrade as quickly as smaller companies. Our IT staff is still working on getting individual users upgraded to XP. There isn't a single workstation in my department that can handle Vista.
It's slow and a resource hog, and none of their different "levels" fits well enough for me. I don't want the low end, but the level of Vista that has what I want and need has a bunch of crap I don't, and costs too much, and the next level down, has hardly of the stuff I want.
It's funny, people were saying the same thing about XP versus 2000 until MS refused to patch 2000 a few years ago. I've used Vista, and it is faster than my 1 year old installation of XP. XP has a nasty habit of getting fucked over time. My machine is fairly mid-range these days.
As for the software versions - christ, 5 versions aren't enough for you? Whatever.
work with 4 year-old equipment, processors, memory, etc.
MS has NEVER released a major release OS that did this. In 1991, many computers still shipped with 1 or 2 megs of ram. Windows 95 was certainly not designed for this. In 1997, most computers shipped with 32 megs of ram, totally insufficient to run windows XP. Especially when today, there is new stuff that really can change the computing experience - dual core processors make multithreading really functional, hybrid hard drives will revolutionize laptop usage, modern graphics cards can really improve the desktop experience - why would MS give a shit about what was happening 4 years ago?
be compatable with SW from the same time frame
Name one major program released in the last 4 years that will not run on Vista.
come in 2, maybe 3 levels of implementation (excluding servers)
Home - Price point under $70
Professional - Price point under $120
Extra (maybe - Price point under $150
MS has kept almost the same pricing structure for ages. You pulled these prices out of your ass.
Upgradeable from one level to the next without a complete reinstall
I'm not quite sure why this would matter.
Beyond basic OS, all extras, funky new desktops, including browser, media player, text pads, etc. are optional installs.
Much of this is optional. You obviously haven't installed it.
And, allow me to virtualize it, dammit!
Only the home edition doesn't allow virtualization. 99% of people using virtualization use it for development or business purposes, so this does sort of make sense. By the business or ultimate edition.
Oh, and give it a name that doesn't blow, or suck.
It doesn't suck as much as you! Vista is a cool name. I like it!
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Maybe it is too costly for Microsoft to dedicate resources for compatibility issues. It might be a nice way clean-up Win32... maybe anti-Wine? They probably knew people and companies won't jump ASAP to Vista (it happened to Win2k3 server), so, why they should care? Is Vista the Windows Me equivalent?
Actually most versions of Windows do a lot of compatibility checks and fixes, but it was because Microsoft wanted people to upgrade (I would say it was a long term plan to migrate everyone to NT). Win 95 was a Win 3.x upgrade, 2000/XP were Win 9x/Me upgrades. For example, Win95 did check for a lot of DOS device drivers - junk probably nobody used like ancient network drivers and weird tape drives.
If I had a product incompatible on Vista, probably Microsoft would blame me for doing stuff they have probably documented "it won't work", and probably also ask me why I didn't test it in all those Vista beta versions. It's a great opportunity for software companies to release new products (regardless of usefulness).
Anyway, they can slowly wait until XP becomes officially obsolete.
Testing a new OS in a month may be optimistic for a large organisation, but seriously, if you take two years to evaluate software, you're absurdly under-resourced (or just incompetent). What did you think you were going to learn after the first couple of times you installed it on a trial network and checked that everything you needed was working? Whole businesses come and go in that time frame! Really, either it's worth the time and money to upgrade or it's not, and if you can't make that call within a few weeks, it's probably not (or at least not until a service pack is out that addresses the concerns raised during your trial process).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Perhaps someone who's posting a piece on how they've had no trouble installing/running Vista has their own agenda?"
Perhaps someone who's posting a piece on how they've had no trouble installing/running Linux has their own agenda as well. Or not.
The point is that on Slashdot saying something postive about MS is instantly suspect, but saying something postive about Linux isn't.
This is disappointing because nerds are supposed to be about logic and critical/scientific thinking, but we can be as blind as the worst sports fans when it comes to our sacred choices of technologies.
