90% of IT Professionals Don't Want Vista

A survey by King Research has found that Ninety percent of IT professionals have concerns using Vista, with compatibility, stability and cost being their key reasons. Interestingly, forty four percent of companies surveyed are considering switching to non-Windows operating systems, and nine percent of those have already started moving to their selected alternative. "The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability. Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista," said Diane Hagglund of King Research.

Comments

Well there you have it

[drspliff]

Conclusive proof that Vista has flopped :) Unless the survey was rigged, but CmdrTaco wouldn't be that naive would he?...

Re:Well there you have it

[abigsmurf]

Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it, very few DOS programs wouldn't work and it seemingly didn't offer enough benefits to counter-act this?

One thing that always bothers me with surveys like this is the "have you considered moving to linux/apple" type questions. That's an extremely vague question that can get a 'yes' that can have any meaning for "I've heard a few people talk about linux, I should see what it is" to "we have drawn up a feasibilty report and are waiting for a decision from upper management".

Re:Well there you have it

[Ajehals]

I have been having this very discussion with trifish as a part of another story.

Trifish would argue that the security benefits alone are sufficient to justify businesses to upgrade. Personally I would say that Vista may be attractive to new businesses* but not ones with an existing investment in XP or 2000, not because the security is lacking, it is an improvement over XP (especially on x64 hardware) but with all the other issues its just not justifiable.

Vista may become viable as hardware becomes cheaper or if there is a sufficiently large threat to XP that is left unpatched but does not affect Vista.

* (but they should be looking at the alternatives regardless, see what my company tries to do..)

Re:Well there you have it

[SatanicPuppy]

The problem is, we've all spent too much time securing our Windows networks already...I don't remember the last time I had a virus take down more than a couple of machines, and the last time we had one at all was more than a year ago. Everything is isolated, anti-virused, monitored...All our email is filtered through a third party that strips out anything that looks weird.

If you're not having security problems, then saying, "This is more secure" doesn't cut any slack, and it sure as hell doesn't make it worth it to switch to a completely new system.

Re:Well there you have it

[LingNoi]

DX10 gaming (very nice).

Based on what? Your experience programming in it? Using the new shader techniques?

Or is it just looking at a new games graphics and saying "Oh wow that's all because of DX10"

The rest of the points pose similar questions, especially the one about Linux drivers... ATI or Nvidia? Which Distro? Which Driver version? I've never had any issues with the Nvidia driver myself so your comment seems very incorrect to me.

I see a reason for businesses to switch to Vista, especially if you play games at work.

Because playing games at work is top priority for most companies...

Re:Well there you have it

[Ajehals]

100% correct (take a look at this thread.).

For the home user Vista has many potential attractions, not least of which is that it will likely arrive on a new PC bought, not because vista is available but because a new computer is required. For business the thought of having to replace a huge number of machines, make changes to various other IT systems, solve any incompatibilities, deal with driver issues, retrain staff and then end up with an IT system that may or may not be more secure than the current one (as you said measures have already been taken) and one that will in all honestly probably deliver little or no productivity benefits, is simply repugnant. This is even more so the case since there are other OS's with similar or better levels of security that run very well on older hardware and are considerably cheaper to acquire and potentially cheaper to maintain, sure they have similar issues with regard to training and compatibility, but if you are throwing out everything else anyway, why not go in favour of something that will at least save you money in terms of licensing and hardware requirements (obviously this aproach is not suitable for all, but then those that is is not suitable for Vista as also not suitable.

How many IT professionals...

[Winckle]

want windows at all?

Re:How many IT professionals...

[AbRASiON]

Honestly, XP has it's flaws but a fully patched machine is a fairly reliable box overall.
It still has windows general bullshit but considering the age, there's so many great newsgroup / forum and google search* posts for support, most issues are bound t be easy to fix.

* fuck experts exchange, get off the google search results.

Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

[Corporate Troll]

In the end Vista will be inevitable. Drivers not available anymore except for Vista, important programs that are Vista-only. Security updates not being made available for XP anymore. (Look at how the support for Win2k went downhill once WinXP was released. For NT 4.0, they stopped giving patches before the official end-of-line) Believe me, it will happen, eventually. Give it another year or two. I didn't switch to WinXP before SP2 was very mature (Fall 2005). Before I was Win2k all the way, and before that NT 4.0....

