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A Majority of Businesses Will Not Move To Vista
oDDmON oUT writes "An article on the Computerworld site quotes polling results from a potentially-divisive PatchLink survey. The poll shows that the majority of enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'. A majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version of Windows. This comes on the heels of a dissenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked a heated discussion on numerous forums."
Perhaps this could be because they are already satisfied with the versions of Windows that they have? At least satisfied enough that they will put off upgrading and spending all that money until a few years from now.
It didn't suck enough. Stuff works with it, it's secure enough, it's no longer costly, it uses a fraction of the firepower recommended for Vista.
I don't think Vista is a bad OS at all. But if XP is working fine, and the next step up is only a mild improvement (and from my experience, something that the home user will notice more than a work user), it's not worth switching. XP just isn't bad enough to move on from.
(Now, if only OS's could get crappier over time, like cars...) Maybe MS should release a "critical update" that turns it into Windows ME or 98.
I like basketball!!1!
Notwithstanding the issues some users are having, Vista seems to me to be more of a consumer oriented operating system. It doesn't really have much to add to businesses beyond UAC, which I'm guessing most system administrators will turn off (in exchange for one of their internal security policies). Thats not even considering the fact that large businesses are extremely slow to upgrade to anything new. We only got XP Service Pack 2 where I work in the past year.
Businesses were *very* slow to adopt XP for many of the same reasons. Until the platform is patched up some and compelling business reasons come out in favor of migrating, they won't. It's been like that with every Windows release actually. This isn't news; it is normal.
Whether businesses will have a choice when they order new computer's through their provider.
It's unbelievable what they have compromised just so they can have flashy graphics and smooth looking buttons. It all boils down to one thing in the end however, I just don't see any benefit to upgrading any time soon so therefore there's no reason to. We will continue to buy our new PCs from Dell with Windows XP on them until they either quit offering it or we have a piece of equipment that requires it.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
For some reason, our software licensing folk installed Vista on all public access terminals this last weekend, contrary to the position taken by our IT people and our College of Business who decided to stay with XP until Vista was a little more office friendly. Won't somebody think of the students!?
2% said they are already running Vista
9% said they planned to roll out Vista in the next three months.
87%, said they would stay with their existing version(s) of Windows.
8% of those polled acknowledged Linux plans and
4% said they would deploy Mac OS X.
I would say "many will stick with the Windows they have", certainly, but I'm not sure I would call 8% or 4% 'many'. And somehow I suspect 'linux plans' might not mean complete replacement of Windows on the desktop.
Just my $0.02
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Even small businesses can request a custom image be loaded on most of the major PC manufacturer's product lines. It's home consumers who get stuck with whatever the OS du jour is.
:)
I hear a lot of people bitching about XP every day, but they'd all be loathe to switch to Vista. In fact, they'd have a good chuckle at the very notion. I'm actually impressed that relatively many are considering an alternate OS....
u-bend
I suppose this is probably a hoary old chestnut, but I always wonder how long we can be kept on the upgrade band-wagon. Up until quite recently, I ran a Windows 98 machine because it did most of the things I needed it to do. I could connect to the web, make SSH connections, write Word documents and play (older) games. It also had a really small install and ran on a crappy old machine.
For people who don't need the latest and greatest hardware support, where is the motivation to upgrade at all? I suppose there are probably security issues with the older Windows versions, but I think you can avoid a lot of this by being careful; something which will probably still be necessary with Windows 2060.
This argument applies even further with application software like Word. I'm not sure I've noticed any of Word's new features since they started underlining my spelling errors, and yet there have been quite a few major (expensive) version since then. Other than version incompatibility and the fact that everybody else is upgrading, why do we need a new version?
Peter
Microsoft has simply discovered that bloat != functionality (and that marketing correctly is important). XP works great, handles all current software that businesses need, and the improvements in the OS are things that are available as freeware add-ons today (and probably work better, at least in the public opinion). The other "under the hood" changes don't mean much to the average Joe User or PHB, and anyone who values "cool desktop graphics" over functionality has already bought a Mac. Try selling a business on spending a ton of money on conversion costs to an OS that requires faster hardware (upgrades) and provides little benefit in the current business marketplace over existing solutions and see how far YOU get.
Most small or medium sized companies can stay with XP for awhile if it is working for them. But when you get into larger companies you have to keep in mind 'how long does MS plan on supporting XP'. Most larger companies will not run on unsupported software or hardware. It might seem trivial, considering that's how most good sysadmins see xp. But, from a business stand point it's an unnecessary risk.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Give it a few years. 98 took 95's place, xp took 98's place, and vista is coming to xp computers. Even if the foss/linux zeal^H^H^H advocates don't like it and enjoy stories like that. I find it stupid to think that everyone should move to an OS which has been released 6 months ago and most likely needs an upgraded computer. And if they don't, it's something that has never happened before and is going to bring linux to the front.
If adoption of open document standards becomes widespread, there will be virtually no reason not to move to linux, Mac or anything else. If you can access all you documents, browse the web and play solitaire in these alternatives, 85% of all business needs are covered.
Is there a free alternative to MSAccess? If so, change that fake statistics to 95%.
Our company has decided to order a PC with Vista only for software testing purposes; we figure one of our customers is going to run our software on Vista one of these days, so we might as well be prepared for them. That being said, we won't be deploying Vista for our own internal use for quite some time. My box still runs on Windows 2000.
Letting MS know that the only way they will get you to make a shift to VISTA is if they poke you in the eye with a freshly charged TASER simply means they won't waste time with other methods.
Why even let MS (or any other entity for that matter) know anything about your future business plans? At least make them work for it, sheeshhh.
Question to MS: "What are your business product pricing plans for the future in regards to VISTA?"
MS: "No comment."
Question to business owner: "What are your software purchasing plans for the future in regards to VISTA?"
Business owner: "IT says to hold off for now, however, we've budgeted a 23% increase in software spending starting Q3, extending on an open/per need basis for the remainder of the fiscal year. Can I have my LOLCAT mouse pad now?"
Why not just hand MS a blank check...
I can't imagine ANYONE using Vista. I tried - honestly - to like it for at least a week. However, when you get screens like the one below, you just have to upgrade to Linux..
i sta_register2.jpg.jpg
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2007/20070519_v
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
There is no way our company is going to Vista anytime soon. Not only is it hard to find any of the normal tasks but when you do it takes 1-3 steps more than in XP or 2000. That I can live with. What I cannot live without is the Run AS functionality that has been in Windows since NT 4.0. The Run As defaults to using the Local Admin account and there is no way to change it. I do not allow any of my employees to log into the computer with an Admin account. They can run applications with an admin account by using the Run As command. That no longer works and creates a huge security and management problem. I cannot believe they would let such a simple but criticle thing dissapear. I have inquired with our VAR for our enterprise agreement, no answer. Spoke with a MCT with no resolution.
