Corporate America Not Ready For Vista

thefickler writes to point out a TechBlorge article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista. The article says that the study, by Softchoice, will be released next week. The study found that 50% of the PCs inventoried (from a sample of 112,000 from 472 organizations) are below Vista's basic system requirements. Roughly half of those PCs will need to be replaced outright to run Vista. 94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition. The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh," as some analysts have been saying for a while now.

Their main market?

[tmandry]

...and the workplace is really Windows' main market. I'm willing to guess that at least half their profits come from corporations. The question is, why do they seem to be switching targets?

I honestly can't think of any corporation...

[Durrok]

... that I have worked for that has changed operating systems on anything besides their servers except when they did a hardware "refresh" (read: PC broke). I know the company I work for is getting ready to start using Vista on their new PCs that they order when Microsoft stops letting HP put it on their PCs but until then it's XP.

Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago. Unless your corporation is very small you keep PCs around until they die or become so obsolete they can no longer run the programs you need them to. In this case we had an active directory upgrade so we had to get rid of all the NT 4.0 machines as they were no longer going to work with the upgrade.

That isn't the computing life in my university

[technoextreme]

That's the computing life in public US Universities.

Says you. My university has Macs, Unix computers, and of course Windows.

TCO is waaaay out of line.

[pair-a-noyd]

The OS itself is priced way out of line but then when you factor in all new hardware, it's insane.
I've talked to several customers of mine and many of them just bought new machines in the last 18 months.
They have no intentions of replacing them all over again just to run this new OS that's not all that revolutionary.
I'll bet that's the general consensus. In general of course.

Some people are happy about this, I am sure.

[elgee]

The Linux crowd for instance. If this doesn't drive more companies to Linux, I am not sure what will.

Not where I work....yet

[Nordrick Framelhamme]

I know my employer won't be upgrading any time soon. In fact the main reason we are using XP is because the hardware supplier we use switched to a chipset that did not include drivers for NT.

As we are looking at moving to a 3 year rollover on hardware most of the hardware will not be Vista ready for at least the next two years, by which times there will be at least 2 service packs and numerous packs for the inevitable MSism in the OS.

LOL VISTA is crap

[Archfeld]

The very LARGE corporation I work for is still running more than 20K windows 2000 machines. We've found ZERO reason to upgrade to XP much less to consider Vista. The ONLY upgrades we've done is 2003 server on certain backend machines that can take advantage of the 64 bit architechture. For business XP and Vista are USELESS expenditures that provide nearly ZERO return for the dollar, while increasing operating costs by more than 20%.

Re:Why release to business first?

[dan828]

The big reason for pushing out the business editions first was because MS sold a lot of Software Assurance licenses with the understanding that Vista upgrades would be included. The first licenses are going to begin expiring this month, so MS would have been in the position of having to extend those licenses to meet their promises. The enterprise sector would have looked on software assurance for the OS as being just a bill of goods that MS was trying to sell them if Vista hadn't shipped within the license date.

Re:Their main market?

[OfNoAccount]

Computers, like most complex devices have a failure rate that forms a bell curve - most failures either occur at the start of the product lifespan (in which case it'll be covered by the warranty), or towards the end. Those 1GHz machines are starting to get into unreliable territory.

Usually around the time that machines start failing, spare parts also become harder to find. When did you last see a new PII-400? Or perhaps a new Slot1 motherboard? If you can find a new one it'll probably cost more than a whole new machine!

You may also find that new perhiperals may not be compatible - maybe the drivers require a recent OS to install, or you need a port that those old machines don't have.

Finally, as has already been mentioned, given a choice between two identical companies, one with the latest computers and flat screens, and another with crap machines and blurry 15" CRT's - it's not rocket science to work out which I'd prefer. A few years ago, I worked at one of the latter - my developer friend had a 386DX40 w4Mb/RAM as his NT4 devbox, logon might take 15mins, compilation may happen overnight - the target customer boxen were dual P133 w/128Mb. I was alpha testing the software under Win95, and the customer was running NT - needless to say sometimes something that tested fine on my system wouldn't even install on theirs... New computers are pretty cheap compared with the losses of key staff turnover, and frustrated clients!

