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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.
What's this about? Anyone want to clue me in?
I always mod up spelling trolls.
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....
It's not as if spectacularly better alternatives don't exist.
you had me at #!
So, they already waited for Longhorn, which cratered. There's a very slow uptake of the 1 1/2 year rush-job that they called "vista", and now businesses are expected to wait for another MS development cycle of indeterminate duration?
I really don't know why MSFT's shareholders haven't lynched Ballmer by now.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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For example, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) is moving to Windows Vista on all their workstations in 2008, even though they don't NEED it. Part of this is due to a federal mandate, and part of it is because Microsoft has it as part of their service agreement. Service pack 1 for Windows Vista has nothing to do with the USCG's standard workstation operating system policy.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
M$ need to move corporate keys back to XP system.
Businesses do not like the idea that there vista system must call in to M$ to check there key from time to time or go in to limited functionality mode or use a key sever that calls in to M$ and systems can also go in to limited functionality mode if the sever / network goes down.
And if vista starts to gain more ground this may end become a big problem that limited testing be for a big roll is something that you may not run in to at that time and you may have to hope for a fast fix it your key gets blacklisted by mistake and most of your systems go in to limited functionality mode.
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.
If Vista was 3 years late, why would anyone trust Microsoft's projections now? If "Windows 7" is going to hit in 2009, that's probably going to mean 2012 or 2011 at best.
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.
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).
At my company, we don't have a single Windows machine in sight. Do we miss it? Not at all. Our desktops are all macs, our workstations Linux, our servers are Linux and FreeBSD. After having worked at several companies that used Windows extensively, I can say I have no desire to ever go back to an environment like that. OS X and Linux are just so much more flexible, and have far less management overhead than any Windows environment.
Let's see--
0. DRM throughout the system.
1. If a dialog box pops up, you can't move or resize the parent window. WHY ISN'T THIS FIXED YET?
2. It's slow and bloated, even on modern hardware.
3. Its user interface is inconsistent. (OK, KDE and Gnome are pretty bad this way, too, but OS-X isn't, for instance.)
4. DRM.
5. Intrusive security model.
6. Requires re-training of end-users, which is expensive. (Had to add this one, as it's always used as a "reason" to not move to Linux or OpenOffice.)
7. Invasive anti-piracy model.
8. DRM.
9. No compelling reason to upgrade from XP.
As you can see, there are lots of reasons MS-Windows Vista is not good, even on modern hardware. However, if it floats your boat, continue using it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You haven't used Leopard then. Leopard = Vista. Both require at least 1.5GB of RAM to run with useful applications. Both require fairly fast hardware. Vista and Leopard don't run on 5 year old laptops at all. Apple's tradition of making it faster isn't true here. There are countless bugs in Leopard. The firewall is actually worse than Microsoft's now. Software applications were broken on both platforms. I actually prefer vista to leopard. I've used Leopard on a 3 month old iMac, a Mac Pro bought in February, and iBook and a PowerMac G4. It's slow on all of these. The Mac Pro shipped with 1GB of RAM which is the problem on that unit.
Apple and Microsoft think a lot alike these days. My pre-order Leopard disk was damaged and after an hour on the phone with Apple, I was sent to the nearest Apple store who bitched me out for not having a receipt. Now consider that they only give you a packing slip with the shipment and my Mac would not boot to print it! I didn't notice it right away and skipped the disc check the first time. I realize that part is my fault but I didn't appreciate the terrible customer service from the Briarwood Apple store (Ann Arbor, MI).
At work we've decided not to upgrade to Leopard until Parallels actually works with it and we can buy more RAM. We have labs full of iMacs bought over the summer!
Lastly, the advantage with OS X in the past was the control over hardware. Do you really think OS X would run well on a beater Dell? I don't.
The failure with vista was the marketing. Microsoft can't come up with one reason to get people to upgrade. Perhaps if they only shipped x64 vista it might have been an incentive for some. It worked with Windows 95. Most people are running 32bit vista. I've been using it since January and it's not too bad for a new Windows release. You must feed it RAM, but that's true of Macs or some of the bigger Linux distros too.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
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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A 1-gigahertz desktop running Windows XP with ECC memory meets the needs of most businesses. They had a genuine need to upgrade from the MS-DOS-based operating systems (OSes) like Windows 98 when Windows XP was launched. The former is just too unreliable, but the latter approached Linux-level reliability.