Their other huge problem is 64bit programs. Even though all new computers have 64bit processors there are very few admin programs that run on a 64bit OS. Also trying to print with a 64 bit OS on a 32bit windows print server is frustrating at best.
The problem with Vista is not with Vista itself. The migration of Windows XP was reasonable because any pre-existing operating system from Microsoft just didn't cut it. Several years later, XP is so mature and secure that the advantages between XP and Vista are less significant. Had Vista been released in its current state two years ago, I guess Vista would have been an obvious choice.
I have no doubt Vista will become significantly better in a couple of years and narrow the competition with the next-gen Windows, but that's how it should be too. After all, XP and 2K were very similar at first, until service packs and such made XP much better. In the meantime, development of 2K halted, which presented a bigger gap between the two systems. The same will happen with XP and Vista.
Full Tilt
Unfortunately. XP is horribly insecure in the default configuration, and few companies have administrators that know enough to make it secure AND useable. Hence the widespread threat of trojans that companies are not even aware of.
A recent survey by websense (unfortunately in German, so rather useless for most people reading here) came up with 98% of companies considering their security "adequate" or better, 53% thinking their security is "very good". 66% of middle management thought that nothing could penetrate their security, their IT guys are rather suspicious, only 25% share the view of their management. Still a lot, if you ask me...
Unfortunately, admins rarely make the decisions when it comes to purchases. They only have to suffer from them.
And the rest of Vista, the eye candy and the fluff, aren't a selling point either for companies. A company doesn't care whether their workers get to "enjoy" their "computing experience" more. Their question is: Does it increase productivity? And the answer is probably no.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
(Now, if only OS's could get crappier over time, like cars...) Maybe MS should release a "critical update" that turns it into Windows ME or 98.
Couldn't help think of Cinderella when you said that. But is that what people really want? Do they really want software decay? No.
That's part of what older generations can't grasp... is how software is infinite and does not degrade like every other product. That means the best business model with software will always be SERVICE not product or captive audience. Just offer a service that makes sense and people will buy it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So long as enterprises continue to pay their maintenance bills, Microsoft doesn't care whether they upgrade or not. In fact, MS can put XP in "special status" in a year and charge extra on top of maintenance to support it.
...they could make a compelling upgrade, so users want to upgrade.
It wouldn't be the first time they copied a certain fruit company.
But they will probably just stop supporting XP, and then that 87% will buy Vista, for fear of the next virus.
Lies about crimes
we started last year replacing Windows 2000 with XP in our company. Vista is far away still. Why should any company adapt to a OS before it is tried and tested?
I've met more than a couple sysadmins who were being very indignant about Vista at first with the whole "It sucks, nothing works, DRM is t3h evil, I'm switching to Linux!" line. However as time has gone on none of them have made even a budge in that direction and are indeed toying with Vista. The "Well I'll just switch to Linux then," almost seems to be the sysadmin equivalent of a tantrum in some cases. They threaten with a switch that they not only have no real intention of making, but indeed no idea what would be involved.
Also, given those choices, I'm not surprised there are a small number that are switching. Had you asked me before recently if we were rolling Vista out in the next three months the answer would have been no. We are going to roll it out (somewhere around three months is the timetable for the first lab I'm planning on converting) but it isn't like we are just going to rush in to it. Things need to be tested, license needs to be hashed out and purchased, etc, etc. So while our long term answer is "Yes we are going to slowly convert all systems to Vista in the coming years," we aren't going to be converting them tomorrow or anything.
Really, all the doom and gloom about Vista seems silly as it has been doing just like past Windows OSes, and even a bit better if you use sales number as the benchmark. Adoption isn't going to be in a big rush, but rather a slow trickle. Right now Vista systems are pretty rare, I'm guessing only slightly more common than Windows 2000 systems. Next time this year I bet they are common, but under 50%. Year after that I bet they are the majority, year after that I bet XP is downright rare.
It is how is has generally gone in the past, no reason to assume it'll be different this time as their are no different indicators. No, the increased hardware demands are nothing new. I remember the bitching with XP over 2000 and particularly NT (which some were running when XP came out). Now, the issues seem like squabbling given the progress in computer power. Similar deal with Vista. It may sound like a lot when someone says "Really, you should ahve a gig of RAM for it," until you realise that a gig of RAM is $50 or less. It really isn't a big deal these days and will only become less so in the future.
Well... my sample is a bit smaller, as only two people I know have used Vista in the first place. But both of them were not so happy.
;-)
One is the owner of a small electronics company, and his experience (relayed to me through a colleague) was that he encountered several problems. OK, it's hearsay and not very accurate...
The other one is a software tester from a consulting company we work with. He told me in person that they "set up one laptop for evaluation, and ended up deciding not to switch to Vista". I know the guys from that company as competent testers and reasonably knowledgeable about Windows. If they have trouble getting it to work right, I conclude that the average user should avoid Vista
C - the footgun of programming languages
A verizon cell phone takes pictures, but I can't transfer them to my hard drive, so it is a broken digital camera. Therefore, that "feature" is not a selling point for me.
The iPhone doesn't support Flash or Java (and won't ever support them, from what I hear, because Apple wants to be the only company that can write software for it). Thus, it is broken both as a handheld computer and as a web browser. Again, those features, as cool as they are, are not selling points for me.
Windows Vista comes with spyware, DRM, and other such malware built-in as part of the core OS. Thus, it will not do what I want it to do, and it will do things I don't want it to do. It's new features are not selling points for me.
What I am getting at is this trend, both in software land and gadget land, of trying to make consumers buy products that limit them, rather than empower them. It is as if they are saying, "of course you want it to be an open and compatible system, but if you have that then you might be able to do things of which I disapprove (whether they are legal or not) or for which I would prefer to charge you. So, I will not give you what you want, but you will buy it anyway."
No, I won't.
Large business cant wait forever for main 3 reasons:
1 - MOLP will require it after a grace period
2 - soon, you wont be able to buy a pc with XP. And then later you wont be able to get one with XP support ( drivers )
2a - supporting mixed environments suck, so they will end up upgrading the rest.
3 - new software will eventually require vista.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
About a month after MS announce the date they will shelve support for XP. Remember when XP was shiny and new, or at least shiny and a year old and businesses had a low (though not quite as low) adoption rate? As soon as they announced the date of EoL for 2000, businesses started adopting. It'll happen again this time. MS collects from business about 2 years after each OS release by coercing them by pulling support.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
it's still a turd. the problem plaguing windows is they don't ever fix the core problems completely, instead they half ass it and throw on 50 new tools or band aids to help you detect or prevent the problem, just fix the issue and you wont need more tools.
cpus are fast enough these days, they need to finally just go to a whole new root archeticture, and emulate everything that is old. the major problem with this is they will add in a slew of DRM and bullshit that no one needs, it will only make things slower and harder to use, so i guess i would just rather have xp.
