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Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT
An anonymous reader writes "According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatability issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"
This is an agency that is very conservative. I mean, it's illegal to have curved driver side mirrors in the US for pete's sake.
HAHA
(it had to be said)
I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
It was like the sound of thousands of MSFT reps all calling their elected representatives at once.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to any Microsoft software products."
What this is really saying is that IT in the DOT wants all their systems to be running the same set of software. Wouldn't this just make sense from an efficiency point of view? I mean, they probably have bans on running MacOS 7.1, Gentoo and OS2 4.0 as well so I don't get the big news.
Did anyone seriously think large enterprise level customers would be jumping to Vista immediately, or even worse, letting their employees arbitrarily upgrade their own machines?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Ok, so the Department of Transportation can't make a business case for it. Big deal.
Allow me to strike some real fear into Microsoft. I work for a large Fortune 500 company with six digits of employees. While it's not our primary product, we write software as a lot of companies do.
When IE7 came out, I decided to use my work legal machine to install it to try it out. This resulted in a next day 7 am nastygram from my system administrator stating that I am authorized to install any software that isn't married to the kernel. Not only were we told not to use it, we were threatened not to install it OR ELSE I wouldn't be able to enter my time or access shared community sites internal to the company.
Because a lot of our company's tools don't work very nicely inside of it. So I'm still using IE6 and my company sure isn't going to upgrade my MS Office suite. Did I mention I write web applications and I can only test them in IE6 and Firefox?
So what would scare Microsoft more? The fact that a government department isn't using it or the fact that many companies like mine are still writing stuff for the old software hence forcing our customers to stick with IE6 or any version of Firefox?
My work here is dung.
I say "thank you" to the DOT. It's not often we catch a break.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
MS is bad!
But the government never does anything right!
But MS is bad!
But the government never does anything right!
But MS is bad!
But the government never does anything right!
*head explodes*
blow your mind already
IE7 definitely is unless it breaks their intranet. As for Vista, it's already being widely acknowledged as a marketplace failure.
haha tag
I'm sure some are wondering why this is news. The US government is Microsoft's biggest customer, by far. If many agencies cut back on Microsoft purchases it will hurt Microsoft a lot. I would imagine one department's decision may set a precedent for others. And even if not, many investors watch for government spending news when deciding Microsoft's stock value. So any change in government policy can have huge implications for Microsoft.
Developers: We can use your help.
I think you'll also find a policy that says you can't install Linux on your desktop either.
Here come the lobbyists. Who knows, maybe in Canada they can even manage to implement a Vista Tax on computer equipment, you know - to make up for all the lost revinue because of people using vista without paying for it (equivilant to the 15cent tax on all blank cd's that RIAA's lobbyists had imposed a few years ago)
Who needs progress when you have profits?
If you allow people to randomly upgrade their departments without considering the interactivity implications, you could inadvertently cause a major problem in a large government organization.
IMHO, it's a sound decision, and isn't a slap to microsoft at all. Everyone has to evaluate their own situation and upgrade if they feel it benefits them. Hell, having a win98 box (non-networked) and running a robot safely for the past 8 years is certainly safer than upgrading it. TFA was clearly biased, and made some idiotic remarks like "ZOMG, if the government doesn't buy vista, MS will go broke!" as if the millions of XP licenses are suddenly free.
So, hold all the "haha" tags, because a thorough evaluation of major upgrades on critical infrastructure makes some sense.
In general, businesses shouldn't be "early adopters" of any technology unless there's a compelling business reason. Any "early adoption" should be in testbed or non-critical environments.
I wish I could say "never upgrade without a compelling reason" but time marches on and lack of new software and the approaching end of vendor support can be very good reasons to stop using a product.
With that in mind, don't even consider using a Windows-based system unless it's been around 6 months UNLESS there is a very good reason, and strongly consider moving away from it at least 6 months before end-of-life.
Machines which are in special-purpose environments, such as machines which are not connected to any network, or which are adequately firewalled and whose connections with non-firewalled machines are heavily restricted, can continue to be used after end-of-life, but even these should be migrated to a vendor-supported environment or at least one where you have source code so you can fix problems yourself.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This'll last about 9 months.
Every time MS come out with a new version of Office or Windows, the CIOs throw wobblies sending out warnings that no-one is to upgrade and they're going to stick with the existing version. They really should know better, all it takes is one person, usually somewhere near the top to install the new version, particularly of Office and the whole organisation then has to upgrade. Way to engineer that network effect.
