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Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT

Posted by Zonk on from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.

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."'"

3 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why not IE7? by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Certainly our developers should not have relied on IE5/6 so much, but they did.
    Well, in their defense who would have ever thought they would have upgraded Internet Explorer after version 6? It's been a stable target over 5 years now! If you're going to develop proprietary web apps IE 6 was the best target for it since it was installed on 95% of the desktops out there.
  2. Re:Nothing really unusual about it by ryanov · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Wouldn't turning your head behind you cause you to rearend the guy who's cutting you off/stopping in front of you? Use the mirrors and keep your eyes forward.

  3. Kinda funny.. by asylumx · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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.