Businesses are real slow to adopt new upgrades, especially when the development environment needs to be very stable. In fact, I literally just got a notice that testing is complete and IT will be installing XP Service Pack 2. That is right, service pack 2.
We develop a lot of aerospace software and are required to maintain development environments that can reliably and consistently reproduce software loads over long periods of time (think life of an aircraft). Using a new OS can throw a monkey wrench into older tools, so we are careful to jump on any new OS or whatever. Not that every company has the same issues, but I bet many have similar concerns. After all, if it ain't broke, why fix it?
This is not really news, is it? I work for an international company of 38,000 employees, i.e. not just a Mom & Pop shop, and we have only recently started moving from W2K to XP.
I guess Microsoft will have to leak one of their security flaws to the public/script kids, and not fix it for a few months, but say it doesn't effect Vista in the meantime.
I'm mostly joking.
No one is buying Vista and vendors are revolting. I'm making a list, enjoy!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I simply can't understand software company logic. They sell a 'product', that is, a cardboard box containing a disk and a book. A few years later they sell more or less the same product (a disk and a book in a cardboard box) with a few changes. But they won't reduce the cost of the previous product. They simply refuse to sell or allow anyone else to sell the previous product at a reduced rate. It makes no sense and no other business (or at least any business that actually makes things) works like this.
Company BozoTron makes Bozo-XKE, a software program that does, well, something. They release version 1.0 and it sells a few at $299 a box. Two years later, they release super-improved Bozo-XKE v2.0 (which does nothing more than muck up the user interface that all their customers took so long to learn, and fix a few bugs). It sells for $379 a box. But you can't buy the old version 1.0 at $100. And the owners of v1.0 can't sell their software for $100 to someone else and have BozoTron continue their support with the new owner. Some software companies might do this, but not BozoTron. You also can't split the v1.0 package and sell one part of it to a company (that will only use that section of the software, and doesn't need the rest of the package) for $50.
So absurd and insane. The only reasonable thing to do is just make copies of XKE and use them however you like. Which drives BozoTron nuts. But that wouldn't be happening if they were a reasonable company with a reasonable marketing plan to begin with. But they aren't, they're a software company, a fantasy business, a virtual corp that only works as long a people agree to continue to give them money.
Now I realize that this goes against everything that the Slashdot community believes in and threatens your livelihood, such that it is, but the only true value in software is what wealth it can create when applied to other economic resources. In itself, software is worthless. Its only value is when it's applied to other techniques, processes, and materials and increases the ability of those other techniques, processes, and materials to make money.
So indeed, if XP is making you money and the cost of going to Vista is going to cost you more money than XP is making for you, then nobody is going to switch to Vista. Microsoft should franchise their old operating systems. Let some other company buy a support license from Microsoft to be the people who adapt and fix the bugs in Windows 98 and continue to support it in its various business environments. They are fools for expecting people to abandon old OS installs and go to unproven alternatives. That used to work for the first twenty-five years of the office PC, but it's beginning to change. People are beginning to realize that their corporate PC needs don't match Microsoft's corporate expansion needs. It used to be that what was good for Microsoft was good for the rest of the corporate community. Now that basic symbionic relationship is splitting. This would be good for the Linux community, but they are too splintered for reliable corporate support. It would be good for Apple, but they took too much LSD and it still shows with their obsession with flashy expensive electronic trinkets instead of rugged flexible low-cost computing systems. Eventually someone else will step up to fill the needs that Microsoft used to be able to do before they lost their way.
It's not because they hate Vista like the article is implying. It's because they will not upgrade until absolutely necessary because of money and time. That is all.
2% said they are already running Vista
9% said they planned to roll out Vista in the next three months.
87%, said they would stay with their existing version(s) of Windows.
--
98% continue to run Windows, with at least 88% exclusively.
Heck, we're a Microsoft gold partner, and we haven't moved to Vista yet. Personally I've been doing a lot of work for large and conservative institutions, several of which have been doing the 2k -> XP migration in the last year or two. Do you think Microsoft really cares if they get their upgrade licenses six months or five years after release? They're far too conservative to jump over a generation even if Windows 2010 or whatever is out by then. Microsoft can practicly book the revenue already, which will come in around the time XP moves into extended support. I think a lot of businesses are that way, it's very rare for an OS to have important new bells and whistles for business users.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is a rather disgusting image, and should be modded down.
XP did not do well but Vista is doing much worse. The rejection seems to be universal. The same low percentage (12%) of business and home users say they want an "upgrade". M$'s power to push upgrades is over and with that goes the whole vendor manipulation monopoly.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
can someone make a HARDENED WINDOWS XP version please :) hehehe
Strive to be happy...
"Unfortunately. XP is horribly insecure in the default configuration, and few companies have administrators that know enough to make it secure AND useable. Hence the widespread threat of trojans that companies are not even aware of." - by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday July 31, @12:00PM (#20058601)
9 03947c5f2702d44e6171255963378&p=375355#post375355
i ntsCISToolResult84735.jpg
See this then:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?s=4e
For any/all admins that want to see a score like this one on their client-nodes in their LAN/WAN, for scores on the CIS Tool 1.x (THE CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITIES' MULTI-PLATFORM ONLINE SECURITY TEST (which runs on BSD variants, Linux, Solaris (*NIX-s) & Win32 via JAVA)):
http://img.techpowerup.org/070618/APK14SecurityPo
It works vs. that which you mention Opportunist, & outlines how to get that score (84.735/100) via an easy to use simple 12 step guide!
APK
the majority of Vista users without problems are not out on the messages boards singing its praises, they (like me) are simply using their computer and find it more pleasent than XP.
What, all seven of them?
By your reasoning, the web should be filled with people complaining about gnu/linux, Apple and every OS. That's clearly not the case, as not even M$'s mighty astroturf engine can fill the web. People who use gnu/linux, OSX and other alternatives mostly love it. People who make the Vista mistake tend to hate it and there's lots of "give me back my XP" business going on in local shops.
People know about Vista but don't want it. M$ has done a good job telling everyone about Vista. 87% of home users know about it and 100% of business IT people know, but only 12% of either group wants it. The rejection is universal.
[some] (like me) are simply using their computer and find it more pleasent than XP. ... I'm not posting to say you should upgrade or that I think you need Vista right now..
