A Majority of Businesses Will Not Move To Vista 378
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."
Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
XP was much the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the real question is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
If not now, but when? (Score:4, Insightful)
For people who don't need the latest and greatest hardware support, where is the motivation to upgrade at all? I suppose there are probably security issues with the older Windows versions, but I think you can avoid a lot of this by being careful; something which will probably still be necessary with Windows 2060.
This argument applies even further with application software like Word. I'm not sure I've noticed any of Word's new features since they started underlining my spelling errors, and yet there have been quite a few major (expensive) version since then. Other than version incompatibility and the fact that everybody else is upgrading, why do we need a new version?
Peter
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:XP was much the same (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been like that with every Windows release actually. This isn't news; it is normal.
I tend to agree, and this was my first thought on reading this article.
I remember way back after Windows 95 came out there were many businesses that just refused to switch, despite 95 being a million times more stable, better UI, etc than the (IMO embarrassingly bad) Windows 3.1. Microsoft was still selling Windows 3.1 licenses as late as perhaps 1998 due to corporate pressure.
Now this isn't quite like that transition. I'm of the opinion that XP wasn't really an improvement over 2000, and 2000 was at the 'good enough" stage.
Re:We're one of them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm.. I didn't think reading stories counted as research anymore, but I guess it does nowadays. Of course the majority of Vista users without problems are not out on the messages boards singing its praises, they (like me) are simply using their computer and find it more pleasent than XP.
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.
Ahh, one test machine and you've written off Vista. I had print drivers that don't install, but that's because the manufactor hasn't released any Vista drivers for the printer. Personally, I've found things are better orgainized in Vista than with XP, once I figured out how they set it up.
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.
OS makers have a tough time selling their product. It IS more secure and more locked down (I've hit this when doing my everyday development on Vista). I've also read some technical artciles about what is more restricted in Vista. So I'm included to say they are there.
Unfortunately all most people see is the new UI. Its the only part of the OS you interact with, even though there are quite a few new features in there. Building applications on the new UI IS going to be much easier for me.. no longer do I have to fork out money just to get a context menu that can have a textbox in it.. I can put one together myself easily.
At any rate, I'm not posting to say you should upgrade or that I think you need Vista right now.. my main objective was to point out flaws in your reasoning used to tell your boss not to buy Vista; nothing you've posted about indicates that you did any kind of real evaluation at all, and I think that you need to be called out on that.
Re:MS made big mistake with XP (Score:5, Insightful)
If XP's only advantage over Vista was that "it doesn't suck enough", then you'd be seeing a repeat of the XP rollout. In that case, a few people upgraded their 2000 and 98 machines to XP. But mostly, people got XP when they got new computers.
This time, it's not just the old systems that are not getting upgraded. Brand new systems are still mostly shipping with XP. People don't trust the beast, and with good reason.
Operation PUMPKIN (Score:2, Insightful)
Couldn't help think of Cinderella when you said that. But is that what people really want? Do they really want software decay? No.
That's part of what older generations can't grasp... is how software is infinite and does not degrade like every other product. That means the best business model with software will always be SERVICE not product or captive audience. Just offer a service that makes sense and people will buy it.
Re:Linux / OSX plans (Score:2, Insightful)
In essence, I think it's hard to conclude that these numbers have much significance with the information we have.
Ballmer Shrugs (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:We're one of them... (Score:5, Insightful)
If my boss asked me if we should upgrade to Vista, then I would tell him "No" without a second thought. And I actually like Vista.
Or maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't be the first time they copied a certain fruit company.
But they will probably just stop supporting XP, and then that 87% will buy Vista, for fear of the next virus.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
How much of this is due to lazy software development by 3rd party vendors in the past 12 years since Windows 95 came on the scene? Many of the incompatibilities are due to hard coded file and data paths, poorly implemented file and registry permissions that require administrative user access to run the software, or non-standard GUI implementations. How does one create a secure OS when the applications that run on it are so poorly written? Vista breaking 3rd party apps was unfortunately a step MS had to make or they would run into more unfair criticism because they didn't do anything to fix security issues. Funny thing is I haven't seen MS apps break yet. Developers for years have been creating "Windows" software but they have been taking shortcuts to avoid the Windows interface. To me, that is the problem and there is no way MS could have made Windows more secure without alienating those broken apps.
