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 what will this mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome this!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets hope this makes people think about Ubuntu atleast :-).
Competition is good, for a technological ecosystem and this is an example of it. Ultimately finally customers benefit and are more free to choose.
Re:hmmm ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with Windows deployment (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:so what will this mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
The main reason for the migration was that we couldn't buy NT4 licenses anymore, 2K superiority being very marginal in the decision.
Re:oy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:hmmm ... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a million PCs. With the amount of money required to license and maintain the beast called Vista on a million PCs, I'd rather pay RedHat or Canonical to give me a customised OS for the lot - and switch over to Web-based apps. Yes, it's a big ask...
By the time it takes to get a million users get trained on UAC, IE7, Office 2007 and the support guys figure out how to get these running... the CIO could confdently move to Phase 2 with Linux-based web services, CRM, Business Intelligence etc. The army of MCSEs can be sent to Dell to support unfortunate CIOs stuck with Vista.
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
Support. Hardware manufacturers, 3rd party software developers, and Microsoft themselves will stop supporting XP at some point. I have personally been in this trap before with MS OS's in a corporate environment, you eventually have to move.
What does it offer to businesses?
Support. Sorry, it's a big deal.
The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.
True, but it can always be tighter. Better tools with more granularity mean less support calls due to malware/intrusions/etc. Of course, the support calls relating to "I can't do this" can outweigh the former, so it's a balancing act. Regardless, new tools are always welcome. Not to mention, new tools in the OS mean less 3rd party products to buy.
Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP
That's not new. I don't recall an OS since Windows 95 that offered a compelling reason to upgrade. Minor bug fixes, better hardware support, etc, but nothing that would make it worth shelling out cash to upgrade. In the past, it's been a case of new hardware just plain not booting the old OS, so we have to move.
At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course
Of course? So you wrote this rant about how businesses don't need to upgrade, then followed it up with this? Huh?
but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away?
2 years? Where did you hear THAT? Considering the amount of engineering that went into Vista, I suspect that the next OS is quite a ways off. WinFS is nowhere near ready, and I can't see MS shipping their next OS without it. Even if it is true that the next OS is 2 years off, that really means 3, plus the time needed for SP1, so minimum 4 years from now to the next usable OS. Plenty of time for XP to fall off the support map.
I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore.
This is what I've done in the past, and I've learned my lesson the hard way. One day, you get a new shipment of laptops to find a minor chipset tweak and, oh crap, XP won't boot. Now I have to QUICKLY figure out Vista and start deploying? No way, not any more. Embracing Vista now, testing Vista, and identifying its critical flaws is very important to businesses. I'm already working on the Vista rollout plan, even though the OS isn't ready. These are the woes of working in a Windows shop.
Waiting for SP1? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure who might be saying that they are not waiting for a service pack before Vista deployment for their business. It's certainly none of the people I've been speaking with. Due to the number of problems with application compatibility, the problems with Vista itself, and the nearly non-existant benefit to my business that Vista would provide, I will be waiting for SP1. At the time that SP1 is released, more time will have passed so that our application vendors will have re-written or updated their code to match Vista's changes. We'll also have less of an expenditure for new equipment to meet Vista's hungry requirements since we're constantly retiring older computers and purchasing nearly top-level systems to replace them. We will _not_ be transitioning to gain access to any new "features" that Vista provides, rather, we will transition because we can no longer buy computers with XP installed. Even though Vista provides some positive enhancements to application/OS separation, we have found that user education is vastly superior to feel-good allow/deny prompts that an uneducated user will botch every time. It's more work, sure, and would be a significant effort with a company larger than our 90+users, but the savings come in time. The "trusted computing" and DRM features within Vista allow _much_ greater control of the computer to be given to the software vendor than any reasonable sysadmin would be comfortable with. Due to these concerns and others, my company has been exploring a move for all users to Linux and MacOS. I know of several other 100+ employee local companies that are doing the same.
Re:So.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I hear the word Vista and I cringe. There is no way I would ever switch over. XP works on all our machines without upgrades. I just don't see enough (any) benefit to moving to vista and we won't be doing it.
I can't imagine the head aches for a large corporation trying to move. Wow. Crazy. I'll say it again. Wow.
Re:Why not ignore it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here. After running Linux (RH + Windowmaker) exlusively from 1997-2001, I switched over to Windows 2000, and then XP.
I had no real complaints. Good hardware support and lots of applications.
Then slowly over the last 6 years I ditched expensive Photoshop and began using GIMP. I stopped upgrading MS Office and installed Open Office. I started using Firefox exclusively. Thunderbird has been my email client for 2 years. I used Azureus for P2P. My stock trading platform is 100% Java.
It occurred to me last year that I was basically using XP to run 90% open source or platform-neutral applications. And while it was somewhat stable, it was still 32 bit, and was susceptible to all kinds of hacks, and still did crash when I had 20+ apps open, screen saver wouldn't engage, crashes when transferring across MS networks, and some other little things.
So last month it was time for a new computer.
I looked at Vista 64 Ultimate bit.
I looked at Ubuntu 64 bit.
Why pay $300-ish? I dunno. I used almost all free software.
Installed Ubuntu, and now have a triple 1600x1200 head setup with 3 monitors attached to 2 video cards.
It looks beautiful.
Have only rebooted for a new kernel updated.
Have some niggling problems (still trying to get the SD card reader and wireless scanner to recognize), but for the most part everything just works, and has yet to crash (knocks wood). And I don't have to do the virus thing constantly. Ad-aware, Norton, Registry cleaner, etc. Was getting tedious. XP had slowed down considerably after the same intall for 2 years.
And I use the same apps as before. OpenOffice, Gimp, Firefox, Azureus, Bittorrent, Thunderbird, Trading Platform ... I can't really tell the difference as the desktop more or less looks the same as before. Three monitors, everything back in it's original place.
I'm not a "fanboy" of anything. I still have a XP partition which I purchased 2 years ago for Flight Simulator X. I think Mac OSX is marvelous ... but as far as BUYING a new OS ... I don't really see the point.
The strides the Linux Desktop have made in the past few years frankly astounded me, and I am running a new box like nothing has happened.
The OS can see al of my 4GB of memory, it's fast. It's stable. I update and install software with the checkbox. And at native 64 bit, it is much faster on the same hardware ... and I am using the exact same programs I was before with no real compromises (and several actual additions to my software arsenal).
I don't hate Microsoft. I don't bash Microsoft. Nor do I hate or bash Novell.
I just don't think they are terribly necessary anymore.
For the average home user, I've just no idea why Vista would be a need. And that goes for business users too, other than the fact that converting a larger operation from one platform to another may be more trouble than it is worth.
What happens when you can't activate XP anymore? (Score:2, Interesting)
What About the "NSA Tax"? (Score:3, Interesting)
This means, of course, to anyone with a brain, that the NSA figured out X ways to break into Vista - and told Microsoft about X - n of them (pick your numbers, the idea is the same.)
This means that any government or foreign corporation who uses Vista has just handed the farm to the NSA.
Anybody outside of the US - and any moron inside the US - who uses Vista has to have their head examined.
Oh, sure, the NSA doesn't care about me, or you, so they aren't probing our boxes - right?
Right.
This is way worse than the old story about the hidden "NSA keys" - at least that time Microsoft didn't admit that the NSA had actively been invited to break Windows security (although I wouldn't be surprised if they had been and did.)
People who compare this to SELinux simply don't know what they're talking about. There's no comparison whatsoever, as SELinux is open source.