I'm happy Vista does what you want, but you have to realize that when the best that said is "wait" people are not going to want it. People who want a real upgrade and vendors who want to survive are going to look to gnu/linux, OSX or any other place that works. That goes double when there are people like me out there who will tell you that it does not take much to do better than XP's expensive, horribly annoying and unstable, single screen UI. When you throw in all the programs and hardware that won't work on Vista and that it's easier to move to gnu/linux, Vista's dead in the water.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"my main objective was to point out flaws in your reasoning used to tell your boss not to buy Vista"
The same could be said for you. Let's see, first, there's this gem "Hmm.. I didn't think reading stories counted as research anymore, but I guess it does nowadays". So you're suggesting that he ignore published stories in the press, as well as other people's experiences? You've GOT to be kidding. I don't know how you do your own research, but it's apparently flawed right at the start.
There's a concept in math called "necessary but not sufficent". You apparently don't do enough necessary research yourself, and what ever conclusions you draw will be insufficient.
Then, you follow this up immediately by this other gem: "Ahh, one test machine and you've written off Vista". So let me get this straight. So now you start harping on him for actually doing research on a live machine.
So how many machines should he keep trying until Vista works? Honestly, that is just so laughable as to be rediculous. Time, esepecially in a small business, is extremely precious. Most people don't have weeks to dink around with every possible solution until something actually works. It either flies or it doesn't. Apparently, for the GP, there's not enough motivation to move to Vista, and you are trying berate him for Microsoft's own failures.
I also trust you're not familiar with the definition of madness. And that is: trying the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
In short, your view is madness. Before you start pointing out flaws in others' reasoning, you should take a good long look at yourself, because honestly you strike me as either a Microsoft shill, or tecnically incompent. And frankly a bit of both.
Many businesses kept Windows 2000 well after XP came out.
Why? One, it was the "unknown" as in "we don't know what bugs are lurking around the corner."
Two, it isn't trivial to convert an enterprise. Training costs alone are substantial, not to mention the other costs of rolling out a new OS.
In order to defeat XP in the business marketplace, Vista has to be not "just as good as" but actually "better than" XP.
In some ways, Vista has clear advantages over XP:
* It has a longer shelf life. XP support will end sooner.
* It has certain security features not found in XP
* It has certain non-security features not found in XP
On the other hand, it has some distinct disadvantages:
* It presumably has more unknown security bugs than XP, although over time this will approach zero
And of course those things that are "different" which make it more costly than XP for established businesses:
* It has some different bugs than XP
* It has some different features than XP
* The look and feel is somewhat different than XP
I'm sure there are many other advantages, disadvantages, and differences of XP vs. Vista.
It is up to each customer to decide which version of Windows, if any, suits him best.
My personal opinion?
Defer ditching XP as long as possible, but plan on being XP-free well before support ends. "As long as possible" may be "we had to buy Vista the day it shipped" or "we'll stick with XP until the day before support expires" depending on your business needs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x =8&y=10&p1=3223
Mainstream support stops on 4/14/2009
Extended support goes out the door 4/8/2014
Mod Great Great Great Grandparent Up. +5
if Microsoft wants to improve sales of Vista all they need to do is move up the date that they will no longer provide patches for WinXP (security patches). That's the way it happened at my gov agency. They were running Win98 and HAD to upgrade because MS said they would no longer provide security patches.
1) The CEO trades in his/her old laptop for a new one with Vista preloaded. Now (s)he can't do X anymore over the VPN to the company intranet. X being some function for which the Vista API has been redesigned for maximum incompatibility. CEO becomes entraged, pounds his/her fist on the big mahogany table and demands that everyone upgrade immediately. IT department capitulates and orders Vista and the several hundred million dollars of new hardware needed to support it for everyone.
2) Someone points out that the CEO will no longer be welcome at the Bill Gates annual CEO dinner if his/her company isn't up to spec. CEO demands that IT department upgrade everyone to Vista. See above for details.
Have gnu, will travel.
Vista has plenty of security improvements and may well be Microsoft's mote secure Windows version yet.
BUT... Due to the problems with Windows XP's security, I bet most companies already have good third party firewalls, spam filtering, and antivirus tools in place. We already subscribe to the enterprise edition of NOD32 antivirus that has an excellent track record, and use a Linux server with Smoothwall for our firewalling and VPN purposes. (and I'm eager to upgrade to the new Smoothwall 3)
Microsoft has to assume people already have security infrastructures in place, and then the question is no longer "is Vista secure", but "what more does Vista offer than this". And I believe that is the problem for Microsoft. Vista offers no earth shattering security improvements, it merely brings it on par with most existing Unix-based operating systems. But if companies have already taken care of that in other ways by using complete security suites with reasonable subscription fees, why should they discard all that, that already works, to spend a lot of money in retraining staff and reinstalling Vista operating systems en masse? It's a huge risk for no clear benefits.
Vista is clearly better than XP security-wise from my experiences, but the thing is that XP + third party security tools (often free and even open source) is usually good enough.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
We have 2000+ desktops. Out of those maybe 500 could run Vista right now; we still run Win2k on a number of the older ones but are trying to standardise on XPSP2.
So far the only (and I mean -ONLY-) compelling feature I have seen in Vista is the ability to easily control 802.1X (P)EAP settings for the wired network interface from Active Directory GPO policies.
Seriously - that's it. If I deployed Vista we would have never ending complaints about nothing working, and even slower machines.
Maybe we will look a moving when drivers stop being available for XP for newer machines that we buy in 5 years or so, but I will be looking to migrate to thin clients or maybe a desktop Linux by then.
XPSP2 as it stands works ok for us for now.
TheSHAD0W attempts self amusement:
Students are going to have to learn how to use Vista, so might as well dump 'em in at the deep end...
I don't think so. I think it's more like this:
M$ is going to have to learn how to use free software, so might as well dump 'em in at the deep end...
Only unconditional GPL of all of their code will remove them from further suspicion.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No, it only managed to capture 97% of the desktop market.
Agreed. It's like the ribbons: I'm a casual Word user but get stuck fixing things like macros and styles for my clients from time-to-time. The old interface was always easy to find my way around and was one less thing I had to worry (VBScript) about.
Now, with the ribbons, I can't find anything, simply because Office is over the "useful feature" curve and had to resort to an interface purging in order to drum up some press and feature bullets for the marketing material.
My company is not moving to Vista. I moved to Linux on my work desktop right around the Vista retail launch, and the entire company will shortly be moving to follow suit.
We have no qualms about paying for operating systems/software when the situation merits (hard working programmers ought to be paid for said hard work, in many cases) we're not too thrilled with Microsoft's confusing, expensive, and sometimes outright predatory "licensing" schemes. Under Microsoft's rule, we frequently pay considerably more for software that does the same thing or in some cases is the same software as normal users because just because we are "corporate." We pay assloads of money for an MSDN subscription that basically stipulates that we aren't allowed to use any of the software except for "evaluation and testing," at which point we're expected to pay for a retail license for said software. It's stupid.
