Texas Senate Proposes a Budget With a No-Vista-Upgrades Rider

CWmike writes "The Texas state Senate yesterday gave preliminary approval to a state budget that includes a provision forbidding government agencies from upgrading to Windows Vista without written consent of the legislature. Sen. Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Finance Committee, proposed the rider because 'of the many reports of problems with Vista ... We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide,' Hinojosa said during a Senate session debating the rider (starting at 4:42 of this RealMedia video stream). 'And the XP operating system is working very well.' A Microsoft spokeswoman said in response, 'We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment. We hope as the budget continues to go through the process, this language will be removed.'"

Comments

MOLP?

[nurb432]

If they are enterprise, they most likely have a MOLP, which if its current they paid for Vista anyway.

that will save lots of money

[WillAffleckUW]

The problem is that there's really no reason to "upgrade" to Vista, and at twice the price for slower speeds and performance, not to mention the mandatory RAM and video card costs, this is a wise budgetary precaution.

Just don't mandate netbooks - they have a tendancy to walk away.

Re:that will save lots of money

[Toonol]

Plus, there's a potentially harmful network effect. A particular department might need new pcs, and upgrade to Vista with no particular cost or problem... but then, they're on a network with, swapping documents with, and have different support and training requirements than other XP users. All of a sudden, other XP users might feel a need to upgrade, generating unnecessary expense.

Even more importantly, do not EVER let anybody in your company or government upgrade to a newer version of Office, because the moment that lid is opened, there's no going back.

Texas BOR

[mrmeval]

If any agency already has a contract their law means diddly squat. The historical meaning of bill of attainder is to try and convict a person or group in the legislature. It may apply to a product if it can be seen as inflicting punishment on Microsoft.

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made.

Texas's constitution still has the post WWII eugenics provisions, how quaint.

IT manager for a small govt org in TX

[Anonymous Coward]

As an IT manager for a small govt org in Texas, it would not surprise me one bit if this was not actually requested by some of my more politically influential colleagues.

I and my group are avoiding Vista like the plague, mostly because of the unnecessary expense of the hardware upgrades it'll require, but also additionally because of the additional end-user training it'll require.

We're having a hell of a time just getting our users to recover their productivity after the Office 2007 mess that was rammed down our throats, and most of them still hate Office 2007 with a bloody passion. We do not wish to repeat this ordeal with a changeout of the whole desktop operating system anytime soon.

Re:Oy

[benjamindees]

There is no IT dept for the entire State of Texas. So, first of all, your analogy is flawed.

Secondly, the legislature writes the budget for the state's OS upgrades. It is certainly within their purview to forbid an especially worthless OS on a cost/benefit basis, regardless of technical considerations.

Re:The Media

[geekoid]

Actually it isn't. Moving From XP to Vista is a big issue, especially if you have a lot of legacy apps.

Re:Why Bother

[Real1tyCzech]

.....

Because there have been numerous betas that have blown both Vista and even XP out of the water?

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12554_22-278706-34.html

[] ...or that it is even improving as it progresses through beta:

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12554_22-278706-35.html

Yeah, I know....someone backing up their statements on Slashdot with actual results? What was I thinking?

Re:this language will be removed

[Anonymous Coward]

I would wager that a significant portion of them are still running Windows XP (if not OS X) and have little or no experience with Vista aside from what their son's best friend's cousin's neighbor told them.

Let me help. I work for a global IT firm with more than 30,000 employees. We sell a lot of Microsoft kit. And internally we have chosen to skip Vista because it's proven to be too bloody problematic in several rather extensive pilot studies.

Apologies for posting AC here, this is one post I really would not be able to get away with.

Re:this language will be removed

[lgw]

Of course, there's no fundamental differece between Vista and Windows 7 (which is Windows 6.0 R2). Microsoft is quietly laughing at all of this - everyone said "we're skipping Vista", so they just rebranded Vista and slapped on a different-looking GUI (which means in most people's eyes it's a totally different OS). If there are enough fixes in the Vista service pack called "Windows 7" to make it tolerable, then this isn't a total scam, but it is humorous.

Re:this language will be removed

[im_thatoneguy]

Vista Service Pack? I've already installed 2 of them. I've also installed Windows 7.

The Windows 7 upgrade was far more profound than either service pack.