Deleted
Since he's clearly bent on saving taxpayer dollars by not climbing on the MSFT "rising license costs" escalator, the words he's going to be hearing soon are:
"Have you ever thought about what you'll do after government service?"
This is a non-story. It is perfectly normal for any organization to not adopt a new OS for a significant amount of time after it is released, years, even. There are enough things to harp on Vista without making things up and pretending they have significance...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
It is very ordinary for a company (or government agency) to adopt a "wait and see" attitude toward new software. Most companies I've worked for will not install a new OS, new software, new firmware, new drivers or whatever until they've gone through at least one revision.
Recently because of Microsofts crappy handling of IE7 upgrades (flagging them as "critical updates"), we had a number of remote users on IE7 and our SSL VPN appliances simply would not work. I had to call a moritorium on upgrading to IE7 and deployed the Microsoft "prevent IE7 update" patch in order to stop these critical updates.
Then, I had to use early-release code for our Juniper VPN concentrator, which broke about half a dozen other things.... Finally, after a few weeks, new a firmware revision for the Juniper VPN came out which enabled me to get the box back to a stable state AND allow IE7 to be used.
But if we had simply called a "ban" on IE7 upgrades in the first place, it would have saved me a lot of headache and our company a lot of productivity.
This is not a "Microsoft sux" decision, but merely a business-case against early-release software that they would likely take whether it was Microsoft or Juniper or Cisco or Oracle or whatever...
Now, Microsoft's handling of the IE7 "critical update" bullcrap.... that falls clearly in the arena of "Microsoft sux".
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I can think of one very big reason to upgrade to IE7 (unless Opera/Firefox is an option) and that's better web standards support. The web development community is going to drop support for IE6 very quickly (I give it approx. 6 months) because the standards support is so bad.
IE7 has a long way to go with this, but it's a massive improvement over 6. It's not as if it costs any money, aside from bandwidth, to download it.
Obviously I would advise them to just use Opera or Firefox and switch to Linux while they're at it. But if that isn't an option they should at least take the free IE upgrade. The decision to not upgrade Office is a sound one though.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
WTF?
Thousands of companies have banned upgrades when new products come out that might break internal apps or include the need (and expense) of training users.
Why is this news?
When I see the headline: "NSA embrases Active X as a security standard, THEN it might have some news value. All these Bash-Microsoft threads only serve to remove cred from this forum, unless they contain some REAL NEWS or INFORMATION.
Bitches!
I work for DHS and we just migrated to XP / Office 2003. It is routine for government agencies (just about all major computer systems really) to wait a LONG time before upgrading.. Everyone already knew people wouldn't mass-migrate to Vista until at least SP1 was out...
why does the department of transportation have the authority to tell me what software i can and cant run?
GOOD!
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
*Warning*
Operating systems may appear more compatible then they are...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I've heard of people saying "But I don't want version 5! I want you guys to make version 3 work the way it's supposed to!"
I really think a lot of nontechnical users couldn't care less about new features or redesigned interfaces -- what they've got works, and they don't want it messed with. So every time a software company adds a bunch of features or redesigns the interface, there's a good number of the user base that is going to be seriously ticked off because they have to retrain on all the new stuff.
Microsoft is one company that doesn't even come close to getting that. I've seen some of their smart house ideas for example -- their designs solve problems that people don't have to begin with. (Is anyone really in such a state that having the fridge track the RFID chips in your food packaging will improve things? Well, handicapped people and shut-ins, maybe, but for the vast majority of people it's overkill at best.)
Reason 1 ... we don't support this product now
...they just write letters.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for downgrading to any Microsoft software products."
God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.
"Banned" is too strong a term. It's an engineering decision.
Just say "Upgrading to Vista is about as appropriate as upgrading to a steam-powered ornithopter."
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Greetings from technical support.
Customer: "I cannot access internet/my bank/whatever"
Me: "Did you install IE7 recently?"
"Yup"
"Okay, use system restore. Here's a complimentary link to firefox."
They do not call again.
The Microsoft upgrade virus model explained:
1. Come out with new OS and release into the market environment.
2. Stop upgrading older OS versions and tell vendors they won't have drivers etc. approved.
3. Current OS gains foothold on market at a virulent rate, quashing older instances of the competition (the older OS version) and tout this slow but eventually exponential customer adoption a success.