Vista's DRM-in-your-face design philosophy was the last straw for us. We might maintain a (probably pirated) Vista box somewhere in the office for when we need it for compatibility purposes, but it'll spend most of its life unplugged under somebody's desk. It's "legacy" Windows and Linux for us.
A silly AC taunts:
XP did not do well - No, it only managed to capture 97% of the desktop market.
By M$ standards and needs, even your inflated share is not good enough. It took two or three years for XP to gain majority share, which is one of the reasons M$ has delayed Vista for so long. Their absolute growth has not been anything good and Wall Street was not convinced - M$'s stock price has remained flat since the tech crash of the late 90's:
Ouch, that's got to hurt. Wait till they see how well Vista is really doing. It's all over for them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Turn to Linux or Mac OS X in the workplace? Yeah, right. 99.9% will stick with XP if they are not moving to Vista. Desktop Linux is a pipe dream.
OS 9 blew by comparison to OS X (10.2 and higher) - X was the one thing Classic had never, ever been - stable.
:P
Those system requirements, though? The last revision of OS 9 required 32-64 megs of ram (iirc it needed at least 32 or 48 to install but you could run it with less once it was on disk), had virtually zero VRAM requirments (the requirment being "a video card") and ran useably (for varying definitions of useable) on machines ranging from 60mhz to 1.4ghz. Virtual memory was optional and ram paritioning (much as everyone hated it) meant that you could balance your application load so that you could run everything you wanted with no danger of any app stealing memory from any other app.
Then here comes OS X, which runs like absolute SHIT at its minimum requirment of 256 megs of ram, runs like a slug on 512 and finally gets useable at around a gig or two. A lot of older video cards that worked on 9 don't work on X, and you need at least 32 megs of VRAM to enable GPU offloading - 64 if you want some of the newer features. Aaaand the OS runs useably on machines ranging from dual G4 450s up to present day hardware. Anyone with older kit is, in a word, humped. Hell, I can't even run photoshop useably under OS X on my home machine, and it's a 1ghz G4 with a gig of ram.
Oh, and the OS is incessantly writing to disk and eats VM like a pig. Every app can steal ram from every other app, so a total pig of an app like After Effects will drive your web browsers into swap, where they get to wait long seconds or longer minutes to load new windows and URLS while AE renders out video. Among other examples.
So. New OS. Five times the system requirements. Runs like complete shit unless you plonk down the cash for brand new hardware. All kinds of security and stability enhancements. Big pretty new interface that exists only to eat shitloads of CPU and GPU.
Only it's produced by Apple instead of Microsoft, so it's the greatest thing EVER.
Of course, Mac users are used to being forced into buying new kit every two or three years anyway, so we're all used to it.
Before breaking out the champagne, I would like to know how this poll or survey was conducted. PatchLink, after all, has a vested interest in operating systems and apps that need third-party patch solutions.
I am 2/3 of the IT department in a company with 4 locations, 200 users, 20 thin clients and 100 PCs. We are currently 80% Win XP, 15% Mac, 5% Linux. We are NOT migrating to Vista, ever. We have eliminated all MS software other than Windows, moving to Thunderbird+Firefox+OpenOffice over the last year. Our plan is to get away from Windows completely before XP reaches EOL and never touch Vista.
s/XP/3.1/g; s/Vista/XP/g
.NET 4 or whatever the latest bizapp is built on and here comes the upgrade cycle same as it ever was.
Dude, I am right there with ya every time but eventually the world moves on and the status quo changes. Before you know it something requires
And so you know where I'm coming from: I installed various builds of Vista and was hoping RTM would fix this fatal flaw that kept my "supported" vidcard and my "supported" motherboard and my "supported" CPU from working together. No such luck, so I too am sworn off of Vista till I can afford to upgrade.
I have a win32 app that's been run on all win32 platforms, including WINE. But in recent years, as IT departments became 'sophisticated' about security (i.e. stopped running all users as admin), we started having permissions problems on .ini files. I was using the 'standard' GetPrivateProfile... stuff to access .ini files in the 'default' location, which turned out to be C:\Windows. Now, if you ask me, this was a bug in XP. Why on earth should the default location for storing application settings be someplace that non-admin users can't access?
.ini files from C:\windows into the user's application data area. So now it 'just works'. Makes sense for the default location for an .ini file to be someplace user-writeable, no? Anyway, it's still 'broken' in XP, but I just have them make those ini files globally writeable, and then it works.
Anyway I was gearing up to bite the bullet and 'fix' this to hardcode a path (I don't want to use the registry), when Vista came along. When I tested my app on Vista, I found out that they changed the default behavior to create per-user copies of
So, I guess Vista's not *all* bad. But it's a hell of a lot slower than XP ever was.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
*duh*
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
You've hit the remaining unresolved issue from 2000 on the head: Is there any way to hold Streissand, a Baldwin or two, and other miscellaneous Hollywood folks to their promise to leave the country? :)
hawk
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
MS doesn't have the numbers of free "beta testing" users... who pay for a product and get to work out it's bugs, thanks MS for making this the norm... with Vista. Apparently millions of testers isn't enough... MS leaves so many holes in the bloat that a billion "testers" are needed over the course of 5 to 6 years.
I've spoken to many people who have used and hated Vista and a few who have sworn if off entirely.
What's really relevant is that Vista came out at a time Microsoft desperately needed to hit a home run. Instead Vista turns out to be a one-hopper to the short stop. An unexpected bonus for Linux and especially Apple.
The culture that produced Vista didn't arise overnight, it's been building for ten years. Vista is the product that comes out of a broken corporate environment.
Ballmer needs to go. He's not the only one, but he needs to go first.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Every Geek has to fight off questions about computers from friends and family. To the point where it is usually worse than being a doctor who gets pestered by the senile elderly, (IANAD, foo.)
When those computers I had unfortunately adopted to janitor status had XP on them, those compies mewled and crashed and bitched, (not to mention their users,) because of being patched 17 million ways to Sunday. Every time I went near one of them they had to be fiddled with. (Yes it may just be my shit luck there, snarky.) These are the type of users who keep clicking past the Avast! popups to tell them to re-register for a year instead of just re-registering. (So Avast! stops working and they keep clicking through for months, annoyed, until I'm near the computer again!)
I'm saying that XP made me feel like an ignorant stub who hasn't been working with computers since the late 80's. I hated even seeing some people who I just couldn't help being nice to, but ended up troubleshooting and fixing XP for hours because I couldn't reformat.
Enter Vista earlier this year. I was so fed up with the Fisher Price, Mega Bloc colored XP that I slapped Vista on what was surely underpowered, 512meg ram, 8meg!!! video card, 1ghz processor machines. ANYTHING!!! because these people looked at my Xubuntu live cd trials as flaming horse vomit.