Going from Windows XP to Vista does not buy you a quantum leap in reliability. The latter has a nicer GUI than the former, but a nicer user interface is not enough to justify spending another $1000+ on a machine for your secretary.
During this obssessive drive to faster, bigger, and badder computers and OSes, eventually the technology reaches a point at which it exceeds the needs of the customers. We have reached that point -- that knee of the technology curve. Any further technical advancements beyond the knee does not bring new customers to computer company XYZ. The computer-systems market now resembles or will soon resemble the automotive market: a replacement market for broken devices.
I do not replace my Chevrolet Camaro when a new sports car enters the automotive market. I replace my Camaro when it becomes too expensive to repair.
No spokesperson for a computer company ever talks about the arrival of the "knee". It means flat sales and thin margins for the company.
Well, the knee has arrived. The personal-computer industry is now a mature industry like the automotive industry. Welcome to flat sales and used-computer salescritters.
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?
I think you missed the point. I can google "Flamingo" and "problems" and get over a million results - does this mean a million people are having problems with their flamingo?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
And this quote from the article proves it:
"They wouldn't be licensing Windows desktop if they didn't have the intent to deploy Vista"
Actually, yes "they" would.
If you are buying machines for any reason, why wouldn't you buy the Vista licensing and use your downgrade rights to run XP? The volume licenses cost the same - why limit your choices?
Microsoft really needs to start listening to their customers.
-ted
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.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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...
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.
I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
I see you don't work in "IT Support". If you did you would know how stupid that is. Large and even small companies either hire individuals or hire outsource IT companies for "Support" These individuals that "do" the actual support work are trained Techs or Engineers. They don't need to call MS and never do. When they do get stumped with a problem they either call a cohort in the business and ask them if they know of a fix or go online and in the case of Windoze go to the TechNet site or check the forums of answers. I know this for a fact I work for a company that does Outsourced IT for small to medium sized businesses. We NEVER! call Microsoft! We are engineers and most likely know their OS better than they do so why call and waste time?
Now for Joe and Jane user that works for a company that we support who are they going to call? They call us. That is what we get paid for. We are "Support" not Microsoft. We still support Win95 if needed. MS doesn't. Hell we will even support DOS if needed. We are Systems Engineers where I work. We work on systems. We don't care what it runs on. We will work on it. A MCSE is NOT a System Engineer. A real Systems Engineer maybe better at one system OS than the other but he can work on any of them. All systems are not Microsoft.
So what if Joe and Jane user decide to run Linux or a Sun desktop? Who are they going to call for support? They are going to call us that is what we get paid for and yes they will get support! You might get transfered to a different person but you will gladly get support. We support most flavors of Linux and Solaris. Most of our customers don't realize it but they may have an XP desktop but most of the backend servers that are serving them are running Solaris or Linux.
Actually we discourage the use of Vista and say that we don't really support it. Any Windoze boxes we put online are XP. We beg our customer NOT to get Vista. These days we are encouraging our clients to really look at Sun and Linux. One of our big points is if your going to have to learn a new desktop and a new office suite. Why not make the change to Linux or Solaris and be done with client licenses, malware, spyware, viruses, blue screens O' death, changing desktops, and on and on...
Personally I haven't even looked at Vista. I did watch my boss play with it for a week and then reload XP. (yes he's a Windows engineer) His evaluation? "What a piece of shit." I must admit I have turned Vista off a couple of times to load FC7 or Solaris10 on the machine infected by Vista. Vista is not an OS. It is an infection in itself.
Why will I not learn it or touch Vista? Anyone that has worked Windows support knows the scenario. You work on a system and it fails again it is now YOUR FAULT its broke. If I never touch it, then it is never my fault. What do I tell people when they cry to me about their Vista machine? "I told you not to buy that crap. Sorry I don't work on Vista."
Remember the "The Suit" that is screaming about support isn't the poor bastard that has to work on it. I am.