4. Evolve OS into the next version and release into the same environment and repeat steps 2 & 3.
5. Market evolves sufficient antibodies to combat next version of the virulent OS and becomes more resistant to infection.
6. Current virus goes into lingering but still persists on weak hosts and certain vendor vectors.
7. Current virus reaches a marginal but stable equilibrium with its natural environment.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
"As the article says,'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products."
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel... You know your Boss's, Boss's, Boss is about to get "THE CALL" don't you?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
and our IT guy says "Vista adoption by the company is a minimum of two years out."
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
For the last 6 years, there has been a massive push from above to move everything to Windows. Even at the NSA, they have had pressure from above to drop support for Unix and linux (both of which are more secure than Windows). This will get the CIO in trouble.
Microsoft employs thousands of people as well - I wonder what their standing is on upgrading to Vista and associated products. Sure they get the software for free and the hardware for cheap, but it's still thousands of computers I bet they're replacing too.
And what's happening to all of these displaced PCs? Someone should build a cluster!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Funny how the positives from the articles aren't mentioned.
I also like the use of the word "ban", which doesn't appear anywhere in the memo. No negative implications with that word.
If you are going to bash someone, at least be a bit more subtle.
Realistically, any decent sized organization will have the exact same policy written or not. The one thing that makes them special is that people found out about it. Give a few years, they'll have a migration strategy laid out and away they go.
Hopefully, that migration strategy won't be to Vista. One can dream...
Bye!
"...but why not IE7? It's free."
Is it? You're suppose to have purchased a OS license from Microsoft to get your "free" product. And like any good car salesman, you roll the cost of the accessories into the initial purchase price. And libre IE is not.
Please remove the extra DOT from the title. That would really make my day.
Buy Windows XP and other Microsoft supported products. I don't see this as such a huge problem for Microsoft. At least DOT is investigating the possibility of using Vista in the enterprise. I'm guessing not so much for .
Give it 2 years and 2 service packs, and try again.
You should see my fridge some time. I'm sure there's a cure for penicillin in there somewhere. And the RFID chip could help me track it down before it manages to crawl away.
I work for Environment Canada and our IT department is in no particular rush to let anyone use Vista yet either. Simply put, it's a brand new OS that may require training for employees, requires a whole lot of new policy to be created in Ottawa, requires a whole lot of software testing to make sure our government specific software doesn't break.. sure there's been a lot of time to test it, but the fact of the matter is, noone needs it just yet and it'd require a heck of a lot of hardware upgrading anyways. It took them a year just go rollout Service Pack 2 for XP to everyone. We've only just upgraded to Office 2003. And noone is allowed to have IE7 installed yet either.. or Firefox for that matter. That one I can't really justify. :)
Vista I can understand, and IE7, I can understand... but Office? Why?
Granted it's a big expense, but Office 2007 is actually pretty nice... I can't ever remember having people tell me "Dude! the new Office is awesome!" for any previous version of MS Office. It's actually very much improved.
For all their faults, Microsoft can at least do three things right: Office, Visual Studio, and DirectX.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
Retire with a fat pension?
The government org I work with just finished their upgrades to XP. It will be 5 or more years before we see Vista grace our desktops. There is much work to be done, The NSA has to tear it to shreds, produce reasonably nasty lock-downs that prevent the average user from doing much of anything, there's the obligatory installation of half a dozen auto-upgrade/patching/content checking tools that need to be verified as working, then there's the mandatory wait period for X number of service releases to be released. The fact that that DOT is stating that tells me their not following the process ;)
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Working for a Fortune 500 company with lots of web-based apps, I can tell you that it breaks almost all of our web-based applications. Certainly our developers should not have relied on IE5/6 so much, but they did.
Hey, can I bum a sig?
It is unfortuneately not uncommon for developers to be more lazy when it comes to standards support on internal apps, as they control which browser the site will be viewed on. Or perhaps more truthfully, it is harder to get managers to see the cost benifit of caring about standards support on internal apps. Hopefully, the IE7 upgrade will teach them not to make that mistake again. In addition, many companies were sold on crappy third-party turn-crank web apps for standard stuff like time-cards, benifits, training, etc, and the companies that wrote them have since disolved. Many of those were horribly hacked together and barely rendered correctly on IE6 let alone any other browser, and so fixing them to work with IE7/Firefox is a major ordeal. Often it is better to just replace them outright. Either way it can take a while.
Plus I agree with geekoid that trading a known risk for an unknown one isn't always the best idea, so a wait and see attitude isn't bad. However, I think 3-6 months is more than enough time to evaluate the risks of a new upgrade especially if the old version is as bad as IE6 was.