The crazy thing is, those brutal hairless kitties choked down Vista, ran just a bit slower (but not enough for the click-through annoyed crowd to complain about) and the strangest thing occurred...
The crap computers and their owners fell silent and became completely usable. Maybe it's the quiet before storm, but they've been quiet for 6 months and I've just been friggin happy that the calls and the complaining and the fiddling have stopped.
I almost want to cry when I think about how peaceful the holidays might be!!!!
Here's the recipe for the sodden Geek who is a slave to their niceness and bitch computers, where Linux is not an option even when it should be.
Vista - even on a 512meg, 1ghz
Firefox and Thunderbird if needed
VLC and Media Player Classic
Whatever Old Office version is laying around
Heaven and Virgins and a nice Reincarnation and all that jazz will be yours again, if'n only for a short while.
And no, this is not some Microsoftie fanatic propagandizing. I'm a fed up XP maintainer of crap who just wants to enjoy the company of family and friends while he uses Xubuntu. As a Linux user I think there is too much Vista bashing going around when it has been nothing short of miraculously kind to me.
Fixed the link for you.
Vista has mental problems
At the very end of the line, Classic was pretty much together, and Apple had finished up its unfinished business before the move to OS X.
7.5 was abysmal (lockups) but still better than Win95 at recognizing peripherals, compatibility, software installs and such.
Facebook is back up! Yay!!
...So would Linux.
Will businesses upgrade then, or is that *also* asking 2GB+ and DX10?
It's not offtopic if it's a Vista derivative, no? (Or has m$ gone the other way with LS)
I'm a Sysadmin of a small Realty company, and over the past 2 years I've converted the entire office to Windows 2000. The office consists of a 500 mhz machine, up to a 3.5ghz screamer that can run the newest games; all on Windows 2000.
Also using just freeware security, scanners, plus not using Outlook express, and IE, our entire setup has been malware free for the entire 2 years. Just minor problems (say a tracking cookie or such.)
So I agree. WHY do we need Vista? Security? Yawn, please...XP? XP's nice, but too much gets in the way, and not to mention that aggravating activation.
I've pretty much told the owner, that upgrading to Vista would be a major and costly mistake. I also said that look at this; MS's support for Windows 2000 is still around, and since most businesses still run Win2k, MS"s not going to drop support of it quickly. (I've heard rumors for at least another 3 years but that's MS so take it with a grain of salt.) After that, we can switch to XP, so I'm thinking that we have at least 10 or so years before MS drops their support for anything less than Vista.
Then take into account programmer's support. Win98 support is disappearing from programmers, and how long did that last? 8 years? So that means at least 10 years for programmers to drop support for the NT core. So REAL need to move to Vista? Tell me in 10 years.
Of course, in 10 years, we can easily move to Linux, or Mac OS. MS's lost us with Vista I believe.
- Kevin C. Redden
The WOW starts now!
I'm sure of it! Hasn't anyone else been paying attention?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Gosh, you mean they'll have to be happy being fucking enormous for a little while before they figure out how to grow again?
Kind of like Digital Research, but M$ has been ten times more fuck than the rest of the industry combined. Think big fat dinosaur.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With all of these good rumours going round about Vista, I have suddenly in the last month got a PC upgrade at work - complete with Windows XP!
Perhaps the rumours that Microsft are going to stop new licences of XP at the end of the year and the fact that Office 2007 doesn't work on Windows 2000 and that our oracle applications don't work in IE7 has made the company I work for realise that XP wasn't that bad after all.
Firefox and open office never had it so good.
People don't trust the beast, and with good reason.
;-) And I'm throwing away my mod points replying here... X-)
Well said. Now if I'd said that, it would be Flamebait city.
you had me at #!
How many times we heard that already? Let's count - Windows NT, NT4, 2000, XP, XPSP2... I don't count the "consumer" versions here. Every time, again and again, they say they wouldn't upgrade and every time, again and again, the vendor makes them do that sooner rather than later. Do we really need to repeat the same "news" pattern with every major Windows version released??
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
bzz wrong next question!
// history
of course they will don't pretend
for (;;){everything();}
-judging another only defines yourself
It didn't suck enough. Stuff works with it, it's secure enough, it's no longer costly, it uses a fraction of the firepower recommended for Vista.
I actually think XP sucked TOO MUCH. In my opinion it ranked only slightly above WinMe in quality. It was Win2k with a Fisher-Price theme and a bunch of cruft that slowed down a 2001-era PC more than it had to. It also had all the same critical security bugs that let worms crawl in from the internet literally within minutes if you didn't have the foresight to keep a well-configured NAT router/firewall in front of it. It was a step BACK from Win2k.
So why does XP look so successful now? Because it was the first NT-based OS with a "home" edition, and NOTHING sucked more than the Win Me it replaced. It was also not different enough to break as many apps designed for the previous versions of the OS (Win2K pro) the way Vista does, so it coexisted in the enterprise better and therefore was accepted sooner in the business world (especially since employers were using the "great" new XP Home).
Furthermore, XP was so horribly sucky and broken that MS was forced to make "service pack 2" as free update. SP2 was such a major enhancement to the OS that in the past it would've been considered another release (that is, an upgrade users needed to pay for). However, XP was so defective that many consumers would've revolted. They also let the bundled browser stagnate so much that they were pushed to back-port IE7 to XP.
So you should say that XP *DOESN'T* suck enough...now. The originally released XP in many respects was a piece of garbage. MS was forced to offer free incremental upgrades over time that added up over time to significant improvements, and hardware improved over that time too. Today, XP looks pretty snappy and indeed is "good enough". And, we are now conditioned to "incremental improvements" being free and many feel that Vista, from a user perspective, is like "XP SP3", unless you have a snazzy new machine that can run the new aero glass interface well (and what PRACTICAL use does that offer anyways?).
You can't say "A majority..." because, like the highlander, there can only be one.
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
I own a Vista machine (laptop, about 8 months old) and at work I have an XP machine that technically has more processing power (although older architecture CPUs). The work machine needs a RAM upgrade, but otherwise is quite good. However, I do all my *real* work on the laptop. The reason is simply that even when working primarily within a single program (Eclipse in this case) Vista still makes it easier to get things done.
The search is probably the biggest improvement (find programs instantly without digging though the start menu, track down emails, documents, and recently browsed web pages without needing to start any other programs, and use utilities like Start++ to add other functionality) but live thumbnails on the Taskbar and Alt-Tab help a lot when you have a great many programs open (a couple web browsers, a few documents or emails, a calendar app, instant messenger, multiple bash - yes, bash on Windows - and powershell terminals, and a handful of Windows Explorer sessions). (I try not to have that many all at once, though it has happened, or close enough. Certainly several of the same or similar programs open at once, such as three bash terminals, a couple email windows, and a pair of web browsers plus a necessary popup that appears in the taskbar as a third browser window.) Note that the live thumbnails require Aero - it's more than just eye candy.