Do what I want, or I won't buy it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone doesn't support Flash or Java (and won't ever support them, from what I hear, because Apple wants to be the only company that can write software for it). Thus, it is broken both as a handheld computer and as a web browser. Again, those features, as cool as they are, are not selling points for me.
Windows Vista comes with spyware, DRM, and other such malware built-in as part of the core OS. Thus, it will not do what I want it to do, and it will do things I don't want it to do. It's new features are not selling points for me.
What I am getting at is this trend, both in software land and gadget land, of trying to make consumers buy products that limit them, rather than empower them. It is as if they are saying, "of course you want it to be an open and compatible system, but if you have that then you might be able to do things of which I disapprove (whether they are legal or not) or for which I would prefer to charge you. So, I will not give you what you want, but you will buy it anyway."
No, I won't.
Cant wait forever (Score:3, Insightful)
1 - MOLP will require it after a grace period
2 - soon, you wont be able to buy a pc with XP. And then later you wont be able to get one with XP support ( drivers )
2a - supporting mixed environments suck, so they will end up upgrading the rest.
3 - new software will eventually require vista.
Businesses will adopt... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
MS was able to gain such a huge marketshare because they found the sweet spot for upgrading... there has been a continual backwards compatability between OS releases, with only a few API calls being broken with each release. The result is that people still have batch scripts and DOS software that will run under XP -- but all this ends with Vista.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't understand software company logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Company BozoTron makes Bozo-XKE, a software program that does, well, something. They release version 1.0 and it sells a few at $299 a box. Two years later, they release super-improved Bozo-XKE v2.0 (which does nothing more than muck up the user interface that all their customers took so long to learn, and fix a few bugs). It sells for $379 a box. But you can't buy the old version 1.0 at $100. And the owners of v1.0 can't sell their software for $100 to someone else and have BozoTron continue their support with the new owner. Some software companies might do this, but not BozoTron. You also can't split the v1.0 package and sell one part of it to a company (that will only use that section of the software, and doesn't need the rest of the package) for $50.
So absurd and insane. The only reasonable thing to do is just make copies of XKE and use them however you like. Which drives BozoTron nuts. But that wouldn't be happening if they were a reasonable company with a reasonable marketing plan to begin with. But they aren't, they're a software company, a fantasy business, a virtual corp that only works as long a people agree to continue to give them money.
Now I realize that this goes against everything that the Slashdot community believes in and threatens your livelihood, such that it is, but the only true value in software is what wealth it can create when applied to other economic resources. In itself, software is worthless. Its only value is when it's applied to other techniques, processes, and materials and increases the ability of those other techniques, processes, and materials to make money.
So indeed, if XP is making you money and the cost of going to Vista is going to cost you more money than XP is making for you, then nobody is going to switch to Vista. Microsoft should franchise their old operating systems. Let some other company buy a support license from Microsoft to be the people who adapt and fix the bugs in Windows 98 and continue to support it in its various business environments. They are fools for expecting people to abandon old OS installs and go to unproven alternatives. That used to work for the first twenty-five years of the office PC, but it's beginning to change. People are beginning to realize that their corporate PC needs don't match Microsoft's corporate expansion needs. It used to be that what was good for Microsoft was good for the rest of the corporate community. Now that basic symbionic relationship is splitting. This would be good for the Linux community, but they are too splintered for reliable corporate support. It would be good for Apple, but they took too much LSD and it still shows with their obsession with flashy expensive electronic trinkets instead of rugged flexible low-cost computing systems. Eventually someone else will step up to fill the needs that Microsoft used to be able to do before they lost their way.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
My business has good, tested, proven software. Even if I felt absolutely compelled to upgrade to Vista, it breaks some of my software. Some of it can be updated to a new version of the software from the vendor, but why the heck would I do so?
It's been my experience that "upgrades" are rarely so. In addition to the cost in money and time, they add features I don't need, and senselessly change the interface. It works fine now, but if they don't radically change things, and add new "features", nobody would pay money to "upgrade".
I would still be using Quicken 8 for DOS if it supported online banking. I'm tired of Intuit changing the online banking format every few years, and deliberately breaking old versions of the software. The new interface is horrid, and adds a lot of useless crap.
Re:XP was much the same (Score:2, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me how bad most people are at accurately remembering events, especially when it comes to time related functions like: speed, total time spent, etc.
My favorite is asking most people how long their commute is. most people will report it as 60-70% of what it actually is. Either they forget to include the parts at the beginning or end of their trip (ie. walking out the door, getting to the parking lot/bus station, traveling side streets, etc) or they lie to themselves to stay sane.