He sure won't be working for Microsoft(Apple, on the other hand...he helps one cartel by hurting the other), unlike most people is this position who end up in fat, cushy jobs with the companies they used to regulate, like the FCC and FDA guys do.
What?
Vista will never be installed at my company. We rarely buy NEW computers, preferring the cost benefit of eBay. My company moves slowly. I am just now expunging Win98 from the network. Why? Because it worked. We are still running the same office version as of 5 years ago. Why? Because it still works. Seriously, our employees gain ZERO benefit from a new OS since they would still be doing the same tasks (ie, word and excel, access db, Citrix to ERP package).
The only reason we are upgrading everyone to XP is for anti-virus and anti-spyware purposes. Our chosen product is eliminating support for Win98 and Win2k. All of our other software, though, still works just fine. Microsoft may not like it, but ph00ey on them.
Bearded Dragon
Windows Me, meet Windows Vista. byebye M$
That's good!
Just because something is free doesn't mean it doesn't cost anything. Best case scenario you have to pay your IT guys to install, configure and help users not used to it.
If the company uses software/internal programs dependent on IE you then you'd need to really test it to check nothing goes wrong. That would take many man hours, and could never guarantee a trouble free life. If you have everything set up fine now, with no advantages in changing why change?
Plus you have to remember that IE6 may be poor security for the home user, but within a professorial environment using mostly internal websites and a proper firewall, virus and so forth there's less of a need to update.
(Course places developing internet based things might have more of a problem.)
I get sick of hearing all the lies and FUD that the anti-Windows crowd spreads all over the place. Microsoft , is the unsung hero of the computer world and internet commerce. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have the booming businesses bringing millions of dollars into the hands of simple and plain people like you and me all around the world. Microsoft beyond bringing startling innovation and major progress to the computer world has also indirectly created an infinite number of business and wealth creation opportunities with every PC out there whether in business or at home on your desk. That alone is the MOST compelling reason. By preventing the distribution of Microsoft's latest and greatest to the largest possible number of PCs, these sorts of actions are essentially trying to prevent the lubrication of the orifices of commerce. I plea with you to please reconsider your actions.
Respectfully,
Davis Hawke
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Stop feeding the monopoly. A competive environment is good for all users. A monoculture is bad for security
SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.htm
eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm
After I validate my copy of WINE running of Ubuntu!
I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.
From the fine article:
With an open mind like that, I'd be surprised if they were not running some kind of Netscape browser already. Give him some time and he's discover Firefox, Debian, Open Office and all sorts of great stuff.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Somebody, please, mod one of these Anonymous Cowards up, before we get three posts saying:
"there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for downgrading to any Microsoft software products."
Oops - too late!
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
I've put the same ban in our office for at least 12 months. IE 7 is the most difficult to stop due to the MS way, but no way is vista going to be on my network for some time to come.
...CIO does is job, film at eleven. Despite all these childish articles and misdirected anger towards Microsoft and Windows, Vista, IE7 and Office 2007 will all sell well, become the de facto standard desktop OS for hundreds of millions users worldwide. Simply amazing given the security issues, near infinite combination of hardware configurations Windows works on, and articles like this. For those who haven't yet figured it out, Microsoft and Windows are here for the long haul.
"The only reason we are upgrading everyone to XP is for anti-virus and anti-spyware purposes."
:( All the programs are quite happy on a P3-450 but the security prgrams aren't and choke it to death. Since many of the machines are still Win98 at least no one is asking about Vista ;)
And they only reason i am buying new hardware is to run the anti-virus, etc
I work in the South Australian Government, and a similar message was broadcast to every employee. On top of similar reasons for seeing no point in upgrading, we were informed that it would cost in excess over $7 million (AUS) to do a complete overhaul to the new software: including licences and training of staff in the software.
...some government employee didn't get their kickback in a timely manner. I'm sure this will be resolved suddenly and to M$ benefit.
I think it's great to have long beta periods and early GM release to businesses, so they can use them in their testbed and other non-critical environments.
Using them in production environments before you know the bugs aren't going to cost you too much isn't good business. As for waiting 6 months: Let Microsoft's other customers find the bugs your internal testbeds don't find.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Mod Up!, +1, Funny!