Re:J. Hasaclue CIO responds:

[Zero__Kelvin]

(I am not saying the OP does not have a clue. We are in agreement here, at least to some degree, from what I can see. I'm just adding the next logical step in the analysis.)

1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.

That is a lot like getting comfortable with a thorn in your foot. It is not comfort; merely numbness.

2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.

They are going to have to switch to Linux at some point. There is no time like the present to start the process.

3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.

Why, it will run the very latest spyware and viruses, of course :-) It will make us allow us to pay heaps of money for newer versions of software just because M$ wants our cash.

4) I don't the the budget headroom for an off-cycle hardware overhaul.

Even with the budget, why waste the money? Switch to Linux. Lower TCO. No need to waste money on new hardware.

5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.

Clearly your CEO is not a hot babe :-)

6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.

We are not deploying another Windows O.S. ever. We would have to be fools to move to Vista rather than Linux!

Re:Vista is the new ME

[shywolf9982]

Microsoft saw that newer machines were largely going to waste with CPU usage below even 1% so they decided that they could utilize more of it and make the user experience more enjoyable.

However I agree with your post, I have to correct you on this issue:

1. average cpu utilization will be as low as it currently is with vista. Effects are calculated when actually someone does something (like moving windows, pulling down menus and whatever else), not if the computer is idle.
2. so effects are drawn when the cpu gets busy, hence not alleviating at all the "burst effect" we currently see on cpu usage
3. the burst effect isn't bad at all (see cpu freq scaling)
4. all the effects calculation are made using the 3d power of the GPU through direct3d
5. effects were added because users like it. I've been using XGL and AIGLX for several months, and now everytime i fall back onto a non-accelerated desktop I feel bad (btw, you don't know how addictive the rotating desktop and/or wobbly windows can become)

To me, Vista needs one key thing.

[CFD339]

There are some things Vista could have that would really draw me in. Sadly, I can't seem to find out if any of these are part of the product or not. In posting this, I'm hoping someone can either answer or point me to an answer for some of the questions.

Number one on my Windows Vista wish list is that they virtualize the screen more.

What I want is actually very simple. I want to tell Windows - in one place - that my screen resolution is not 72dpi, but is in fact 125dpi. Once that is accomplished, all Windows elements should be scaled to that result.

For any application which does not specify drawing size, but rather specifies pixels - the new AERO graphics engine should do a simple calculation "X pixels * (125 / 72) = Y pixels" and draw it as Y. For fonts and other "vector" based drawing objects, this should be even easier as the curve calculations are already based on this kind of math.

If this is done properly, an 8pt font will take up the same physical area on a high resolution monitor as it does on a low resolution monitor. What's more, it will fit properly in buttons because the number of pixels on the button have been properly sized and should match.

Some people may WANT that optimized screen real estate. That's easily handled. They just need to set the DPI setting on back to 72, and their ultra-sharp tiny little fonts will be right back again. The only thing that could suffer - in theory - is looking at pictures. If something is supposed to be 10 pixels, it ends up being 17.36 for me. Rounding is where you get the "fuzzy" aspect.

Why does this matter? Right now, I'm looking at a 19" monitor which is optimized for 1280 by 1024 pixel resolution. The laptop is more extreme. It's a 17" monitor that is 1920 by 1080. Making some simple assumptions that the pixels are square and aligned uniformly (which they are not, actually) the two monitors come out to about 86 and 125 pixels per inch respectively.

LCD screens are not like the bulky old "tube" based screens. The pixels aren't projected onto a phosphor screen; they are actual hardware - like little light bulbs. If you decrease the display resolution, you're getting less crisp representation at each point than you would at the optimize resolution because the dots themselves cannot change size. They must therefore be approximated.