Seems to me the point was not about running to Linux as alternative to Vista, but staying with XP.
...but after the vista migration you're still in the same jam! The size and scope of the project gives all the more reason to start NOW, with plenty of time to get it right.
Actually, now is the perfect time for end-user institutions to begin linux desktop migration projects, and to push vendors to fully function in that environment. After all, we're talking about migrating to a different operating system, why is it just assumed it will be vista, why not linux? Start plans to migrate to linux NOW, and start testing a linux desktop replacement that works with corporate apps. I include dumping exchange in the scope of these projects. The license fees to be saved by a large institution with thousands of desktops are enormous, and with the savings comes the satisfaction and freedom of no longer being beholden to the microsoft protection racket.
I realize this is a large project, expensive in itself... hey, SO IS MIGRATING TO VISTA,
Linux has:
.NET (again, NOT) and WinFS (right, again NOT, has been in development for almost FIFTEEN years I think, since WinNT at least), ...
- completely standardized/open formats and protocols as opposed to the "completely brand new" file formats that Microsoft loves to create each year
- had fully working x86 64bit support 3(!) years earlier than Windows (well... minus a ton of 64bit-incapable proprietary offerings, which never get their things done in time anyway)
- had nice 3D desktops at least a year earlier than Vista
- enjoyed a nice Bluetooth stack as the very first operating system ever
- and several others I don't recount right now
So, pray tell me, this is "completely brand new" (implies lots of bugginess) how?
So, let's see how well Windows does in comparison:
- "completely brand new" office suite (entirely redesigned GUI) with "completely brand new" DRM-crippled file format
- "completely brand new" operating system with "completely brand new" yet currently less visible DRM crippling which extends all the way down to hugely increasing hardware development costs and complexity to make sure users will have lots of fun with self-crippling hardware (protected audio path etc.pp.)
- "completely brand new" Windows shell (oh, right, NOT available) and fully based on
- "completely brand new" Windows build (how much time did it take them to come up with a final build of Vista after the semi-decade-long desaster that was Vista development? 6 months?? And you think this will turn out to be stable??)
Conclusion: please tell me where your point is?
they used to, in the nineties this was all the rage. However the trend has come staggering to a halt as more and more large scale deployments fail.
What amused me was during the 2K bug crisis, after years of New Stuff being clamored about, and attempted forced obsolescence of old hardware, just how many organizations turned out to still have old Cobol systems installed in the back end of their New Stuff.
I won't be upgrading to Vista till I absolutely have to. I don't think this will be for a very long time, probably many years, as my main system is a Linux box, and my treasured cluster is a Gentoo system. XP is kept around for the few games I enjoy that need it. I'll likely upgrade when games manufacturers stop developing with support for XP. If Linux becomes a decent gaming platform before that then I may still not bother.
My son will be getting Vista next year in his new computer, and that will suit for my software testing purposes. I do need that aspect because the software I maintain is cross platform, even though the main branch is Linux. If he hadn't been getting that system I'd probably just rely on Vista owning friends for testing.
If anything, Vista will be especially appealing to Businesses, with its slew of enterprise features (for example the workable non-Administrator platform, IPSEC, Quarantine of machines on the network, Group Policy and Software deployment, etc...).
There's never been an OS that has seen immediate deployment in Enterprise. It's pretty disengenious to try to make conclusions out of the corporate adoption rate on the first month of availability (especially when it's not event available to the broader public).
The point is that on Slashdot saying something postive about MS is instantly suspect, but saying something postive about Linux isn't.
All things being equal I'd agree with you, but all things aren't equal. MSFT spends millions on PR firms that make their living generating positive "press hits" for their clients. Slashdot readers aren't the only ones justified in being cynical of what they read about MSFT and MSFT products online, including this forum, and in trade magazines.
Not every positive comment about a MSFT product is a PR press hit, but there are enough of those out there we have a right to be cynical. Many of us have been burned enough over the years that MSFT has earned that instant suspicion. If on occasion a genuine positive comment gets tarnished, well that's just too damn bad, isn't it?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage