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."

Linux / OSX plans

[kripkenstein]

Last year, Linux and Max OS X had only meager appeal to the CIOs, CSOs, IT and network administrators surveyed: 2% said they planned to deploy the open-source Linux, while none owned up to Mac OS X plans. July's survey, however, noted a six-fold increase in the total willing to do without Windows on at least some systems: 8% of those polled acknowledged Linux plans and 4% said they would deploy Mac OS X.

Hmm, assuming the data indeed reflects reality, this is a significant development, isn't it?

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[rwven]

On the contrary, I've spoken to many people who have used and hated Vista and a few who have sworn if off entirely. I started using Vista at the end of February. I dropped it and switched back to XP in the middle of July. The few benefits of using Vista don't come anywhere near the downsides. I liked the new look & some explorer elements, but there were some core elements that just wouldnt work the way I wanted, as well as many large issues with stability. (The computer was built in february with over the top specs.) XP runs very fast and solid as a rock on it.

I could go into details, but I don't want to become a troll. Suffice to say, I'm happy on XP, wasn't on Vista.

Re:XP was much the same

[div_2n]

Except that you didn't have to forklift upgrade the vast majority of your systems in order to implement XP. You also didn't have to buy beefy computers to run it acceptably either. As long as existing computers work and are under warranty, Vista won't make a lot of traction.

This gives businesses time to consider alternatives and also time for alternatives to mature even more than they already have.

Re:"many will 'either stick with the Windows...."

[Anonymous Coward]

If adoption of open document standards becomes widespread, there will be virtually no reason not to move to linux, Mac or anything else. If you can access all you documents, browse the web and play solitaire in these alternatives, 85% of all business needs are covered.

Is there a free alternative to MSAccess? If so, change that fake statistics to 95%.

Re:MS made big mistake with XP

[Shadow Wrought]

Exactly. Vista would probably slow most people down anyway because of the resource issue. Maybe in another couple of years when more companies are upgrading their systems company-wide.

Personally, I think Windows peaked with 2000.

Re:MS made big mistake with XP

[derrida]

Maybe MS should release a "critical update" that turns it into Windows ME or 98.

Already did [microsoft.com].

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[Fozzyuw]

I doubt businesses are putting this off because they think Vista sucks, but rather because XP works just fine, and it wouldn't make sense to spend money on something that isn't broken.

It's a little bit of both actually. My own company sent out a memo stating that no PC is allowed to be purchased with Vista and not to upgrade to IE7. They also cited a government response to this [informationweek.com]. (which I submitted posted here on /. back in March, but never got picked up that I noticed)

You see, the thing is NOT that Vista is broken but that other software breaks on Vista. You see the difference? We're not talking about some Video games or Office Suite programs but 3rd party business applications such as accounting software, medical software, etc. Along with IE7, my own companies IT department has been testing IE7 and Vista and have concluded that a lot of our 3rd party software that runs a lot of our day-to-days would not work or crash often on Vista or IE7 (for internet based apps.).

Given expectation of most people that a computer will 'just work' no matter what setup it is, it's much easier to just ban it altogether until there's a need for it. Also, there's the obvious reasoning for cost, which I due agree that it's the most important reason. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

Safe to say, they're waiting for for the cost to come down or until MS forces everyone to buy it by a) stopping XP support b) requiring Vista to run programs (such as Halo 2, Shadowrun, etc that they're trying to do with the gaming market... and I absolutely refuse to take part in and I hope Linux and open source can get something to compete with DX10 and supported by companies before that happens so I can happily switch to Linux for gaming.)

Cheers,
Fozzy

Most businesses don't have to anyway

[eebra82]

The problem with Vista is not with Vista itself. The migration of Windows XP was reasonable because any pre-existing operating system from Microsoft just didn't cut it. Several years later, XP is so mature and secure that the advantages between XP and Vista are less significant. Had Vista been released in its current state two years ago, I guess Vista would have been an obvious choice.

I have no doubt Vista will become significantly better in a couple of years and narrow the competition with the next-gen Windows, but that's how it should be too. After all, XP and 2K were very similar at first, until service packs and such made XP much better. In the meantime, development of 2K halted, which presented a bigger gap between the two systems. The same will happen with XP and Vista.

Security is no selling point

[Opportunist]

Unfortunately. XP is horribly insecure in the default configuration, and few companies have administrators that know enough to make it secure AND useable. Hence the widespread threat of trojans that companies are not even aware of.

A recent survey by websense [websense.com] (unfortunately in German, so rather useless for most people reading here) came up with 98% of companies considering their security "adequate" or better, 53% thinking their security is "very good". 66% of middle management thought that nothing could penetrate their security, their IT guys are rather suspicious, only 25% share the view of their management. Still a lot, if you ask me...

Unfortunately, admins rarely make the decisions when it comes to purchases. They only have to suffer from them.

And the rest of Vista, the eye candy and the fluff, aren't a selling point either for companies. A company doesn't care whether their workers get to "enjoy" their "computing experience" more. Their question is: Does it increase productivity? And the answer is probably no.

Also would really depend on who you asked

[Sycraft-fu]

I've met more than a couple sysadmins who were being very indignant about Vista at first with the whole "It sucks, nothing works, DRM is t3h evil, I'm switching to Linux!" line. However as time has gone on none of them have made even a budge in that direction and are indeed toying with Vista. The "Well I'll just switch to Linux then," almost seems to be the sysadmin equivalent of a tantrum in some cases. They threaten with a switch that they not only have no real intention of making, but indeed no idea what would be involved.