Where this becomes a problem is that many aspects of the Windows screen are designed to be a set number of pixels in height or width. The unit of measure is in pixels, not inches. This includes fonts, title bars, buttons, icons, and all kinds of other things. Much of the time, Windows doesn't know how many of those pixels fit on a linear inch of screen space on my screen. What people don't realize is that the old standard has been to assume about 72dpi for screen resolution. That means on my laptop, with nearly twice that resolution, things tend to be on half the ideal size.

Re:Their main market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps what you said is true for certain types of IT graduates. For most other employees, the kind of OS their employer offers is a non-issue.

Pay, benefits, name recognition, prospects, upward mobility opportunities, afterhours compensation, lunchroom selection, breakroom coffee/soda quality, company junkets, types of hand moisturizers in the restroom -- important.
Type of OS deployed? -- HELL no.

In particular, what you said is not true for pharmaceutical jobs. We use win 2k for personal workstations, *NIX on all servers, NT4.0 and *NIX to run 50% of instruments, the other 50% running off 98/95. And we still use 3.11 to run mass-specs. I am yet to see an XP computer or a Mac.

Background: I graduated 2006 with a BSci in Biochem, and now work for a large pharm. company [wikipedia.org] , making over $80,000/year.

Re:Vista is the new ME

[Foolhardy]

That's all well and good, but what features exactly were taken away in Vista that were found in XP?

The backup program has been nerfed, for one. I'll summarize what I posted [shellrevealed.com] on the Shell: revealed forums (a forum set up by MS late in Vista development to get feedback on the RCs) as of RC2 that Vista Backup (stclt.exe) can't do but ntbackup.exe from previous versions of Windows (which is not included and not compaitble with Vista) could:

• You can't actually select the files you want to back up. You have to pick an ambigious category of files or back up the entire hard disk.
• You can't backup EFS encrypted files, either in their raw format or unencrypted. NTBackup could archive the encrypted form, for use with seperately archived keys.
• It's unclear if it backs up extended attributes, alternate file streams, security descriptors, reparse points, and hardlinks.
• It can't back up registry hives, except in a full-system backup.
• The scheduling options are much less flexible than before.
• You can only include local (not network) files in an archive.
• The help is awful: there are at least two different hyperlink-in-dialog style help links that both go to a single generic FAQ that doesn't actually include the linked questions.
• You can only back up to DVD or network, or for non-full backups: CD. Nothing else. You can't put the archive on another hard disk. NTBackup let you put the archive anywhere. The question of why you can't use a HD is one of the unanswered question links.
• You need admin access to back up your OWN files. Another unanswered question link pretends to offer the rationale for this.
• Vista backup doesn't seem to have any command line support. NTBackup had tons.

Re:"Premium Edition"?

[sharkey]

FWIW, Aero Glass runs just fine on 512MB of RAM, as long as you have a display adapter that can do it (128MB RAM, WDM compatible). At least on RC1 it does.

Re:Not ready for IE7 either

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has a clause in the employee agreement for search quality folks that their work may involve looking at porn, even if inadvertently.

Re:Spend $ on Vista, or on necessities? My choice.

[mythosaz]

"$500 for a complete PC system installed? Your $500 machines aren't nearly as powerful as my 2.5 year old equipment!"

A new Dell GX6xx in quantity is about $500. I'm not sure what machines you were buying 2.5 years ago with core duos, but, I'm sure you might have been buying things that powerful. In our environement, a box from Dell shows up post-sysprep with our enterprise standard image on it (imaged AT Dell from our prepared image). A technician takes it out of the box, types a machine name, it auto-joins the domain, and policy (through BMC Configuration Management / Marimba) deploys any extra non-standard software for the users based on geographic and user-specific identifiers.

"I need something that will last for several years with near-zero fuss. I really can't afford to buy equipment that was obsolete last year, or that needs constant tinkering and upgrades and support."