No, Vista is a real failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
XP did not do well but Vista is doing much worse. The rejection seems to be universal. [slashdot.org] The same low percentage (12%) of business and home users say they want an "upgrade". M$'s power to push upgrades is over and with that goes the whole vendor manipulation monopoly.
Re:Not a Big Surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
"Vista is made for the Industry not the consumer. Consumer's are dairy cows to be milked for their money."
And businesses aren't? We all know the real reason Microsoft issued Vista in December was because otherwise they would have lost a lot of business customers with their "software assurance" program. They had to either issue a new OS before 2007/01/01 or face a revolt, because businesses were guaranteed between 3 and 6 years of OS updates for buying their plan. December 31st, with no new OS, would have made that "guarantee" even more worthless.
Microsoft is still in a position to abuse their customers, because most of those customers, both industry and retail, are too cowed to look at alternatives. Microsoft certainly isn't going to educate them.
"Software assurance" my *ss. But what do you expect from a bunch of ? [trolltalk.com]
Re:XP was much the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, I think the last must-upgrade version of Windows was 2000. Windows 2000 offered much better hardware support than NT, but much better stability and security than Windows 98. For many business, there still isn't any compelling reason to upgrade beyond Win2k.
Now, honestly part of that is because Windows 2000 was a pretty good OS for its time. On the other hand, I don't know what it says about Microsoft's future that they haven't developed anything compelling in the last 7 years.
The long road to XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? One, it was the "unknown" as in "we don't know what bugs are lurking around the corner."
Two, it isn't trivial to convert an enterprise. Training costs alone are substantial, not to mention the other costs of rolling out a new OS.
In order to defeat XP in the business marketplace, Vista has to be not "just as good as" but actually "better than" XP.
In some ways, Vista has clear advantages over XP:
* It has a longer shelf life. XP support will end sooner.
* It has certain security features not found in XP
* It has certain non-security features not found in XP
On the other hand, it has some distinct disadvantages:
* It presumably has more unknown security bugs than XP, although over time this will approach zero
And of course those things that are "different" which make it more costly than XP for established businesses:
* It has some different bugs than XP
* It has some different features than XP
* The look and feel is somewhat different than XP
I'm sure there are many other advantages, disadvantages, and differences of XP vs. Vista.
It is up to each customer to decide which version of Windows, if any, suits him best.
My personal opinion?
Defer ditching XP as long as possible, but plan on being XP-free well before support ends. "As long as possible" may be "we had to buy Vista the day it shipped" or "we'll stick with XP until the day before support expires" depending on your business needs.
End of Life will FORCE upgrades (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes they will (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The CEO trades in his/her old laptop for a new one with Vista preloaded. Now (s)he can't do X anymore over the VPN to the company intranet. X being some function for which the Vista API has been redesigned for maximum incompatibility. CEO becomes entraged, pounds his/her fist on the big mahogany table and demands that everyone upgrade immediately. IT department capitulates and orders Vista and the several hundred million dollars of new hardware needed to support it for everyone.
2) Someone points out that the CEO will no longer be welcome at the Bill Gates annual CEO dinner if his/her company isn't up to spec. CEO demands that IT department upgrade everyone to Vista. See above for details.
Vista have plenty of security improvements... but (Score:4, Insightful)
BUT... Due to the problems with Windows XP's security, I bet most companies already have good third party firewalls, spam filtering, and antivirus tools in place. We already subscribe to the enterprise edition of NOD32 antivirus that has an excellent track record, and use a Linux server with Smoothwall for our firewalling and VPN purposes. (and I'm eager to upgrade to the new Smoothwall 3)
Microsoft has to assume people already have security infrastructures in place, and then the question is no longer "is Vista secure", but "what more does Vista offer than this". And I believe that is the problem for Microsoft. Vista offers no earth shattering security improvements, it merely brings it on par with most existing Unix-based operating systems. But if companies have already taken care of that in other ways by using complete security suites with reasonable subscription fees, why should they discard all that, that already works, to spend a lot of money in retraining staff and reinstalling Vista operating systems en masse? It's a huge risk for no clear benefits.
Vista is clearly better than XP security-wise from my experiences, but the thing is that XP + third party security tools (often free and even open source) is usually good enough.
Re:Businesses will adopt... (Score:2, Insightful)
My perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
So far the only (and I mean -ONLY-) compelling feature I have seen in Vista is the ability to easily control 802.1X (P)EAP settings for the wired network interface from Active Directory GPO policies.
