Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
The cost of upgrading software has very little o do with an upgrade price paid to Microsoft, and everyhting to do with support costs. Changing the OS on everyone's desktop is a major cost, as applicaitons that users count on inevitably break, and the simple differences in UI drive many helpdesk calls. And that's for a normal OS upgrade: Vista is made of fail and AIDS.
I hate to tell you this, but governments specify oddball restrictions based on what their son's best friend's cousin's neighbor told them all the time. If there's not a campaign contribution to dictate the way a politician votes, or a deal to vote on this so another rep will vote his way on somehting with a campaign contribution, he effectively votes at random.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
As much as I'm unimpressed by Vista(and dread the eventual move of the PC side of the operation I work for) and amused by this bill, it is a stupid idea.
Let me just put out in front of what I am about to say to you (and depending on how worked up I get, possibly about you) the disclaimer that I thought that this article was the best thing I've read all day. Hell, I think that this years' AFD was one of the best ever (mostly due to the level of discomfort it caused the general populace) and I think this is better than anything I read yesterday too.
A lot of people think that the United States is some shiny, happy land where nothing bad ever happens and where the good guys are trying to save us from ourselves. I don't know if you are at some deep level one of those people, or not. But if you can't imagine a good, logical reason for something like this to go right into the budget, you haven't been practicing The Imagination Song. Do I really have to say more than the word kickback to tell you all that you need to know? Should I have had to say anything like this in the first place? Microsoft needs buyers. People at all levels of society need/want money. Windows Vista is pure, concentrated evil - I was going to say shit but any farm kid knows that you can grow plants with that. Adopting it while security updates are still available for Windows XP would be insanity (even with the incredible slowness of XP with SP3) while every state in the nation is scrambling to put a budget together.
If Texas' state IT minions are so incompetent that they need politicians to tell them what software to use, based on anecdotal evidence, then they should be fired at once. If not, then they should be treated like reasonably responsible adults, and allowed to do their jobs to the best of their expertise.
Life isn't fair. A lot of people should be fired that aren't. I bet they belong to a union of state employees or something.
Broad requirements like "thou shalt use only open, interoperable systems" are perfectly appropriate; but "thou shalt not use item X" is just stupid, even if I happen to dislike item X.
Even a complete fucking moron can see that Vista is dogshit and spending money on it would be wasting money. I strongly suspect that this was an attempt to head off a specific action by some massive department to create a gigantic piece of pork which the great state of Texas can ill afford at this time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I use XP, Vista32, Vista64, and windows 7 daily.
Upgrading from XP to Windows 7 will have FAR LESS downtime and retraining than Vista.
Vista 64 is a giant steaming pile of crap that needs to die,die,die,die.. Vista64 is typically the cause of every incompatibility report on the net for Vista it's a steaming pile of crap that is incompatible with everything.
That said, I have found a few really important appps we use at work that do NOT work with vista. Strangely windows7(32bit) does not show the same incompatibility, and I am very curious as to why.
The test laptop with Windows 7 is the EXACT SAME laptop model and setup that the other two are. the Windows 7 laptop runs as fast as the XP laptop does. The vista laptop thrashes it's hard drive and idles at 30% cpu use on the dual core processor. The Windows 7 setup does not do this... YET... I'm waiting for what Microsoft will throw in there.
Although the Vists laptop rips Blu ray discs just as well as the XP one does... so that's cool :)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.