Which is exactly why turning over a brand new Dell every 3 years (which matches the warranty period) makes sense for us - and for many, many, other large organizations. No tinkering -- we made the image. No upgrades needed -- it's new. And we're already the support. No fuss, no muss.

Also, as an added bonus, since the process we MAKE our enterprise standard image comes from a single unattended DVD (with a plethora of driver support, updated by us), when my "Developer" system was deployed, in dual-proc, 15k SCSI glory, it too ran the standard image, and got non-standard software deployed automatically.

"Assume that this machine will be in service for at least 3 years with near-zero maintenance."

From a hardware standpoint, we do. A rotating stock of 0-3 year old PCs is greatly cheaper than trying to stretch them beyond that age with upgrades, or to try to over-buy them with bleeding-edge technology at purchase time. We have similar support to our machines in terms of upgrades and maintainence (low), and I pay [for hardware], under $200 a year for PCs. If you're paying 2,000 but can stretch your PC lifecycle out, you'd better be getting 10 years from a PC without any upgrades. I assume you splurged for 64 megs of memory on the machine you bought in 1996? $200 is *nothing* for a productivity tool for an employee for a year.

This is pointless, of course. This is HOW large enterprise organizations are going to acquire Vista licenses and O2007 licences. Select agreements work that way. You can't buy a Windows 2000 license with your new PC - even if that's what ships on the disk. You just maintain enough OS/App/CAL/Exchange/whatever licences to match the NUMBER of machines that you have. Someday we'll have enough licences, and someday the suits will want to change the standard...just like we did from 2000 to XP a few years ago.

[For what it's worth, we embrace open source and open standard initiatves at our company. They honestly aren't mature enough yet, and the programs available aren't specific to our industry yet. We keep moving closer and closer, and someday, we'll divorce ourselves from Microsoft -- but that day isn't exactly tomorrow.]

Jeff

[msanford]

Jeff says it all [wordpress.com].

Re:Their main market?

[tftp]

The "secure" argument may work with home users - who don't upgrade anyway, outside of buying a new box. However in a corporate setting all Win machines are behind layers of firewalls and proxies, running antiviruses, so that problem had been solved already. Vista gives nothing to the corporate user, and takes some things away, and requires massive upgrades. So there is absolutely zero advantage in upgrading, until the ISVs start dropping XP apps (not any time soon yet.)

Re:Yea, but when is any company ready?

[jc42]

So, remind me which corporations of notable size are known to be early adopters?

Well, I recently finished a project at a rather large corporation (which I'll mercifully not name here) that hasn't quite finished upgrading all its W95 machines to W98. They also have a few NT machines, mostly in the IT dept.

No, I'm not joking. And this isn't the first case like this that I've seen.

Funny thing was that the project I worked on involved migrating software from a big IBM mainframe to a flock of distributed unix servers. Talk about having one foot in each world.

Re:J. Random CIO's thoughts:

[tftp]

Working as a CIO here, I can comment:

Bitlocker for laptops

Neither wanted nor permitted, ever. Employees do not own the work files, the company does. EFS is OK as long as recovery keys are available and user's own keys are backed up. BitLocker gives the keys to the user, and expects the user to maintain the backups (such as on a Flash disk, per MS's recommendation.) There is no reason, from corporate POV, to permit this.

Better power management via group policy for desktops, just to name two biggies

This is not even on the radar, and existing computers can already be configured to do the right power scheme for you. Group policy is important when things change often; but this power scheme can be on the Windows image that you used to install (clone) from.

Unless you need hardware upgrades there likely won't be a funding need since the upgrade is likely covered under your SA agreement.

Yes, but you forgot the compatibility testing and user training. If you use tons of apps how can you be sure they all work on Vista, given your configuration and usage pattern? I have one mission-critical app that runs only on Win2K - not NT 4 and not XP! It controls now obsolete piece of hardware (no upgrades from the vendor) so I guess we are stuck with Win2K until the hardware dies.