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.'" '

Comments

Migration

[HazMathew]

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.

Re:Migration

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Do any companies ever upgrade immediately? It's stupid from the point of view of application support (for any OS upgrade/update there'll almost always be a few issues to be fixed) and there's no clear advantage. My last job was working in an office at a major company, yet they only upgraded from NT to XP in late 2004/early 2005, at the same time as they upgraded all the hardware. That's a little over 3 years after XP's release. I expect the same will happen with Vista. The next time they replace the workstations in 3-4 years they'll shift to Vista aswell. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than switching now and having to upgrade the hardware at the same time.

And of course this doesn't even begin to account for legacy software. In that job we were still using software originally written and deployed in the 70's, software that's damn hard to replace because the original COBOL coders are all long gone and nobody really has any idea how to migrate properly. Ridiculous amounts of money (millions) were spent getting this stuff to run on XP through emulators, you can be damn sure they're not gonna want to spend that kind of money again to get it to run on Vista until they absolutely have to.

It's a similar situation for home users. Very few people actually go out and buy Windows, they just use whatever OS comes with the hardware when they buy that. Given that computers are reaching a point where you no longer need to buy a whole new one every few years, is this going to affect the uptake of Vista? I mean I'm currently writing this on a Athlon XP 2400+, it's five years old yet it can easily accomodate any task I can throw at it. I'd say it's still got another couple of years in it yet, so what exactly happens to Vista's sales if everyone but the hardcore-gamers buy new systems running Vista on a seven year turnaround?

AV incompatible? So?

[iainl]

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?

Re:AV incompatible? So?

[kfg]

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?

Assuming this to be true, it still does not answer the fundamental question:

"Why bother?"

There's a new Shimano Grouppo out too. The mere fact that Shimano has released it doesn't in any way compel or obligate me to buy it. Releasing it is their issue, not mine.

My old Grouppo still works just fine.

So here's what they do:

The Grouppos require special, made only by Shimano (they have patents and shit) chains. They will discontinue making the chain for the Grouppo I already have, so just to buy a new chain I will eventually have to buy a new Grouppo.

Does this behavior sound at all familiar?

KFG

Re:AV incompatible? So?

[paeanblack]

I've never had a single virus or spyware infection in my life. They're a completely overrated threat.

Wait until you have children...thousands of children. Some will even have titles like CFO or Senior Partner. The big kids want (and get) local admin rights. Those kids know they have you around to clean up their mess, and they can blame the existence of the mess on you in the first place.

Same Old Cycle

[Genocaust]

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.

This is unusual how?

[throx]

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.

Notes compatibility

[photozz]

Notes is such a shitty program I'm surprised it's running in WinXP much less Vista....

Re:Right

[garcia]

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.

Businesses aren't upgrading because...

[Ice Wewe]

"With nearly a month of Vista availability behind us, businesses don't seem to be in any rush to take the leap."

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.

Quote from the article

[Corporate Troll]

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".

Re:Well, perhaps....

[ClosedSource]

"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.

Re:Now Is Not the Time for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me the point was not about running to Linux as alternative to Vista, but staying with XP.

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, ...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.

Re:Not entertaining anytime soon

[Mafia$oft]

Linux has:
- 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 .NET (again, NOT) and WinFS (right, again NOT, has been in development for almost FIFTEEN years I think, since WinNT at least), ...
- "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?

Re:Right

[dioscaido]

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).