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Vista at Risk of Being Bypassed by Businesses
narramissic writes "With Windows 7 due in late 2009 or 2010, many businesses may choose to wait it out rather than make the switch to Vista. According to some analysts, Vista uptake at this point really depends on how good Vista SP1 (due in Q1, 2008) is. If it doesn't smooth over all the problems, companies are much more likely to stick with XP. And that holds especially true for those businesses that follow the every-other-release rule." Note for Microsoft: Allow us to natively disable trackpads.
they'll hold off on switching to Windows 7 until SP1 hits.
Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?
Truth is, while holding off Vista might be an idea, what guarantee is there that Windows 7 will be any better. In many ways Vista seems to be a symptom of a failed development process, bad priorities and not understanding their users. When you have five years to developer a product and this is what you get, something is wrong.
Vista is not a total failure, but its not a success either.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The thing that bugs me the most is the additional system resources it hogs - i buy a pc to run applications not run an OS. look at anything that runs both vista an xp and xp always has lower requirments. MS would win a lot of fans if they made OS releases they used the same or less resources instead of massive bloatware, or atleast show SOMETHING useful that's hogging the additional memory and CPU time.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Be on time? Of course not.
Will it be full of anti-user software and self-disabling drivers? Absolutely.
Im just about fed up with Microsoft.
Im used to the music and video companies treating customers like criminals, but MS with their remote computer deactivation garbage sets them far over the line. As far as I'm concerned, Im going Ubuntu and Debian.
BTW, Ubuntu likes my new T61 thinkpad. And IBM/Lenovo is Linux friendly.
It makes the hardware look old.
At first glance this doesn't appear that bad for Microsoft -- so businesses wait, and then buy a different product from Microsoft; it delays income, but isn't that bad. The problem for Microsoft here is that it gives desktop linux an extra year or two to keep improving. The reality is that Linux on the desktop, whethr you consider it "ready" yet or not, has been improving at a far faster rate than Windows has. Just compare Windows98 and the contemporary releases of Linux (around Redhat 5.2 I think, back when they were still using Afterstep as the default environment) and then compare Vista to Ubuntu 7.10: any gaps have narrowed dramatically. Give linux another couple of years to make comparative gains and things may look inteesting when it comes time for businesses to look at OS upgrades -- do you move to Windows 7, or Linux? Both will probably represent almost equally large changes and require as much retraining as each other, and by that point Linux may well be a very good desktop option. Combine that with the fact that Linux (via wine) might actually be as good as Windows 7 at running your old win32 software (given Vistas difficulties with such things) and Microsoft may have a potential revolt on their hands.
The simple reality is tht, once you all out of step on the treadmill, then working to stay on it doesn't continue to look as attractive as it used to. Lock in is quite important to Microsoft's business model, and failing to keep businesses in step with current MS trends is actually quite a serious potential problem brewing.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Or maybe, just maybe, Microsoft released an unfinished operating system, which was a spectacular failure, and now everybody is trying to avoid paying a huge chunk of cash because there is a good chance Microsoft will try to wipe the problems under the carpet and get something better out ASAP.
Or in other words:
Vista is the new Millenium.
IIRC Windows ME was a bust right out of the gate. We have seen some grudging indications from MS that Vista (aka Windows ME II) isn;t meeting the expectations they had for it in terms of adoption and implementation. How long until people say, "Yep, Vista sure was a bust!"? Maybe MS will never say it, but what will it take to convince the popular press and cheerleader factions that Vista, in fact, was a horrible OS?
The cynic in me says it doesn't matter because the DRM core of the OS will never get the criticism it deserves and, thus, any follow-on OS will be just as bad. No OS that manages someone else's rights without giving a hoot for mine will ever run on my hardware.
This is a grate time for apple make osX for all x86 systems and apple os is much better then windows as they have cut out all older api's and code from the old mac os 1-9 unlike M$ that still has code and API's from windows 3.X in vista.
Drivers for ATI / AMD / NVIDIA / Intel chipsets can easy be made from MacOSX like they are from windows and linux. ATI / AMD / INTEL / NVIDIA Video drivers are the same way as well.
So does Leopard, and do you hear people whine about that? OSX is a memory hog too.
-- Cheers!
Organizations don't want to install vista. Check. What makes us think the successor to Vista will be recieved any better?
Instead, the real danger to MS is a push to thin clients. I've heard rumblings lately, and if the next OS dissappoints like vista, you can expect huge deployments of thin clients coming. I know it would make more financial sense for my location when time comes to upgrade from XP to go with thin clients chatting with a windows terminal server. There is risk involved with this step, but if we see another crappy OS come out, it will be the justification I need to validate the switch over.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I think you underestimate what most people do on their PCs, especially at work. Most business PCs run many proprietary pieces of software that will only work properly on Windows. Admittedly, this could be solved with Citrix / WTS but it involves lots of business change (plus served apps generally blow for general usability, especially when the network gets busy).
