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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. Nothing really unusual about it by 2.7182 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Nothing really unusual about it by IDontAgreeWithYou · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where I work we just switched to XP from Windows 2000 less than 2 years ago. We won't switch to Vista anytime in the near future (my guess is three years at least). This isn't a story, it's standard practice. In order to upgrade, you need to do a lot of testing and updating software, especially in-house apps. If they were using Linux, they wouldn't update the kernel as soon as it was available either.

      --
      Finding other idiots on /. that agree with your opinion doesn't make it any less stupid.
  2. Fixed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to any Microsoft software products."