Also, given those choices, I'm not surprised there are a small number that are switching. Had you asked me before recently if we were rolling Vista out in the next three months the answer would have been no. We are going to roll it out (somewhere around three months is the timetable for the first lab I'm planning on converting) but it isn't like we are just going to rush in to it. Things need to be tested, license needs to be hashed out and purchased, etc, etc. So while our long term answer is "Yes we are going to slowly convert all systems to Vista in the coming years," we aren't going to be converting them tomorrow or anything.

Really, all the doom and gloom about Vista seems silly as it has been doing just like past Windows OSes, and even a bit better if you use sales number as the benchmark. Adoption isn't going to be in a big rush, but rather a slow trickle. Right now Vista systems are pretty rare, I'm guessing only slightly more common than Windows 2000 systems. Next time this year I bet they are common, but under 50%. Year after that I bet they are the majority, year after that I bet XP is downright rare.

It is how is has generally gone in the past, no reason to assume it'll be different this time as their are no different indicators. No, the increased hardware demands are nothing new. I remember the bitching with XP over 2000 and particularly NT (which some were running when XP came out). Now, the issues seem like squabbling given the progress in computer power. Similar deal with Vista. It may sound like a lot when someone says "Really, you should ahve a gig of RAM for it," until you realise that a gig of RAM is $50 or less. It really isn't a big deal these days and will only become less so in the future.

YMMV

[Lonewolf666]

Well... my sample is a bit smaller, as only two people I know have used Vista in the first place. But both of them were not so happy.

One is the owner of a small electronics company, and his experience (relayed to me through a colleague) was that he encountered several problems. OK, it's hearsay and not very accurate...

The other one is a software tester from a consulting company we work with. He told me in person that they "set up one laptop for evaluation, and ended up deciding not to switch to Vista". I know the guys from that company as competent testers and reasonably knowledgeable about Windows. If they have trouble getting it to work right, I conclude that the average user should avoid Vista ;-)

We're just migrating to XP now...

[Zed is not Zee]

This is not really news, is it? I work for an international company of 38,000 employees, i.e. not just a Mom & Pop shop, and we have only recently started moving from W2K to XP.

No complelling security improvements eh?

[Safiire Arrowny]

I guess Microsoft will have to leak one of their security flaws to the public/script kids, and not fix it for a few months, but say it doesn't effect Vista in the meantime.

I'm mostly joking.

Re:MS made big mistake with XP

[uncoveror]

I wish they still sold Windows 2000. I encounter PCs in my computer repair business that are saddled with 98 or ME but otherwise functional. They would be maddeningly slow with XP and unusable with Vista, but would work like a charm with 2000 if I could still get copies of it to sell. It would keep a lot of functional hardware from ending up in a landfill.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[jafac]

I'm working with a project that's trying to port some software from XP to Vista - Microsoft's driver model changed drastically as most folks are well aware; one of the downsides; devices now report themselves using localized strings, where they did not previously.

I predict a lot of very expensive work ahead for vendors trying to port any hardware-intensive software from XP to Vista, particularly if it's going to have to support multiple languages. (because you'll now need a bi-lingual developer to re-code the device-tree scanning and parsing code - for each language. Microsoft developer support's still scratching their heads here. . . )

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[iminplaya]

I'll second that. To me all they did was change the look and double the hardware requirements. It's just not worth the hassle from an office standpoint. And I do have driver problems, with HP printers of all things. They're still selling stock that doesn't include the Vista drivers out of the box, requiring a 100-200 meg download. Not too helpful for those without internet or on dialup.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[GIL_Dude]

It would be an oversimplification to say everything works fine. I'm a tech lead on a team that is creating the Vista / Office 2007 image for 80,000 machines and have been running Vista since the earliest available versions. I have to admit that at this point in time it is not as stable as XP. This should come as no surprise to anyone. It probably is about as stable as XP was before it's first service pack though (and yes, I was in the TAP program for XP too; although it was called JDP back then).

However, the security gains are there and they are real. Things like ASLR, file and registry virtualization, BitLocker being much better integrated and a whole lot better recovery scenario that standalone encryption products, etc. Agreed that so far this year there have been only two patches that I needed for XP that I did not for Vista. That's not great - they need to do better there.

We are at 5 years on our existing hardware, so it is time to replace it. The replacement will be with Vista Enterprise. With the better security - it just makes sense to use Vista instead of shipping XP again.

Re:Slashdot... oh slashdot...

[voidstarstar]

I have been using Vista for 3 months. And have lots of complaints. The most frustrating part is wireless network connectivity. When switch my laptop between work and home. The wireless connection frequently fails to connect, which is fixed by rebooting the OS. Not to mention the myriad of programs that either crash or plain don't work on Vista.

Oh my... not again, please!

[silverdr]

How many times we heard that already? Let's count - Windows NT, NT4, 2000, XP, XPSP2... I don't count the "consumer" versions here. Every time, again and again, they say they wouldn't upgrade and every time, again and again, the vendor makes them do that sooner rather than later. Do we really need to repeat the same "news" pattern with every major Windows version released??