Seriously - that's it. If I deployed Vista we would have never ending complaints about nothing working, and even slower machines.
Maybe we will look a moving when drivers stop being available for XP for newer machines that we buy in 5 years or so, but I will be looking to migrate to thin clients or maybe a desktop Linux by then.
XPSP2 as it stands works ok for us for now.
LOL (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it only managed to capture 97% of the desktop market.
Re:So the Web is one Big Negative Hole? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oho, my sides.
By your reasoning, the web should be filled with people complaining about gnu/linux, Apple and every OS. That's clearly not the case, as not even M$'s mighty astroturf engine can fill the web. People who use gnu/linux, OSX and other alternatives mostly love it. People who make the Vista mistake tend to hate it and there's lots of "give me back my XP" business going on in local shops.
People DO complain about those OSes! A lot of people! It's a little rich to go on like your shit doesn't stink yet claim that all criticism of anything not carrying the name Microsoft is just "astroturfing".
You've just said that people who use Vista tend to hate it and here is this thread with some praise for it, which you ever so readily dismiss. Even at this early stage, Windows Vista has around four times the market share of Linux. The non-techie people I've spoken to seem impressed by Vista, and say they want to get it. Not heard much Ubuntu buzz, I must say. [wikipedia.org]
Don't take this as criticism of Linux, by the way; my personal problems with it are my own, they might even be fixed (haven't tried a recent release). Just noting that your arguments SUCK FUCKING SHIT because they're FULL OF LIES and are almost entirely MADE THE FUCK UP.
Ahem. Sorry.
People who want a real upgrade and vendors who want to survive are going to look to gnu/linux, OSX or any other place that works
Kinda funny how they aren't, though. Ubuntu et al have made great strides, but they're still a tiny blip compared even to Vista.
That goes double when there are people like me out there who will tell you that it does not take much to do better
People like you? I'm sure there are many, but just like you they probably haven't got any credibility whatsoever. Look, face it; you're on Slashdot, preaching to the converted about how wonderful Linux is, and EVEN THE CONVERTED THINK YOU'RE A TOOL. You have precisely zero influence on anyone, besides perhaps your wife and kids and the people at your local LUG, much less the open source community at large. Perhaps if you spent more time developing software for the OSS community (which, shock horror, I have done; it's not much, but it's more than you've done) rather than just flinging shit around on Slashdot you'd have a tad more credibility.
I just LOVE how you seem to think you're some kind of free software celebrity. Oh you're well known, sure, but for all the wrong reasons.
XP's expensive, horribly annoying and unstable, single screen UI.
"Single screen UI"? What are you wittering on about? "Unstable"? Have you even used XP? For fucks sake, Mac OS X has been flakier for me than XP.
From what I can tell from your many, many anti-Vista/Microsoft/everything posts, you've never used Vista and you've barely used XP. It's software for christ's sake, you're not really in a position to make a judgement unless you've actually used it. If you'd like me to rattle off a list of all the distros/OSes I've tried for the sake of giving a fair shake, just say the word...
(FWIW, I've used Vista briefly and wasn't too enthralled, but then I didn't really sit down and use it properly. Felt the same way about my Mac to begin with, so hey...could be a grower.)
All the programs and hardware that don't work on Vista...but will also not work under Linux. Well done. *golf clap*
Vista's dead in the water.
Yeah, it's so dead in the water; even by the extremely optimistic IDC survey result that 2.75% of desktops run Linux, Vista is past it in market share. And most likely climbing much faster.
Laughing Last, Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
A silly AC taunts:
XP did not do well - No, it only managed to capture 97% of the desktop market.
By M$ standards and needs, even your inflated share is not good enough. It took two or three years for XP to gain majority share, which is one of the reasons M$ has delayed Vista for so long. Their absolute growth has not been anything good and Wall Street was not convinced - M$'s stock price has remained flat since the tech crash of the late 90's: [nytimes.com]
Ouch, that's got to hurt. Wait till they see how well Vista is really doing [slashdot.org]. It's all over for them.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
You won't need a bilingual developer. You'll need a developer with access to a translator.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, 32-bit apps have been common for over a decade now. Excluding
Maybe Apple, Sun, & Linux folks should band together to show their collective strengths in fighting Windows and fund projects like WINE to their collective benefit--instead they fight each other. (Then again, Jobs' ego would prevent such an unholy union...)