Other handy little things like the Sidebar (the Notes gadget in particular, although there are others that I use frequently) also help improve productivity. While they could be replaced by other means (I used to keep a notes.txt file on my desktop, usually with a Notepad session open to that file) Vista provides a very easy-to-use and convenient working environment that needs less third-party software and is easier for the user to manage.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I don't see the point of upgrading yet.
Heck, a lot of companies are still running NT 4.0 servers.
I have to dissent against the prevailing popular view here: I use Vista Business on a Toshiba laptop that came with it preinstalled, and upgraded a 1.5-yr-old XP machine to Vista. So far, Vista itself has been decent. It's a tad slower because of the overhead of the new security model combined with the new graphics stuff, but I actually sort of _like_ it. I have traditionally been extremely skeptical about anything coming out of Redmond, but the last 18 months of product releases has been pretty good - Office, Exchange, Sharepoint and Vista all included.
Many people here may not remember what XP was like when it first came out: everyone swore they'd stick with Windows 2000. XP was just rewarmed 2000 with some graphical improvements, right? It was slower and bugger - why switch from something we knew worked so well?
Perhaps some of you remember when Mac OS X first shipped? It was the slowest thing ever to be foisted on the commercial computer market; yet nowadays it's incredibly slick and tight.
Six years later, XP is great. OS X is awesome. They're tested, secure, and very very useful.
I don't for a second think Vista is as good overall as Mac OS X - but it does have a lot of new stuff going on under the hood that's very intriguing - and believe it or not, I think Microsoft got a lot RIGHT when they shipped it this time around. Most of the problems I've seen are third party companies playing catchup: maybe they didn't take MS seriously that they would actually ship an OS this year? Give Vista a couple of years and it'll be widespread and XP will seem archaic in comparison.
Vista is a Home user multimedia and gaming OS.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Forget about vista. The only OSes my company supports are W2K, XP and the windows server editions. And I'm not talking about a small 20-employee company either. We have about 500 machines spread across 4 sites.
The above got marked insightful? How is this a different situation than any previous version of Windows? Business users are usually years behind the new OS curve -- at least 3-4.
What would be insightful is to understand how it is different this time versus previous times.
I've got to wonder: what does Vista offer businesses?
- The new desktop wouldn't be a draw.
- The new indexing features might not be considered a benefit by some businesses.
- The loads of incompatible drivers and applications has got to be a downside -- even it is a small number.
- Having extra security prompts come up to business users? In large settings, I'd think that IT would have
domains and policies to handle most permissions, and for machines isolated on an internal net, it could be a negative.
- Supposedly new hardware may be required -- but that may only be for HD video. Still might not "sit" well. Would a business want to upgrade to a new OS but not compatible hardware to take full advantage of the OS? Maybe easier to wait until you need to replace hardware?
- There's a training gap -- things are more different on Vista and Office 2007 from XP and Office 2004 than XP was from Windows 2000 and Office XP was from Office 2000.
- And maybe finally, there's the fact that the new OS is either no faster or slower on most tasks than XP. It would be like buying a "downgrade". Why would businesses want to spend more money to downgrade?
And those reasons are on top of the standard reluctance of businesses to immediately jump on a new Windows release.
Nobody said it ain't so. But how many companies actually have administrators worth the name? I didn't say you can't get it secure. I said most admins can't.
Now, one might ask, if it's that easy, why can there be admins that can't get it secured AND retain their jobs? The answer is in my original posting: The management does not care, and/or those wannabe-admins managed to bs them into thinking that everything's fine the way it is. Those admins are cheaper than people who actually know what they're doing and care about security, who may even have some certificates showing them as security experts and people with a clue.
The problem is, again, that IT security doesn't play a major role in the budget of most companies. IT is something that should "work". And with "work", most managers only mean that their employees should be able to do whatever they're supposed to do, and as soon as this is achived, they're satisfied and don't question their IT department. Not to mention that in smaller companies this "IT department" is actually comprised of some dude who happens to know a bit about computers while actually being hired for (and supposed to do) something completely different.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Switching to Mac OS X, that is. The investment required to switch to OS X would entail all new hardware, which is surely more costly that switching to Vista running on existing hardware. Linux might be an option, since it will run on existing PC hardware, but again, the investment in installed, Windows-tailored software must still make Linux the more expensive enterprise alternative. Enterprises will just wait, sticking with XP for as long as they can get support for it. This may slow down the spread of Vista among Windows users and will probably effect Microsoft's quarterly earnings, but it won't spell the end of Vista or the survival of XP. It won't be a boon for Linux or Apple. Maybe it might make MS a little more attentive to what its customers are telling it, instead of it telling its customers what they need and are going to get whether they like it or not. Now that would be a boon...
They will not upgrade NOW, just because vista came out, they will wait for the end of life of their desktops and consider the correct upgrade path (hinging mostly on what microsoft provides the best support horizon for, really, and sooner or later XP support will be stopped, as with any old product) when that becomes relevant. And if it'll be Vista then - so be it.
Nothing to see here (except for the few puzzled idiots who're scratching their heads and asking questions like "What, not EVERYBODY in the corporate world just dumped all their existing long-term desktop OS strategies and just ran wildly to upgrade everything to Vista the moment it came out?!"), move along.
Sheesh.
-
I was just about to post the same thing.
In any given group you can only have one majority, that's why it's the majority.
1) What kind of warranty do you actually get from Microsoft?
2) Why do you need a warranty for a software product that you have successfully used for a few years? I'd assume that you are familiar with its strengths and flaws by then, and nasty surprises from further use are unlikely.
C - the footgun of programming languages
In my company we have almost 100 machines, but none of them runs Vista. 95% of computers run WinXP + SP2, and a few ones run Win2K + SP4.
Microsoft should pay 3DRealms enough money so as that DNF is finally finished and released exclusively for Vista. I will be the first to buy a Vista machine, just to play it. If DNF is so much better than any other game, home users will rush to buy Vista machines, forcing enterprises to convert as well.
"... many large issues with stability."
Rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never move to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief. (Someone said that rule will just cause Microsoft to release service packs much more often. If that happens, it may be necessary to change the rule to "until the X service pack...")
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, Windows XP SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented.
It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive.
Where is service pack 3 for Windows XP? We've found that it is often necessary to reload Windows XP, because of instability and infections. Windows XP SP3 would make that easier.
I guess Microsoft is trying to discourage people from using Windows XP by making them download 70 Megabytes from Windows Update, or use Autopatcher. When a company doesn't take care of business and requires volunteers to maintain its product, that's abusive.