Yeah, I really am not a fan of Internet Explorer. But at the very least, DOT should upgrade to IE7. IE6 has so many security vulnerabilities that can be exploited and IE7 really helps to secure the browsing environment. As a government agency, they really should be more concerned about these types of security issues. If some not-so-savvy employee browses to a bad website in IE6, it could mean big trouble for DOT. If they run IE7, at lease the damage could be reduced in such a situation.
As for Vista and other products, you don't need to upgrade. In fact it's probably good that they're waiting to upgrade to Vista. Most large corporations wait at least 6 months to upgrade to a new OS. It's a good, cautious way to go.
I'm allergic to kittens
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I can list the Enterprise applications that do not work, in any capacity, under IE7.
They work under IE6, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror, but not under IE7.
Juniper SA is one example. Some older versions of PeopleSoft act kind of funky. Some of the online CRM stuff doesn't behave properly.... there are others... not to mention all the internal software.
Blah.
Also, don't discount the fact that the average business-cost of a man-hour of employee time is about $30/hr and assuming a liberal 1 hour to coordinate with the user, access their machine and do a complete install and config (including staff overhead), the cost of deploying it to 60,000 users is a hair under $2 million in IT costs and $2 million in productivity loss during the upgrade process.
And then the question is "why did we just spend $4 million"? What did it get us?
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I've never heard of any really big organization installing any new Microsoft OS before Service Pack 2 comes out.
SP1 usually fixes most of the really bad bugs, then SP2 fixes the bugs introduced by SP1. That's how it's been for about the last 12 years.
Both McDonalds and the military are hiring. Keep your hands, nose and guns clean, and you will be able to work for 19 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That is so true!
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
It's also common for a company to take a "do-not-use" approach to software (or hardware for that matter) that causes known conflicts. Where I work, we have a policy of reverting machines that come with IE7 back to IE6, and disabling the windows-update packages for IE7.
Why, because we know that it bugs out with our portal system, as well as some of our other information management systems. I know that many other industries and/or sectors are experiencing the same thing: it's not a case of "might not work" or even consistency, it's pretty clear that anyone using IE7 will run into issues with the systems we commonly use.
For that matter Java 6 (from 1.5 to 6, WTF?) doesn't play nicely with various systems either, so that's on the do-not-use/do-not-upgrade list as well. The fun comes when all the happy little auto-updater applications decide to take it upon themselves and increment versions without our knowledge... which means making sure that auto-upgrades are in general disabled when possible.
So far I've found that firefox 2.x is working happily, which is one of the few newer web-type apps that hasn't run into conflicts when moving up from older versions. It seems that one end or the other runs into standards compliance issues in most cases (i.e. older web-app that doesn't meet standards, newer browser/java/whatever or vise-versa).
IMHO commercial enterprises should only upgrade to vista after service pack 1.
Visit http://www.kaizenlog.com
It appears that, where I work, the web stuff we developed is happy to run under IE7 because I pushed to have it work under both Firefox and IE without doing browser detection. This limited all the browser-specific fancy crap and has meant that our "Portal" happily works with pretty much any browser.
I wish more places did the same thing. Very little of the DHTML/Javascript bleeding-edge UI stuff is really necessary. Frankly, I think it's cooler if something works on Opera for the Nintendo DS.
DOD/DA have aggressive migrations strategies for vista especially for the bitlocker encryption. Yes their might be other solutions but this ones included in their already "paid" for software assurance licenses. DOT will have their decision changed for them by congress. Dumb reason to make public from DOT.
You know, you can usually eliminate the blind spot just by adjusting your stock mirrors correctly. Most people set them so they can see the "fins" of their car. That CREATES a blind spot.
Try this (recommended by the AAA by the way - an 'old' link):
* On the driver's side, put your head against the window, THEN adjust so you can see the "fins."
* On the passenger side, put your head in the middle of the car, then adjust the mirror.
Those are approximations, of course. Tweak until you have continuous coverage from Side Mirror--> Rear View --> Side Mirror. In my car (smallish hybrid SUV with requisite blind pillar spots) I don't have to turn my head all the way because my stock mirrors eliminate the blind spot completely! I look anyway, of course, but it's nice to have TWO views that overlap. I see the headlights of a car passing me in my side mirror while I can still see their taillights in my rear view. It took a while to get used to, having done the "fins" approach for decades, but now when I drive someone else's car I feel vulnerable until I get the mirrors properly aligned.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
It's a shame though that Macs are so bloody expensive. They could've used an oportunity like this to swoop in and take the market. Tooo bad I guess. I suppose we'll never see a PC compatable version of OSX ever... any time.. ever.. even though it'd be a great alternative to Vista... I mean seriously...
