A Majority of Businesses Will Not Move To Vista

oDDmON oUT writes "An article on the Computerworld site quotes polling results from a potentially-divisive PatchLink survey. The poll shows that the majority of enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'. A majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version of Windows. This comes on the heels of a dissenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked a heated discussion on numerous forums."

We're one of them...

[NIN1385]

I have instructed my boss to not purchase any new computer with Vista on it for at least a year or two. Just some of the horror stories I have read about all the incompatibility and the problems with just using the interface was enough. I did however have an coworker who received a new laptop with Vista on it and we have had nothing but problems with it. Our printers wouldn't install and I cannot believe how overly complicated they made it to find anything in the operating system.

It's unbelievable what they have compromised just so they can have flashy graphics and smooth looking buttons. It all boils down to one thing in the end however, I just don't see any benefit to upgrading any time soon so therefore there's no reason to. We will continue to buy our new PCs from Dell with Windows XP on them until they either quit offering it or we have a piece of equipment that requires it.

Sticking with windows

[Mike1024]

many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'

Well, lets see what the actual numbers are (quoting the article):

2% said they are already running Vista
9% said they planned to roll out Vista in the next three months.
87%, said they would stay with their existing version(s) of Windows.
8% of those polled acknowledged Linux plans and
4% said they would deploy Mac OS X.

I would say "many will stick with the Windows they have", certainly, but I'm not sure I would call 8% or 4% 'many'. And somehow I suspect 'linux plans' might not mean complete replacement of Windows on the desktop.

Just my $0.02

Re:XP was much the same

[Vancorps]

In my short career thus far I've seen hundreds of businesses move to XP but only one that actually upgraded the OS on existing machines. Most businesses will get Vista just like this did with XP. During their 3 year hardware refresh. Most businesses these days are leasing their hardware and will be more than happy to get laptops which have no trouble handling Vista.

Given that everyone knew Vista was on the horizon and how MS deals with roll-outs a lot of businesses did their refresh last year since the devil you know is usually better than the devil you don't. Makes sense to me, I don't know why a business would upgrade the OS either from 2000 to XP or from XP to Vista. You end up with extra crap you don't need if you do it poorly or you end up gaining very little for your efforts. If the OS comes with the machine then there is no work in deploying the OS. You just join it to the domain and GP installs SMS client which installs Office and any other apps you wish to deploy. Easy as pie and works with old and new OS's.

Well

[Eisenstein]

we started last year replacing Windows 2000 with XP in our company. Vista is far away still. Why should any company adapt to a OS before it is tried and tested?

I completely see this...

[s31523]

Businesses are real slow to adopt new upgrades, especially when the development environment needs to be very stable. In fact, I literally just got a notice that testing is complete and IT will be installing XP Service Pack 2. That is right, service pack 2.

We develop a lot of aerospace software and are required to maintain development environments that can reliably and consistently reproduce software loads over long periods of time (think life of an aircraft). Using a new OS can throw a monkey wrench into older tools, so we are careful to jump on any new OS or whatever. Not that every company has the same issues, but I bet many have similar concerns. After all, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Re:This is due to....

[mlts]

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x =8&y=10&p1=3223 [microsoft.com]

Mainstream support stops on 4/14/2009
Extended support goes out the door 4/8/2014

Re:MS made big mistake with XP

[bconway]

Windows 2000 will receive security support until 2010.

Re:MS made big mistake with XP

[pe1chl]

I don't think the difference between 2000 and XP is that big that a PC can work like a charm in 2000 and be maddingly slow in XP.

Probably you just need to turn off a few of the eyecandy effects.

Re:HARDENED WINDOWS XP

[dc29A]

can someone make a HARDENED WINDOWS XP version please :) hehehe

You can too!

(1) Don't use your PC logged in as administrator unless updating hardware/OS. Run as command prompt or MMC works great too, and don't even have to log off or switch user.
(2) Patch it to the max.
(3) Disable every service you can. I run Windows 2003 with about 8 or so services on, default install: 25+ services.
(4) Stop using IE for other than Windows Updates. Firefox + AdBlock Plus + NoScript = awesomesauce.
(5) Stop clicking on every "OMGZ! CLICK ME AND WIN!!!!! OMG111!!!" popup.
(6) Stop downloading videos called something like "Pr0nMovieHotBabe.exe". If you really MUST download those movies, use a VM to test them.
(7) Most importantly, common sense. Oh and, did I mention never use administrator unless you have to configure hardware or update OS?
(8) ?????
(9) Profit!

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[JMZero]

Funny thing is I haven't seen MS apps break yet.

From Microsoft:

While we have made tremendous investments in Windows Vista to ensure backwards compatibility, some of the system enhancements, such as User Account Control, changes to the networking stack, and the new graphics model, make Windows Vista behave differently from previous versions of Windows.

The changes impact Visual Studio and thus we're unable to support Visual Studio .NET 2002 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows Vista.

Vista breaks a lot of stuff. MS stuff included.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[j-pimp]

What printer actually *has* drivers for XP-64? Although I see the advantages of going w/ 64-bit OSes, the hardware/software support just isn't there yet - although it should be. And it is not MS's fault.

It depends... the Open Source community is quite willing to make its own drivers if the hardware specs are available. Can't we expect the same from Microsoft? At least for the "big brands"?

Besides, if Microsoft says "give us the specs or your hardware stays unsupported", I guess most hardware vendors will comply a lot faster than when the Linux community says the same ;-)

The thing is generally vendors write the drivers and sometimes Microsoft distributes them with the OS. I don't think Microsoft write any print driver for physical hardware printers. Although I'm sure if they do a Slashdotter will correct me.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[Spikeles]

Hmm. depends. From what i understand there are a few ways of accessing sound in Windows. Through the old legacy win32 interface, direct to hardware driver access(EAX etc) and DirectSound. Each of those access the card in their own way separately of each other and don't know about each other's volume. Hence the reason Vista uses a software stack. All those streams are now sent through a single software stack and each can be controlled and modified( eg, volumne, special effects, pitch, tone, etc) by a single layer.

An example is World of Warcraft starts using DirectSound to pump out sound at 75%. Then your email application pops up and tells Windows, hey i want you to turn the sound to 100% so i can play a "you've got mail sound". Neither of these applications know about each other, and they both want access to the same card. In XP, there is going to be conflicts, the email application might turn your sound up, but forget to turn it down causing WoW to get really loud. WoW is still at 75% but because your email application told the card to go higher, well, it gets noisy.

In Vista, you get two streams heading into a single control layer which can adjust the volume on each input stream seperately before merging into a single stream to the card.

As you mentioned it would require special hardware support and then Windows would have to support it.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[tomofumi]

I remember in older Windows release there is a printer driver called "HP Laserjet 1xxx (Microsoft)", it looks like a generic HP driver come from MS, with less function than the real thing but still works.