As the Microsoft bloatware continues to sink into a morass of wasted processor cycles, the performance gap with Linux and Macintosh provides a great impetus to the adoption of Unix systems. The funny thing is that it used to be the other way around. Back in the 1980s, MS DOS and Win3.1 was touted as 'more efficient' than Unix systems.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As the IT Manager for a medium sized regional construction company, I've played with Vista for a year and frankly, I get frustrated with it - and if I do, I can't imagine how my userbase which has computer savy ranging from "I have servers at home too!" to "How do I turn this on again?" and there's no sense overburdening one's self with a massive amount of support calls with the lesser skilled people fighting with Vista's UI and all the other traps in the OS itself. (Hey, these people build buildings for a living, they shouldn't need to fight the OS on their laptops)
Vista might not be the utter stinking turd that ME was but it's a painful bowel movement nonetheless.
Here's to hoping Microsoft gets on the clue bus with Windows 7...
In other words: every OS could boast the same sale figures... if it came preinstalled in every PC.
RT
--
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ZOMG, I bet that if I googled "Linux" and "problems" I wouldn't get any results huh? Oh... wait... actually... I got 102,000,000 results. And for "vista" and "problems" I only got 34,300,000. Hmm. Yeah. That's right. shut up.
When you do that on Vista, it looks like total utter crap - which is not fine.
So, would you rather use something that looks perfectly fine or total utter crap?
It may not seem it to Linux users, but the eye candy that Apple added generally gives you visual clues to what is going on. When I minimize a window it graphically collapses to the Dock, that's useful, because without thinking about it, I watched it drop down and keep track of it. When I switch between users, the graphical rotation visually lets me know that I've done something substantial. It breaks the visual space the way I've visually broken up the process.
It subconsciously gives me information and it useful.
The eye candy on my XP desktop at work is not useful, is mostly annoying, and doesn't help me understand my environment. That's a HUGE difference.
I think that their most important failure is their development process.
For years, Microsoft's books about software management were the best, because it included human management (by suggesting using geniuses for the coding) along with software planning.
But these last years, the agile methodologies (TDD, extreme programming, etc...) appeared and Microsoft has not been able to use them.
First, their main problem is that they have a lot of legacy code (millions of lines of code !) with ZERO automated test (we don't count code analysis as a test). Adding tests and refactoring the code will take several YEARS, since the code is not designed to be automatically tested.
Secondly, their tool (Visual Studio) is still unable to generate proper testing skeletons and sucks at refactoring (even though it's promised since several years).
Meanwhile, we see Apple, Google and Mozilla successfully use agile technologies, and tools like Eclipse ease agile development.
Apple releases one upgrade every SIX months, and Firefox releases one new version every year. Why cannot Microsoft do the same ?
A generation of cell phones takes less than one year !
Console generations last 2 or 3 years.
Even Ubuntu has a release cycle of one year.
Do Microsoft think everybody will wait 3 YEARS to get their new expensive OS ?
Technology changes every year, and gets cheaper, while Windows is still using old development procedures, and their OS are more and more expensive.
Microsoft has to quickly drop its one year beta phase, and implement automated tests, or Vista will die within the two next years.
Where I work, it is not a risk. It has been confirmed that our IT team will skip Vista completely, as it does not meet our needs as well as Windows XP does.
The early versions of Linux were definitely for the tech savvy only. Driver support was lousy and you usually spent a lot of time on the command line getting yourself going. That's not something Joe Schmoe is going to want to do on his own.
It's not just tech savvy. It's tech savvy and masochistic. Just because I have plenty of experience editing configuration files, compiling code or writing/debugging device drivers from the hardware spec, that doesn't mean I want to spend my valuable free time doing it just to be able to use basic applications.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm astonished that I have yet to see the best reason not to roll out Vista in a business environment mentioned. The answer is quite simple.
Vista kills productivity, yet offers no real value in return.
In order to run Vista where I work, we would have to replace every single machine we have. That's over 100 desktops and laptops--not cheap. Granted, some of those computers need to be replaced, but that's beside the point. Even crappy P4, 1GHZ, 256MB RAM, on-board video computers run XP better than a brand new Dell laptop with 2GB RAM and a 256MB video card runs Vista (it was running Vista Business Premium). Why in the @#$%! should we pay a boatload of money to slash our workers' productivity? As far as I can see, there is absolutely no business case for Vista whatsoever. Until such a day as there is, then you can bet your bottom dollar I won't allow a move to Vista to kill ours.
Granted, from a technological standpoint, Vista is crap. But that's not the argument to make to your superiors when opposing it. Show them how it will hurt your bottom line. That'll get their attention.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Results 1 - 10 of about 162,000,000 for windows problems. (0.16 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 101,000,000 for linux problems.