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
These kinds of decisions have to be approved by a board and then each time it's approved by a committee, the decision moves up a rung to the next level.
It's a lot faster to have a lower body deny the request, and not filter it up to the rest. It takes several months and sometimes even years for major systems-impacting changes to become implemented. Hell, on our contract, we've been trying to get our new CAC authentication approved for the last 6 months, and even though it's been approved by a number of different bodies, we're still awaiting authorization from the CCSB to implement. Until they approve us, we have to keep delaying, keep delaying keep delaying our implementation...
Vista is no different. As long as there's one body that shoots it down, they won't approve the implementation, and with a change that has such a broad scale, all the different factors come into play and can cause major delays. The fact that it takes longer isn't necessarily caused by people waiting to see if Vista is worth it. The government will inevitably upgrade to vista (And IE7 especially), it just has to be approved first.
Our company has gone further than the DOT. Not only is upgrade not allowed but a PC with Vista is not allowed to connect to the corporate network. Our government customer has banned Vista from it's network too and we need to inter operate. The DOT is not alone. Many organizations are going to wait and do 6 or 12 months of testing first.
These departments usually don't authorize upgrades because they're afraid they would have to hire someone to gut out the ActiveX garbage that they bought off on several years ago and replace it with more securely designed controls.
> All these Bash-Microsoft threads only serve to remove cred from this forum, unless they contain some REAL NEWS or INFORMATION.
:-)
You must be new here
No matter how much you sit and debate about Vista to be installed or not installed in corporate networks, the leaders in your orgs are going to decide that. Because face it, most of you work for someone who works for someone .... (atleast 4 levels up). So just stay put and get your work done with what you have and stop cribbing. If it is about an issue relating to your home computer, keep yapping...
SAP Portal software doesn't work with IE7 without using a recent patch and huge orgs can't patch SAP without a shitstorm of trouble, so they just ban IE7 altogether. Oddly enough Firefox works with those versions of SAP Portal (although suffering from some minor rendering bugs causing very wide pages with scrollbars).
To some extent, Microsoft is trying to do the right thing. Vista's security is way better than XPs security, actually running as a user and prompting for permission to run with admin rights.
And IE7, though not perfect, is much better at rendering standard compliant webpages than IE6 ever was. IE7's method of installing ActiveX controls is way better than that IE6.
And yet vendors continue to write software that forces you to run as an admin, or uses IE6's proprietary rendering. Then Vista and IE7 come along, and everyone screams foul because the stuff they wrote IMPROPERLY IN THE FIRST PLACE won't work on Vista and IE 7.
We can't move to IE 7 at work because over a dozen vendors have web apps that drop unsigned ActiveX controls on the box. We have other vendors that won't sign their Java apps, so the newest version of JVM 1.5 causes us issues.
The biggest holdup for Vista won't be IT budgets, but poorly written apps. It's a good thing Microsoft bought Softricity. They're going to need it.
And for the record, I would use a Mac or Linux any day over Windows. And yes, I have used Vista.
Andy
... shame on you, fool me 7 times, shame on me
It's kinda funny to watch all these people on Slashdot try to rally against Microsoft. Meanwhile the world moves on... No average joe computer user will ever pick linux over windows as long as linux looks like something out of the late 80s. Mac, maybe. Linux, not a chance in hell. Update the UI and put UIs on top of the configuration files... or better yet, set up some sensible defaults from a USER's point of view so the config files are a non-issue. Also, stop wasting so much time trying to punch at Microsoft from a silly web forum, and spend that time working on the items above. Then maybe people will take all of you seriously. And editors, remember, bad publicity is still publicity... I think you're hurting your cause more than you're helping it... then again, I'm sure you're making plenty of money from all the page views these MS articles generate... Particularly from the MS ads you often have right underneath the summaries. For those of you with itchy mod points burning a hole in your Firefox sessions, please read the points I've made before you get defensive. Maybe you, too, could do something worthwhile (which modding is not) and help your cause a little.
all the way from Seattle!
If you haven't dumped that MS stock by now, you're an idiot!
Webmasters exist? A rare specimen indeed; we will use him for further scientific study.
I find it understandable that they don't upgrade the computers without reliability...