Try running NT 4.0 these days... Won't get you very far. That's the future of Windows XP. They are going to drop it like a hot potato.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

[Silver Sloth]

I think you're missing the point.

It may well be wishful thinking amoungst the Linux faithful but there is a growing impatience with the endless Microsoft upgrade cycle. IT professionals are incresingly saying 'Why upgrade? We gain nothing and lose lots.' I have no major issues with XP, it does everything I want it to, but I will have to upgrade because of all the reasons you state.

So, put yourself in the shoes of a CIO faced with replacing hundreds, or even thousends of PCs because they need to be upgraded to run Vista, and the difficulty of going to the board once again with a request for huge amounts of cash for very little gain, and then maybe Linux starts to look a little better.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

[Zeinfeld]

It may well be wishful thinking amoungst the Linux faithful but there is a growing impatience with the endless Microsoft upgrade cycle.

Oh yes, people are equally furious about 1) Microsoft continuously introducing new versions and 2) Microsoft not providing the features they want and need.

And whats more its the same people and they don't use Windows anyway.

Vista runs just fine. I have been running it since May and not had any problems apart from a couple that are pretty squarely third party issues. Vista is fast and slick on my hardware.

Admittedly I would probably not recommend a Vista upgrade but thats mostly because the cost of the Vista upgrade is so close to the cost of a new machine anyway. I have two vista machines and three XP machines in the house. One of those is a three year old Vaio that is dropping to pieces anyway. Another is a Dell box I paid $500 for including the monitor and the other is the machine I use for surfing while I am working out on the treadmill.

Why pay $160 to upgrade when the machines are 2 years old and I can have a whole new machine thats much faster for $500? I certainly would not consider buying a new XP machine though.

The industry does not want Vista whine is wishful thinking. Many companies took two years or more to roll out XP. If you have a hundred or so users you would be a fool not to adopt a wait and see approach. But that does not say anything about the quality of the product.

Vista has higher hardware requirements than past versions. That does not make them unreasonable requirements. But most IT depts want to support a single version of the O/S so that means that they can't do the upgrade till they can afford to end-of-life the legacy machines that don't support the new version.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

[Corporate Troll]

It's already happening with laptops that came preinstalled with Vista. It's very hard or impossible to find drivers to make a working XP install on those.

Nothing new.

[Bruzer]

I read the same kind of article when XP came out. People didn't want to leave 2000 to upgrade to XP, and as we all know that happened.

Articles like this don't offer too much insight. IT workers are resistant to change... BIG surprise there.

Re:Nothing new.

[GregPK]

Different though, when 2000 came out it was pretty much everything Microsoft claimed and any transition to it was done with minimal compatability issues. Often times more things worked better after the switch. With XP, in the early years anyways there were some compatability issues. But again and overall users were happier in XP. VISTA comes out, users make the switch and the interface confuses everyone, Including the IT pro's. It has driver issues and backwards compatability issues. Even HP's own basic business systems have more compatability Errors with Vista than with XP. In other cases the interface is easier. But, to do anything advanced requires relearning how to a number of menu's. Things take longer...

Re:Nothing new.

[porcupine8]

Of course, back then, the Apple alternative was a little thing called 10.1 that seemed somewhat interesting, but had yet to be proven (and 10.0 had not exactly been amazing), and most of the apps had to be run in Classic Mode.

Now, the alternative is an OS that rivals Vista in the amount of hype it's gotten and at a bare minimum at least has support for MS Office and Adobe CS products (and has a couple different ways to run your XP/Vista programs if you really need one or two of them).

And, of course, Linux has come a long way as well - in 2001 it definitely was not user-friendly enough to be seen as a viable alternative for a lot of companies. Now not only has it improved its interface in a lot of ways, it has a much better software selection - a lot of office drones can get by just fine on OO.o instead of Office, people are using Firefox instead of IE even in windows, etc.

