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US Army Will Upgrade To Windows Vista
MojoKid writes "While many organizations are preparing for an upgrade to Windows 7, the US Army is upgrading to Windows Vista. The upgrade will include getting rid of all the Office 2003 programs and installing Office 2007 in its place, and is scheduled for a Dec. 31 completion date. Half the Army's computers (they have 744,000 desktop units) have Office 2007 so far, and 13 percent are on Vista, which was released in January 2007. Windows 7 is supposed to launch before year's end, so the Army will be fully on Vista sometime after Microsoft's next-generation OS is already launched."
I know there are going to be dozens (if not hundreds) of vista jokes about this article but I still don't know why everyone hates vista so much.
This is going to sound really weird, and I am not making this up. I'm a Linux user (kubuntu at the moment, used to use slackware and I'm thinking of installing fedora) and I have an old mac that I use regularly too. I wasn't too fond of XP, and I'm not a huge fan of microsoft either because of their dirty business tactics. I got Vista (with sp1) cheap because I'm a uni student. The first thing I did before buying Vista was to make sure that all the parts I had were compatible, and luckily they were as I only just built the computer. Anyway, so I installed vista expecting there to be a million problems, I had a preconceived negative opinion of vista and I was actually quite surprised. Its stable, fast (on my computer, at least) and I'm quite enjoying using it.
However, I never used Vista before SP1 and I didn't have the driver problems. And I guess because I don't use XP that I wasn't missing any of XP's features.
Anyway, I guess my experience isn't the usual experience. Sure, I'm not going to make Vista my main machine (I love kubuntu and os x too much to do that :)) but I don't regret installing Vista.
At least they have upgraded from RIS to WDS, that will make the upgrade to win 7 much easier. And they have gotten used to MS's new and interesting licensing schemes. Both have been a big hurdle for us. Those factors actually played a big role in us skipping Vista for our users.
This is such an incredibly bad idea. To stick to a less-granular must-"keep moving"-just-because mindset is massively boneheaded considering how many things you aren't safe assuming these days with new software.
To try and justify that by saying new hardware is getting more difficult to get working with XP, that begs questioning with the following points:
1. Most hardware manufacturers without their heads up their asses are still writing stable drivers for XP and even NT/2000 (not quite that different anyway).
2. The trend of "new" is not limited to software anymore, and we're starting to see it in some places with hardware design that is layers upon layers of infantile "standards" that just came out and don't have any solid roots to legacy artitecture at all. Not that breaking ties with legacy is bad, but it is when support only lies with vista and above, and starts to completely destroy the ideas that things such as fixed resources operated upon. These things ALWAYS worked. Too much automation is what led to the magical reboot as a viable solution in the first place.
I was a Microsoft supporter until Vista came out. I would defend them at every turn through the days of 2000 which I still use. When XP arrived it took me quite a while to warm up to it until it was patched hundreds of times and stronger hardware showed up. However, it is still built on a solid base of usability and structure that anyone who isn't a help desk terrorist idiot appreciates.
Now, I've been pissed off to the point of diving head first into linux (Debian right now) and building a desktop at work with enough tools that I don't even need Windows on a workstation for an average week's worth of IT tasks. Just to prove a point.
Microsoft advertises with the phrase "people ready"...but this makes absolutely no sense when the same amount of brainpower it takes to mind all the bugs, patches, hangups and general arthritic-jointed nature of all of its software could be used better building something open-source. Having said that you'd come out with the same functionality, and quite a bit happier, retaining most of your hair too.
The entire idea of new just because needs to be re-evaluated and completely trashed in some cases. The companies today with the same names of yesterday are sometimes not even the same companies at all. It's not necessarily the companies you want to hang onto, which people do the most.... it's the "old" (read: actually working) idealisms that were great because you got a real return for actually reading and thinking.
This is making a stretch, but it proves a point: when I set a jumper on a card, I KNOW WHAT FUCKING IRQ IT'S GOING TO HAVE.
Wow.. my experience with Office is totally different. I used OOo exclusively for the last 2-3 years until I got Office 2K7 at work. After fiddling with it a bit I almost immediately fell in love with it; I found it so easy to use (the ribbon just clicks for me for everything).
I was sure I'd still use OOo for everything but MS Word and Excel load faster and I find muchmuchmuch more intuitive to use when compared to OOo. Don't get me wrong; I hate myself for it - I love OOo and am all about open data formats, but really when it comes to Getting Shit Done, MS Office works better for me (even writing this I sound like an MS shill and assume modding down is in my immediate future, but if you read my post history you'll see I'm not).
I am farrrr from an Office power-user and I find Office 2k7 the easiest thing for me to get the most out of at a high level.
Re: Outlook - I run it non-stop from the moment my computer boots to the moment I need to reboot for a Windows update (usually a week :), with no problems at all due to memory leaks or performance issues. I'm running it connected to Zimbra so it's using the Outlook plugin to talk to the Zimbra server stuff; maybe it sucks more under Exchange.
I should know. I work for a city government and we are getting ready to bring in Sharepoint. No business plan, no requirements documents like are needed for the small web apps I write. We're bringing Sharepoint in because the CIO is a sheep just like 95% of the other CIO's out there. If they see others doing it, they're going to follow suit. Meanwhile, due to budget constraints, our libraries will be open fewer hours. Yep, we've got our priorities in order.
"In the process, generate a new IT re-education process within the government to train people on Linux and just be rid of Windows ..."
That is workable, just as it was when we switched from green-screen terminals to Windows in the USAF.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They will discover that Software may become a national security risk
The NT kernel has many great features that put it on a par with Unix in terms of security and functionality. As yet, no operating system using the NT kernel has actually used those features. Even UAC is a bizarre hack of a permissive userland, and doesn't use the kernel's security features. It's about as secure as Windows 98, thanks to Microsoft's butchery of the userland in the name of backwards compatibility.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Windows can be hardened and made secure. Just because you're too stupid to figure out how doesn't mean it can't be done. I am part of a shop that manages a 12,000 computer network, about 10% XP now, 70% Vista, the rest are various Windows server versions running under VMWare ESX. Not one *nix distro or flavor. We had a grand total of 4 malware infections last year, all because of 'privileged users' that we allowed to install software and who stupidly ran untrusted exes. Bottom line, computer security is about policy, configuration, and educating your users, not whether you run *nix or Windows.
I'd like to preface this comment by saying I don't mean to be snarky, but given the general tone of it people are bound to misinterpret. This is Slashdot, afterall...
How much does the QA cost in terms of money and man-hours? How much is Microsoft billing the US government for 744,000 copies of Vista and Office? It just seems to me that no matter how big of a "discount" Microsoft is giving, you can't beat free. Linux is proven to be secure and stable, even without military QA. I'm sure it would still be put through it, and rightly so, but it would take much less work to get any gaps in Linux sealed up tighter than Windows ever could be.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Can't the army just requisition the code on the basis of national security and fix the bug themselves ...?
Many Universities and third party vendors already have full access to Microsoft source code. You better believe that the US government and Department of Defense have access as well.
As I recall, Windows 98 wouldn't have been able to do that. Something about the tick timer overflowing or something that wasn't fixed until NT.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."