Dell Warns of Vista Upgrade Challenges 287
Mattaburn writes with a story up on ZDNet UK reporting that Dell is warning businesses of the migration challenges that lie ahead as they move to Vista. The article notes what an unusual step it is for a company of Dell's size to be "toning down its sales pitch for Microsoft's Vista operating system" — particularly because "one of the issues the hardware vendor is warning business about is the extra hardware they will need to buy." Quoting: "'They need to be looking at the number of images they will be installing and the size of these images,' said Dell's European client services business manager, Niall Fitzgerald. 'A 2GB image for each user will have a big impact.'"
So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"We are not here to promote Microsoft and tell people they should buy it. We can show them the advantages of Vista and what they need to put in place to begin to move across. "
"Vista is big and complex and there is a lot to it. It requires a lot of testing. You can't just shut off XP on Friday and start Vista on Monday morning. There will be training. There are things to learn."
and then..
"However, he still thinks that business should go ahead with the migration and not wait for Microsoft to release its first service pack."
Not stupid at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The nice thing about big businesses like Dell, is that they have a lot to lose; keeps them at a certain level of honesty.
Wait for SP1 (Score:5, Insightful)
I would disagree. My company's IT department waited until they felt that IE7 was stable and patched enough for a rollout to start offering it. Most of the "techies" that I know think the same thing about Vista. That the really big reasons for not upgrading will be fixed after SP1.
Why not ignore it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do they even want to upgrade?
I'm on XP Pro and I have absolutely no desire or see any reason to upgrade to Vista. And from what I've seen so far about Vista, my next hardware purchase will not have Vista on it.
Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does it offer to businesses? The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.
Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP. At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course, but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away? That's not a very long time. I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore.
Microsoft reached a plateau with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It's going to be harder and harder for them to convince people they need a new operating system.
Re:Why not ignore it. (Score:2, Insightful)
That is how I felt about Windows 2000, when I was working with it.
It is amazing how much it feels like history repeating itself. Windows 2000 was one of the better releases of Windows, and certainly the only one I'd use now if I had to use windows at all. (Assuming hardware support.)
Re:Aero needs 400m transistors? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time Microsoft stops supporting XP, the costs for hardware will probably have dropped to the point where Vista capable hardware is affordable.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
We originally said the same thing about XP - that we would stick with 2000 and skip a version then Microsoft released Vista and we're upgrading to XP while we can.
Sanity and Respect will Sell (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this as indication that they are reversing course on this and going back to what worked for them in the past... earning customer respect and loyalty.
Re:Migration... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I had REALLY expected them to release Vista drivers on time.
Praytell.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dell doesn't offer Ubuntu for corporate customers, but they have offered RHEL for quite some time, and don't make the insinuation you pointed out. However, on a 'home and home office' page, this is very important to do, as you can't expect Joe Blow to just know Ubuntu from anything else.
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Praytell.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because if he were a real CIO managing 10,000 computers, he ought to know that Home, Home Basic, Home Advanced, Home Ultimate and Home Wet Dream are just a way of confusing buyers, and preventing them from becoming tech-savvy. It tells a lot about the psychology of Dell, and it's unthinking gullible customers. In short, it tells the CIO he shouldn't be trusting Dell for any tech advice.
Re:Wait for SP1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Dell CYA. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I really don't understand is why he made the statement in the first place. Dell really isn't over-promoting Vista to its Enterprise/Corporate customers. I recently had to quote out several Dell OptiPlex workstations, and Windows XP Professional is still the default OS licensing option for OptiPlex workstations, which are what most enterprise/corporate customers purchase.
The whole "2 GB" image thing is a bunch of nonsense as well. With every version of Windows that comes out, the default footprint size of Windows on the hard disk has increased as well. I remember installing Windows 95 on 200MB hard disks, with plenty of space left for Office 95 and other applications. Any IT manager in charge of making Windows images knows that a new version of Vista is going to be larger than its XP counterpart. Not only is this true of Windows, but of most software application packages as well.
Overall, Vista does have a lot of new changes. However, there is not too much there holding a customer back from upgrading. Many of the new features in Vista can be turned off and disabled if they can't be tested or get in the way, leaving you with a very XP-like user experience. Vista supports almost all of the group policies that XP does when it comes to being managed through AD. There are several new ways of deploying Vista images as well, with free Microsoft tools, but, there is nothing stopping you from using your existing tools either (Ghost, etc).