But when are they going to upgrade the roads. Every two years it's some lamo cheesy patch job. And maybe if we're lucky we get a turn lane mod. Then they add lanes which they claim are good for extra bandwidth, but they're stupid and allow too many new developments to connect and saturate the network. Then of course you've got system flooding, followed by a barrage of worms. If this happens often enough, then you've got guys showing up which go hacking into the tubes wrecking infrastructure stability, only to be followed by another lame patch job. Not to mention they seem to be on break more than actually constructing.
I want to upgrade to Roadways Autobahn Edition! Please?
I can so relate... At my work (IT dept for a large financial firm) IE 7 is NOT to be deployed, but our home Citrix users who have IE7 all have to uninstall. Lotus Notes also hates IE7, won't render anything HTML, PowerDesigner, almost all of our in-house software, Remedy... and those are the ones I have to deal with on a daily basis *sigh*
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Juniper SA is one example.
Dude, Juniper's SSL VPN solution works just fine with IE7. What firmware version are you running on your IVEs now?
posted anonymously so i don't un-do my moderation
You generally don't expect the government to catch on to the latest tech issues,
but this time they hit the issue dead on:
Windows Vista Is useless.
With Tax money hard to come by, and money needed for roads and bridges - not software
- I commend these administrators for avoiding unbounded and unnecessary IT expenses.
Score one for the Department of Transportation, Good Job!
didn't care for standards compliant bowsers
didn't refrain from using IE-only quirks in the server
didn't find anything wrong in re-coding the server every time a new browser version came out...
It is unfair that you are still a webmaster.
The world needs webmasters who understand their job is to be compliant with the entire web - not just the Microsoft portion of it.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
enough said.
Most companies waited a long time before upgrading to XP if they even did that--I still know some major companies using 2000. But the real question is why does ANYONE need to upgrade? Most offices need office applications, email and a web browser. A few people need other, more specialized programs. But if you've got one of the later versions of Office and Windows XP, WHY should you upgrade? And it's not like your users will appreciate having the latest and greatest--they just got used to the last version and you're going to hear a lot of complaints over items moved or changed. What REALLY is office 2007 going to do--make my coffee? Any new release from MS is going to be full of bugs and security holes--why deal with the hassle?
That's why Microsoft wants to move to a lease-type role model where you rent the software rather than own it--because there's no compelling need to change and eventually they will stop upgrading. Or, worse for MS, they'll move to other applications like Open Office.
Our office is certainly not going to Vista and not even IE7. We use Oracle portal for the web and testing found some issues using IE7 with it. I've also helped a friend with her website and commercial CDs. Security setting are almost backwards. We found IE7 will have some basic securities locked up so tight (like running a CD from the drive) that it's hard to find where to turn them off. More important things, like phishing security that should be left on and probably won't interfere, can easily be turned off by a menu, however.
While I currently have IE7 for testing, I personally use FireFox exclusively for everything else, it has everything I could want and then some.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
How do we know it's not the DOT IT guy's way of saying, "Hey Bill...my palm is wide open - if you grease it with enough of the green stuff, I might just might be able to find a justification to upgrade after all." Isn't that usually how these Microsoft-related moratoriums work?
Or in the real world you just push it out via a group policy while the employee isn't there.
"there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for downgrading to any Microsoft software products."
(Yes this is a blatent attempt to score karma by bashing MiCro$uX. So sue me if you want but mod me up and Linux is still te RoxXorZ)
Qxe4
If I remember correctly there were no such talks when Windows XP first came out. And you know why: Windows XP was generally compatible with all Windows 2000 software, most 2000 hardware drivers were compatible with XP.
In terms of compatibility XP was much easier to upgrade and that's why most businesses shun Vista.
Vista imposes too high demands on PCs (most corporate PCs have only 256 or 512MB of RAM these days) and lacks a way too many drivers. Not to mention hundreds of software titles which don't work nicely on Vista.
If you do any kind of backing up in tight spots then you need your mirrors.
I adjust mine so I can just see the door handles.
No sig today...
As a DOT employee I feel I should mention this is not a surprise. We just got our first XP upgrade less than a month ago, wouldn't make much sense to upgrade now. Also we have a hard enough time getting decent support for out 2000 and XP machines, I seriously doubt our IT staff (contracted) is up to taking on another OS.
I work for the DoD, and they have made it very clear - if IE 7.0, Windows Vista, or Office Vista is found on the network, you're in deep shit. But hell, we're still not even allowed to install SP1 for Windows 2003.