Everyone keeps saying "the same thing happened with XP" - but it's a different world now than it was when SP came out. No, I don't think Vista is going to be a MS-crushing flop. But when everything shakes out a couple years down the road, I think that the market share figures will definitely look a little different, even if MS still has a majority share.

More legacy than stability

[techpawn]

Honestly for me, the number of applications that would just stop working or would need to be coaxed to run on Vista that would make it unstable is far more of an administrative headache than I know I'm willing to deal with at HOME let alone from Joe User who know how to turn a computer on and swears that when an icon is gone the application is missing...

Different things

[Slashidiot]

It's different what IT proffessionals think to what will happen. Who makes choices? The guy with the money, and withouth the knowledge. It's important to see that distinction, as it will take a loooong time to convince the people with the money that microsoft is not the best option. But at least it feels good that almost unanimously the IT people feel Vista is crap.

90% of IT professionals doesn't want anything NEW

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Any good IT professional lives by the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' adagium, so what's new?

Uh...No.

[SatanicPuppy]

I've been working IT for a long time, and I've NEVER liked a new operating system. New == Problems.

Unless there is a damn compelling reason, I'll stay with what is working and working well until the new thing has been out for a good while...Hell, I know shops that are still migrating to XP and while I think they're behind the times, they're not alone in that.

If you migrate up just because something new is out...That's just foolish. You're adding a fricking ton to your workload, and for no good reason.

Re:Uh...No.

[WPIDalamar]

I think the biggest problem with Vista is there is no compelling reason to upgrade for business users.

It's prettier. But that's about it.

The disconnect between developers...and everyone!

[BigCanOfTuna]

I contract for an organization who's core business is developing software for the stock markets. While we use Linux in our test, staging, and production environments, I am constantly asking myself why the hell I am stuck developing on a laptop with XP? Why the hell am I stuck trying to emulate our Linux environment with Cygwin? Why are we maintaining two sets of scripts to make sure everything works (bash/batch)? Why am I forced to run performance crippling virus software? There are a number of supposed reasons. You've heard them before: "We need Windows for Outlook and Office" - I'm a developer, I need EMail and I hate documentation. Please let me use Firefox and if need be, I'll use OpenOffice. "The learning curve of Linux is too big for some developers" - Fire them, or give them different jobs. Why are you wasting my time, and others who could be more productive because of one or two nine-to-fivers? "Management of Linux would be more difficult for network support" - What you really mean is your support staff has let their skill set elapse and they have focused on Windows technologies. I'm sorry, but fire these people too. Your organization is being held hostage and is losing money by inept people.

What's to discuss?

[talexb]

Feh. Consider:

1. XP is fine -- a remarkable achievement, actually -- a Microsoft operating system that's finally releatively stable. Well, they've had a few years to get it right. And getting an OS right is really, really tough.

2. Vista requires top of the line hardware to run decently -- dual core processors and 2G RAM. We had the exact same discussion over ten years ago when Windows 95 came out -- Microsoft swore it would run fine in 4M memory, and it never did -- 8M was better, and 12M was decent.

3. Vista is still not stable -- it is, after all, a 1.0 release. Geeks consider anything 1.0 from Microsoft a bit dodgy.

4. All current applications run fine on Windows XP, but may or may not run under Vista. No surprise there.

5. A recent article said that XP was still outselling Vista three to one on new system installs. It's not a tough choice: do you want the stable option that runs more quickly and is more compatible, or would you prefer the unstable option that runs more slowly and is less compatible? Hmmm. But the new one has such pretty pictures! Shiny! Shiny!

Sorry. Got carried away for a moment there.

I think Microsoft's suits need to just suck it up and keep selling Vista quietly, and give the engineers time to get the code right. The hardware will catch up to Vista, and the engineers will get the bugs sorted out. In a couple of years XP will be old hat.

I just wish they'd been able to get more of the cool stuff like WinFS into the latest version of Windows. It seems that this version is just new wrinkles in the sheet metal, and nothing much else. Sigh.

So I Was a Vista Skeptic...