This statement looks like Dell spreading is FUD to cover their tracks for another upcoming quarter where they will have poor financial results. They can then blame "slow adaptation of Vista" as a reason for slow hardware sales.
Re:Just wondering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure? Windows 98 hacked to run Firefox would probably work too. I use a VM based on that combo for a disposable browser that fits on a small thumb drive.
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) After December XP not available for sale (volumne license folks may be exempt)
2) Drivers for the new hardware you buy may not work on anything prior to vista.
(some companies have migrated some machine from 2000 to xp because of these reasons.
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The post was meant to be funny right?
Re:Wait for SP1 (Score:3, Insightful)
The great thing about "considering" Linux is that it costs you nothing.
I was going to purchase Vista Ultimate 64bit ... but just for shits and grins I downloaded Ubuntu 7.04 to see what all the fuss was about.
I will be honest ... I though Ubuntu was a bunch of Linux Fanboy hype about how Linux was ready for the desktop (we have all been hearing this for years - yet it has never completely been so), and I was certain that I would be off to Fry's to grab a copy of Vista.
I have 3 monitors running, and heard nothing but horror stories about multiple heads in Linux.
My "hacking" days are over (I contributed a small part to the Linux kernel in the 90's). But I am old and busy now. It's not my thing anymore. I don't care to dick around with driver code recompilations anymore. I just want to install the things and go on. Almost like my friggin mother.
I burned Ubuntu onto a DVD-RW ... so I didn't even have to waste a perfectly good DVD, and could even erase it from that.
I had no intention on keeping the thing on my system, but with a fresh machine ... it was the time to just screw around with stuff until I moved all of my data over from my own machine.
It's a month later. I never did buy Vista. Barring a Vista-only program that can make my schlong bigger. I likely never will. I did make a small partition for XP to dual boot, but 90% of the drive is Ubuntu and it is the default OS. It took me 5 minutes with "nvidia-settings" to set up my 3 heads with xinerama enabled.
Nobody is more surprised than I am about this. I had already put the money aside for it ... so that wasn't really the issue.
I simply got the exact OS I was looking for when I was eyeing Vista (namely something 64 bit and stable that could see all of my RAM), without ever having to leave the house.
Will everyone come to this conclusion?
Not only no, but hell no.
The point is, you lose NOTHING by trying. Fire up bittorrent, grab Ubuntu (or whatever flavor you like), and try it.
If you aren't pleased ... purchase Vista.
At least then you know you made the right choice.
Vista is a fine OS, and you won't shoot yourself for getting it.
But if you set aside one day to install Linux completely for free, what have you lost?
You don't need to CONSIDER Linux. Just try it hands on. The thing even comes with a Live CD so you don't have to touch your hard drive ... although the functionality is very limited on the Live CD.
In a perfect world I would like to see everyone just give it a whirl, and move on if it doesn't meet their needs. And there is no reason not to, since it costs zero to do so ... and zero if you want to keep it.
And if it isn't for you, it isn't for you.
The fact is that there is no "bad" OS, IMHO. I could take any OS and get done what I need to get done. They are all fine products.
But if you can taste a major OS for free ... then why not? At least you will know for a fact that it wasn't for you, and possibly if you are like me, you will find out that it was.
Re:Wait for SP1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So.. (Score:3, Insightful)
He did evaluate it. Didn't you read about the part where he saw no benefit? It implies that he did look for benefits. Furthermore, if XP is doing the job on his current hardware why should he switch?
You claim security is the reason, but if XP is so unsecured what makes you think the new system will fare better? Yes they are hyping security, and it probably is more secure, but Microsoft is a company with a track record and it is impossible to look through an entire system to check to see if it secure independently. Thus the only real way to judge security is by reputation and from the real world experiences of others.
One major part of security in the real world is knowing your own plan and procedures. You are not allowed to know what is going on inside a Windows machine. You have to take MS at their word and that alone is a strike against security.
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have any idea how many small businesses - not big corporations that routinely swap out machines every three years because they've amortized them out - are running on four, five, six, seven year old machines that are perfectly fine for office workers with XP? Or that almost all office machines not used for video editing are probably running with 512MB of RAM - which is more than adequate for ninety percent of office workers?
Yes, the hardware requirements for Vista are a problem. Every single industry report has said that. Some people have said that the "sweet spot" for Vista performance is FOUR gigs of RAM. Numerous people have complained that it is dog slow on recent machines with 1-2GB of RAM, depending on applications mix, even a minimal applications mix.
Your experience is essentially irrelevant - a single data point at odds with most others reported for months now.