Results 1 - 10 of about 95,000 for windows "sucks ass"
Results 1 - 10 of about 44,000 for linux "sucks ass".
Results 1 - 10 of about 32,300,000 for vista problems. (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,220,000 for RHEL problems. (0.15 seconds
So What's your point?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Ubuntu is a good desktop OS. Linux is the name of the kernel.
Just like Red Hat produce a great enterprise product. The user experience is still defined by the quality of the product provided by Red Hat. Linux based distributions usually share from the wealth of quality software produced and provided by the community, but that doesn't mean that the responsibility (or blame) for the quality of the distribution falls on the KDE or Gnome project manager. That's backwards. These projects do great work and then give you (or in the two examples the companies) the source. To presume that this is the final product would show an amazing lack of imagination.
An individual distribution can do as much to improve or customize the operating environment as they want. Including developing standards and improvements based on their target market. When people expect "Linux" or the community at large to do this I find it kind of alarming. Linux and the open source projects surrounding it are far too diverse in scope and purpose to create the kind of one-size-fits-all user utopia you seem to be suggesting. But if you're interested in seeing it succeed in a particular segment (desktop in this case) then focusing your comments or energy on a single distribution would probably be the right way to address your concerns (and maybe even help or make a difference).
Finally (sorry, this is long) a Windows compatibility layer does not mean Windows clone. If that's something you're actually looking for I think you'll always be disappointed. At best Wine is a crutch to possibly ease the transition.
Quack, quack.
I've installed ubuntu, and even as very technical user, I had problems when trying to customize my installation to my needs. You basic email, web, IM works out-of-the-box with no problems. However I need to: - connect my windows mobile device. (no i'm not going to reflash it with something else) - had problems with ATI driver - have to compile drivers for any obscure devices i might try to connect - safe mode is not graphical - windows was snappier on my 6 year old laptop (probably due to generic drivers being used by ubuntu) I'm afraid we're living in a MS ecosystem. In the business world it's Windows-Exchange-MS office + windows mobile. At home it's windows, windows games, windows media center, and xbox. Ubuntu has given Linux some sort of standardization but still I think they need alot of money to even approach the dominance of MS. Even Ubuntu feels like many separate projects held together by string. Of course Apple has their own eco-system too. Conclusion: governments should do more to support open source for the benefit of all.
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You know, in reading this article, I have just been enlightened. I realize that all this time, I was confused because I didn't understand the purpose of Windows Vista. You see, I thought it was Microsoft's way of making a really, really funny joke. I mean, what else could Vista possibly be? Let's examine Vista and see why this is so:
- Every other button you push, the entire screen goes black and it asks you, "Did you really push that button?"
- The system is so excruciatingly slow that even on the newest hardware, it is much, much slower than XP on much older hardware.
- Boatloads of drivers and applications that worked fine under XP do not function under Vista. The result is that things like printers that were supported just fine under XP do not work under Vista. The result is that you have to throw away your perfectly good printer or whatever, and get a new one, as if having just bought a brand new computer and dropping a ton of money on Vista Ultimate isn't enough of an expense.
- The Vista installer takes F*O*R*E*V*E*R to load, and then gleefully tells you that Windows Vista "saves you time," as if to demonstrate that if the installer is this slow, wait 'till you experience the operating system!
- The colors chosen for the Vista desktop and windows are such an eyesore that even their own mother couldn't possibly like them. I'd like to know what the graphic designers were smoking, because I want some.
- There are not one or two but six different versions of Vista. Do they suddenly think they're in the Linux business because it seems they want to scream out, "We're just like Linux; we have too many distros to choose from too!" (Well, I think someone mentioned that RMS wanted Vista to be called GNU/Vista or something like that.)
- Even if you're an expert XP user, you have to completely relearn how to use a computer when you downgrade to Vista, because everything is so significantly different that you'll have a field day just figuring out how to move a file from one place to another.
So, I mean, what else but a really funny joke could this be? A product?But having read this story, I now understand that there are actually people who worked on this Vista thing who believed that they were making a serious software product. The only thing I can think to say is that this is a tremendous shame. I mean, Windows XP can do pretty much anything that a business might need. All they had to do was spend the last five years or so perfecting XP, ironing out all the bugs, cleaning it up as much as they could, optimizing it for better performance, tightening up security, etc. That would have given them a very solid product with which to compete. Instead, they wasted all this effort, time, and money making a product so embarrassingly slow and bloated, even on the newest hardware, that many businesses are avoiding it like the plague. I'm sorry but I really think that Vista is an enormous flop, even if Microsoft is successful in selling millions of copies. The point is that Vista is actually a very good advertisement for Apple Macs with Mac OS X, and for Linux and the *BSDs.
Their motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" I don't know about you, but as my sig and journal both say, Microsoft released Vista, so I went to an Apple retail store and bought a Mac.
Ok. No email about the world's finest software company is complete without a remark that calls for chairs to be thrown... but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.