"It took Microsoft a few years to stabilise just one release [of WinXP] to make it halfway decent; people are sceptical about Vista for reasons such as this."
"Vista looks cool and all and has some interesting under-the-hood improvements, but the release was rushed..."
Mod parent up to +10.
"The culture that produced Vista didn't arise overnight, it's been building for ten years. Vista is the product that comes out of a broken corporate environment.
Ballmer needs to go. He's not the only one, but he needs to go first."
As of January 2008, Microsoft will no longer be selling Windows XP.
These companies may not upgrade now, but they will eventually get Vista when new hardware is purchased.
Last year in November, the company I work for decided to switch the entire company over to OSX, for clients and for servers. We still use Linux for our webhosting and mail, but these will be switched or outsourced later this year.
This decision came one and a half years after we almost switched all the clients over to Windows, back in 2005, when we wanted to consolidate costs. We do need Windows for limited Office testing and we need Windows for our high end CAD software. However, ever since it became easy to dual boot Windows in Bootcamp on OSX, it is much easier for us to do just that for our Windows needs. OSX is far more flexible for design and media companies, we feel. Almost all new employees know and prefer OSX.
We briefly looked at Vista late last year, and discovered that it doesn't offer anything we don't already have. We will only install some limited Vista machines for compatibility with external clients when it becomes absolutely necessary. And that is probably why the majority of companies are not installing Vista. It looks nice and is somewhat better, but brings with it a whole host of resource requirements and software compatibility unknowns that most companies simply don't need. I'm sure most Windows shops will eventually switch, but ony when they really truly must.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.ph p/912301
It appears that most businesses won't install XP either...
"Nobody said it ain't so. But how many companies actually have administrators worth the name? I didn't say you can't get it secure. I said most admins can't. - by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday August 01, @03:01AM (#20067585)
And, I'll agree with you, on MOST counts... I think they could, IF they looked into doing it (which is HOW I came up with the "12 step program" list I did above in the URL's in my last posting) & doing it right, + had the motivation to do so... but, as you say, in many "smallish" (purely relative term here) companies, this is NOT the case.
"Now, one might ask, if it's that easy, why can there be admins that can't get it secured AND retain their jobs?" - by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday August 01, @03:01AM (#20067585)
That's easy to answer, in MANY cases (&, very unfortunate too): "Buddy/Buddy" rules everywhere (cliques) & also nepotism.
Easy to cure though, too: If "some little bird" pointed out to a few key customers that "COMPANY A IS WIDE OPEN TO INTERNET ATTACK & PILFERING YOUR RECORDS etc. et al", you'd be surprised how FAST things change.
(Of course, that's pretty unscrupulous thinking - but, then again, so is "buddy/buddy cliques" & nepotism too, which the latter IS AGAINST THE LAW, but goes on like mad & we ALL know it!)
"The answer is in my original posting: The management does not care, and/or those wannabe-admins managed to bs them into thinking that everything's fine the way it is. Those admins are cheaper than people who actually know what they're doing and care about security, who may even have some certificates showing them as security experts and people with a clue." - by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday August 01, @03:01AM (#20067585)
I don't have a certification in security, but I came up with that list of 12 steps that WORK & HAVE PROOF OF IT via a multiplatform well respected test (& is possibly the highest possible score you can get on this test no less that I have ever seen, even vs. Wilderrs Security Forums folks' scores no less)... anyone can do it, if they can read, & have SOME understanding of things "IP" & networking really... imo, @ least!
NOW? I think you HIT IT ON THE HEAD, directly: Mgt. is generally lazy people who "delegate authority" to others they hire to do the less "easy" tasks THEY ought to be doing &/or were assigned initially.
"The problem is, again, that IT security doesn't play a major role in the budget of most companies. IT is something that should "work". And with "work", most managers only mean that their employees should be able to do whatever they're supposed to do, and as soon as this is achived, they're satisfied and don't question their IT department. Not to mention that in smaller companies this "IT department" is actually comprised of some dude who happens to know a bit about computers while actually being hired for (and supposed to do) something completely different." - by Opportunist (166417) on Wednesday August 01, @03:01AM (#20067585)
So true, & just like that which I state here FROM A REAL EXAMPLE I HAVE SEEN & GONE THRU:
I was & have been told to issue code (for a company I was brought in to HELP SECURE THEIR CODE, no less, a healthcare insurance provider) with KNOWN issues (many times, intermittent bugs, hardest to trap but not usually ones that pop up a lot, granted), & was told "DO NOT OPTIMIZE TO THE LAST 10%"... all I wanted was "110% bulletproof & bugfree solid code", not junk.
IF IT RUNS, IT's OK (even though it hands the keys to the kingdom to remote interlopers) - this seems to be the 'trend/mantra' out there today... I dunno!
I also pointed out to that same company they had holes in their network security... this got me called 'stupid' by their "network admin/CIO" (the very same 'type' YOU talk about no less, lol) & yet, when it came down to arguing the actual fine points of this stuff (how the network stack works, what layers control ingre
All this needs to be put into proper context:
...
- My current corporate laptop will be replaced with one that must last 4 years.
- Windows XP Pro gets to be maintained until 2011 (at least for business customers).
- If MS releases "Windows 7" by 2010, and my next laptop (shipped this year)
starts out with an XP image, what possible incentive does my company have to
upgrade it during its expected life-cycle?
I say all this because this is *exactly* what happened the last time; I needed XP, but my laptop (originally released with Win2000) was not upgraded. Instead, only when I was shipped a new laptop was I permitted to run a standard image based on Win XP. Of course, I could have built my own image, but that just won't work for 99% of the "Almost One Billion" PC users out there. And as with most companies, I don't get install disks to the components of the image.
So to all the Vista fanboys out there - can you give my company a good reason to _upgrade_ existing XP machines from the original OS image to a Vista one? If there isn't one, then Vista will be a gradual adoption over three to four years - driven by the hardware life-cycle, by which time Win 7 will be out and the process can start all over again. Since I have servers from the turn of the millennium still running (Win NT 4 Server => Win2000 Server => Win Server 2003 => RHEL v4!!) I would say an OS "upgrade strategy" makes more sense for server boxes than business workstations. Of course, the volumes (thus $$$) are at the desktop.
To me all this puts a kink in the MS typical upgrade cycle of: New HW / New OS / New Office bundle => drives demand for the rest that don't have the latest stack. We are still using Office XP (2002); same logic applies to why we didn't upgrade to Office 2003 (no value in running two different office versions, especially since we still had Office 2000 users). Thus to me the real question is what happens to Office 2007 upgrades? Vista is only have the story.
Of course, your mileage may vary
Old_Fortran