Re:MS made big mistake with XP (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lost in the discussion (Score:3, Insightful)
I've spoken to many people who have used and hated Vista and a few who have sworn if off entirely.
What's really relevant is that Vista came out at a time Microsoft desperately needed to hit a home run. Instead Vista turns out to be a one-hopper to the short stop. An unexpected bonus for Linux and especially Apple.
The culture that produced Vista didn't arise overnight, it's been building for ten years. Vista is the product that comes out of a broken corporate environment.
Ballmer needs to go. He's not the only one, but he needs to go first.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
2 weeks and some 100+ hours later, I still don't get it. What it is, why it was created, what it does that XP didn't do, etc.
I can confirm that it is quite a bit more resource intensive, and appears to be somewhat slower than XP. The interface is odd and counter-intuitive. I had to turn off UAC because it asked me to confirm every time I wanted to fart. When I turned off UAC, all of my application settings were reset, which means I had to re-configure pretty much everything. The mouse settings won't stick between reboot. I have to reconfigure the pointer evertime I boot the machine.
I have 4 gigs of memory (only 2.5 gigs are visible), and the disk thrashes every moment that the machine is on. Even when sitting idle at the desktop doing nothing. Some programs don't work, or work in an odd manner. Adobe Premiere dumps on my with a cryptic error message, and I have had one BSOD. Something about could not get driver_power_state. Unplugging the external firewire drive seems to have stopped that.
I thought FSX would really fly on Vista compared to XP, but the framerates are the same, even with the significant bump in hardware (From an AMD FX-55 to a Intel QX6800 and 6800 to 8800 video cards).
I am trying to love the thing. I really am. Does it have some positives? I suppose. The little "Aero View" thing is marginally cool. Visually, the window manager theme is nicer. It runs MOST of my applications fine and allow me to get things done similar to XP. The drivers for the X-Fi card sound just incredible, and this is the best audio I have ever had. The drivers for the 8800 cards produce very nice and sharp images and go back and forth between quad monitors and SLI with a simple reboot.
But does it do one thing that XP didn't do? For me ... no. At least nothing that I have come across. It does the same stuff as XP, sligthly slower than XP ... and seems to pound the living shit out of my hard drive. I am looking at the drive light right now and the thing is flashing constantly. It never stops.
I still have my Ubuntu machine beside this one, and would love to install Ubuntu on this QX6800. But until Creative releases a driver from the X-FI card (which I am not willing to give up), I'm pretty much screwed on front.
Once Ubuntu 7.10 is released, which will probably have native 8800GTX drivers on the live disk, and hopefully will have some kind of driver for the X-Fi card, this is going to become a Ubuntu machine very quickly, with a 50gb Vista partition for FSX. I am a heavy multi-tasker and have used every manner of OS release since DOS. I was a Unix admin for several years. So I am not exactly Joe and Jane Soccermom when it comes to screwing around with new OS's
Until I can get some better Linux drivers for my current hardware, I will be spending more hours with my new buddy Vista, and I will be trying my best to figure out what Redmond was doing for the last 5 years.
I keep telling myself that it just has to be something more than a window manager update ... but as of this typing, that is about all I have been able to find. XP with a new, slower, but prettier Window Manager.
I am not sure what that point of upgrading from anything to Vista would be. Maybe I will figure it out in time, but don't know why anyone would bother right now.
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
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. 64-bit windows has been around for a few years now (also, nearly any computer bought today has a 64-bit supporting processor) and the driver/application developers knew that a 64-bit Vista was coming. MS even gave out public betas of Vista for people to test and for manufacturers to develop updated drivers for the new OS... and what did we get - Symantec complaining that Vista's improved, more secure kernel (which is debatable, however I wont go there) locked out their virus scanning applications and buggy drivers (nvidia/ATI - I'm looking at you!).
I don't like MS anymore than 95% of slashdot does, but still... the parent is right - its the device manufacturers that are the main problem, not MS (at least at the hardware driver level). But one thing MS *did* mess up was hardware based audio.
Re:s/XP/3.1/g; s/Vista/XP/g (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
Business is really all about risk vs reward. Migrating to Vista has associated risk and cost (licenses, IT staff training, user training, app and device compatibility) but it doesn't have much reward. Even if migrating to Vista works perfectly large businesses won't do the switch until they have to unless there's a tangible reward like better stability, security or desktop management.
Not very likely! (Score:2, Insightful)