I'm a member of the United States Marines and my job is roughly that of an entry level IT professional. We (and by we I mean the Armed Forces) have been operating under a moratorium against upgrading our Microsoft products for years. The only authorized OS we can install, support, or allow access to ANYTHING on our network is Win2k. It's the only OS we're fairly confident has had most if not all of the security holes worked out of it. Of course if there was a security breach we couldn't do anything about it because of NMCI... I love when an Admiral forces a civilian organization down our throats that does the exact same job we do, with less responsiveness, less effectiveness, and a bill in the billion dollars range... And then resigns his commission as an Admiral to become the CEO of NMCI 6 months after he forces the acceptance. They of course can't do our job in the field so they settle for making our job difficult in garrison.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I'm willing to put money down that it wasn't months after XP came out.
I think Microsoft might finally have to realize that a lot of corporate and government customers just aren't going to upgrade every time there's a new version of Windows or Office. I work for a company that just grew insanely huge in the last 7 years. When they were small, they were in XP's rapid adoption program...but now we have almost 8 times the number of users and lots more supported applications.
We're trying to stay off Vista for as long as we can; we have almost 3000 machines that can't run it at all. Office 2007 is going to introduce way too many training headaches. Even though most of our users are savvy enough to pick up the new UI, there are a few who have never updated their skills from Office 95/97. I'd like to move us to IE 7 or Firefox for the better security and the fact that Microsoft is eventually going to pull IE 6 patch support. However, we're married to a ton of ActiveX which makes switching to non-IE browsers impossible. Also, lots of our outsourced app partners don't support IE 7 yet, or require an expensive upgrade to get it.
Microsoft already sees this, which is why they have the Software Assurance licensing model. We can run whatever supported version we want, as long as we pay. I don't think there will be too many iterations left for the monolithic desktop OS and office suite anyway... Eventually the web user interface problem will be solved, and connectivity will be universal. As much as I hate the whole Web 2.0 texting/blogging/YouTube/MySpace stuff [1], that's where the computing sector is headed. Pretty soon everyone will be using their cellphones to write spreadsheets.
[1] I don't really "hate" Web 2.0...I just don't like the fact that it's reduced people's attention spans even further...
If said Admiral forced the choice and then joined NMCI 6 months later as CEO he must have already known he was going to do that when he made the decision as appointments at that level take months to negotiate.
There seems thus cause to investigate said guy for conflict of interest as (on the basis of what you stated) there appears to be a valid basis for investigation, he's costing the US taxpayer billions.
If I recall correctly, rules were put in place to prevent potential for corruption.
Newer versions do, indeed, work.
This was not the case when IE7 first came out.
5.3R10 and 5.4R2.1 both seem to be reasonably stable versions that support IE7.
When IE7 came out, I believe 5.3R7 was the newest and SAM simply refused to run under IE7 at that point.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
You're absolutely right. A moratorium isn't necessarily a ban, it's the lack of action. They're just going to wait until someone tells them to upgrade.
According to Wikipedia, an operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. This means that the OS is not supposed to consume all of the resources of the computer it is running on, which Vista does nicely. It is incredible to me that you need 2G of memory with Vista to run the OS comfortably. It is incredible to me that the OS would have a so-called feature that lets you use flash memory as a memory boost, when such memory is far slower than system memory, and where flash memory has a limited number of write cycles anyway. I am an IT professional, and I run Windows XP Professional SP2 quite nicely on a dual-core PC having 2G of RAM and no swap file whatsoever. I repeat, zero virtual memory. I can run memory greedy applications like video editors with speedy response, no problems with memory whatsoever, and without having to close down any other apps. Vista as an operating system completely misses the boat. Instead of designing it to run faster on existing PCs, it is bloated to the point where it will run slower that XP, or may not install at all. Even on fairly new PCs, the OS may refuse to display it's fancy aero glass interface, which is nothing more than eye candy. Then there is the new user interface, which is idiotic. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out where Microsoft hid simple menu items on IE7, and then spent more than that trying to explain this "easy to use" interface to a non-technical user. What is the ROI on Vista? Most business PCs will have to be swapped out for high-end gaming PCs to take advantage of the aero glass interface and to preserve existing application performance levels. This comes at a great expense to businesses, and the power consumption of such PCs is higher too. Some existing applications will not work correctly, and users will face massive training issues. And the benefits of all of this are what, exactly? I applaud the decision of any and all government agencies to prevent the rollout of this bloated OS. It is, after all, my tax money we're talking about here. And yours.