[Bilby Baggins]

Basically from Vista's release announcement I've been saying that it hasn't had enough time in dev, it was released too early, and that Microsoft didn't get around to doing any of the things that they said they would do with Vista- basically, that Vista is to XP what Millennium Edition was to 98SE- a backslide. I tried to get one Vista laptop to connect to our campus wifi with no luck, and basically had a hell of a time navigating the few Vista systems that came around.

When it came time for me to get a new laptop, I desperately wanted to get one with XP, an operating system that has mostly had the major issues worked out of it, and that I knew well inside and out. But my business partner made the good point that, as IT Consultants, we were going to have to support it, so we should know it, whither or not we really like it. And (of course) the best way to get to know an OS is to live with it.

So I've been running Vista for about a week so far, with heavy use both plugged in and on battery, and I have to say this (in bold in italics so you get the idea of how surprising this was to me... ) I'm pretty impressed with Vista. YES, I know i has problems, some of which are VERY aggrivating. It shows as using a lot of ram, and it does tend to bother one overly much while installing software and doing other system tasks. BUT- for the avarage user, these warnings will help to make it harder for malware vendors to install their junk software, for even if the spyware/adware uses an IE exploit to enter the system, if they are trying to hide behind the vague shell of being valid software their install will cause a warning to pop up for the user. While this doesn't stop a user for still allowing it, it DOES make them aware of the problem- an improvement. to be sure.

I also have noted that yes, Vista DOES look a lot like Windows XP professional in drag. The menus are confusing... but only for someone used to 98/2k/XP. Oh, and you can make Vista behave and look quite a bit like XP, as well. Personally I've left the pretty stuff on- it's not too bad looking, and hell, if Apple can get away with a pretty UI, why not Microsoft?

Vista has it's share of problems, but overall I'd say that it will be an improvement over XP- once some of the worst issues are taken care of.

Personally, I've not had any software compatibility issues yet, and have installed old versions of Winamp, CDex, and even Total Annhiliation on the system with nary an issue.

I'm NOT saying that it's perfect, nor that it's ready for a large-scale enterprise roll-out. Realistically speaking, XP is a better platform anyhow- hell, most corporate networks could still be using terminals for much of their work! But it's a step in the right direction for Microsoft.

Please note that not only did I post this from my work OSx machine, I'm also in charge of maintaining 200+ desktops with OSs ranging from Win98SE to OS9 and a couple variants of linux. So i'm not a total OS/UI noob ;)

When playing games at work is a valid reason

[tepples]

I don't see a reason for businesses to switch to Vista, unless you play games at work. Does anyone see any real benefit for a business user to switch to Vista? If your company develops software for Windows OS that will be made available to the public, you need Windows Vista in order to test your product software for compatibility. If your company publishes reviews of proprietary works such as video games designed for Windows Vista, you need Windows Vista to run these works.

Re:When playing games at work is a valid reason

[shinmai]

In both of your examples, I see no reason for the whole computer infrastructure of the company to get the upgrade. Some testbed-machines should suffice just fine. It's like with web-development (that I'm much more familiar with), I have various different browsers installed on a handfull of machines, but I only use one browser to read slashdot, the others are there just for testing...

Makes no sense whatsoever..

[dhavleak]

Quoting from TFA:

Ninety percent of 961 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half said they have no plans to deploy Vista. (emphasis mine)
Quoting the headline of the /. post:

90% of IT Professionals Don't Want Vista (emphasis mine)
Hardly the same thing. Concern != Don't Want. And you have to be crazy not to be concerned when you deploy a new OS in your enterprise.

TFA even cites a Forrester Research article to back up it's claim (without linking to it). If you want the actual link, here it is. That study actually claims that one third of businesses will switch to Vista in 2008, which I think is ridiculously optimistic -- but it just goes to show what these studies are worth.

Then there's this gem:

Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista Let's consider compatibility first. Do these 961 IT Professionals think that switching from XP to OS-X or XP to Linux will give them less compatibility headaches than switching from XP to Vista? On reading this, I can't even understand how CmdrTaco decides that this post is worth our time!!

And next, let's consider stability. Stability first of all requires a definition -- it's very unclear what stability the 'study' is referring to. I'll assume for a moment we're talking about Vista not crashing. This is a very valid concern -- any time you're doing an enterprise deployment/upgrade. That's why you test your apps on the hardware you purchase. That's why you standardize on the hardware you have validated -- so you know you are buying machines with h/w, with supported drivers, etc. None of this is new to OS deployments/upgrades in general. I'm not sure what other kinds of stability they might be referring to, but it takes on an all-encompassing vagueness in a very FUDlike manner in TFA. I mean, if you're talking about stability from a support perspective, nothing has changed between now and XP. MS is not about to go belly-up anytime soon, so your vendor is not going to sell you an OS and then dissappear into the ether. Maybe stability refers to the disruption caused by transitioning OSes in the very first place. Understandable. That's why businesses aren't using Vista yet. They don't switch to a new OS just because it was released. They had (or at least should have had) very clear requirements, cost-benefi analysis etc. done when they deployed XP. If they did a good job with that deployment, and it is still serving their needs, they have absolutely no reason to switch. Windows XP will go End of Life in 2014 (i.e. MS will support it until 2014). Until then, if their requirements have not changed in a way that necessitates them to switch, they should not switch -- unless there are some other circumstances (like perhaps needing to deploy new h/w and wanting to sync the OS upgrade with that), or perhaps some cost-benefit analysis shows that they can save money by switching to Vista (just tossing that out as an example -- no need to launch an all-out assault on me).

Microsoft has opened a Pandora's Box.

[Aslan72]

We're in a world where Open Source has created compatability and the goal is brining everyone in under the same roof. Leopard, Ubuntu, SUSE and their ilk have created experiences that are comparable to Windows and, in some cases, even better. The onus is now on MS to keep up. If we're waiting on SP1 for this OS to be stable (which we are) I would have rather they waited a year and released a better product. There was a ars technica article where they interviewed the manager for Vista some time ago and everyone at MS was praising him because he was marshalling people and ditching features in Vista in order to get it out the door. I'm horribly dissapointed in what came out. There were features that I, for one, was looking forward to and would have given Vista's poor security implementation a whole lot more grace in my eyes had they included them. --pete

Comparisons to XP are invalid

[HangingChad]

Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it

I was there and this nothing like those days. There is a perfect storm of circumstance conspiring against Vista success. The devaluation of the dollar and crisis in confidence of the valuation of US investment instruments will put many big enterprise upgrades on hold. Based on just the phone calls I get, I see more companies actively seeking alternatives that will run adequately on the commodity hardware they already own.

MSFT contributed to Vista's problems by delivering late, stripping out the value functionality, jacking the prices and confusing the market with their licensing scheme.

Business is good for people writing those decision papers right now.

My Reasoning

[Tarlus]

As a sysadmin, I would fall in that 90%.

I'm not so much concerned about incompatibility, instability or user-unfriendliness.

The license would be expensive and I'd have to upgrade 100 machines which are all comfortably running XP. XP works for everybody. Nobody has any applications which require Vista. So there's really no motivation to buy it.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Sadly, once security updates cease, a lot of those people in that 90% will have no choice but to reconsider the switch.

My 5 Cents Comments

[HerbieStone]

I once designed GUIs as a professional and found it to be a very difficult job. I too hate Explorer with a passion, though now that I work with Ubuntu at home and at work it has become more and more a memory of the past. But I disgress...

Designing GUIs is difficult because you don't really know what it should look like until someone else tries to use it. Every person will use your GUI a bit differently and those will want you to adjust your GUI your GUI accordingly (and often be right at that). And (and this is the most problematic part) even persons who don't use your GUI will still have an oppinion how the GUI should look like and work, according their own logic and might demand that you change it (bosses and such). That is why I have huge respects to the guys over at apple. Oh and I don't get me wrong. I don't search any excuses for MS, after so many years they still manage to screw up on the usability side. I just want to give you another perspective as to why such might crap happens at MS. My guess goes towards bad bosses.

The other thing I wanted to say is, that I think your "DISK1C___GAMES PORN___(E)" is pretty kinky and I bow before you beeing so straight forward and not obfuscating it after taking screenshots of it ;)

Cheers
Herbiestone