University of Penn. Recommends Against Vista SP1

At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.

Re:woot

[webmaster404]

I dont see the difference between this OS and XP

Except for say UAC, all the DRM and the fact that the thing runs slower on more powerful hardware then XP?

Of course if all you read is slashdot you would also think that NT is just a unix wannabe

It employs many design concepts from *Nix that weren't present in 9X so in a way it is very similar to Unix. Now granted there are only a finite way of solving problems present in Windows 9X so making it more Unix like is one of the ways to make it more secure.

2000 an expensive upgrade for those who already have 95 and dont need it

2000 probably won't run on the same hardware that 95 ran on, so yes they don't need what they can't run.

and that XP is just 2000 with fisher price colors

It is, it is basically Windows 2K with a shiny theme on it much like how Vista is like XP with a bunch of crap thrown on it and a shiny GUI.

A bit off topic, but I can't help replying to such blatant lies.

Penn State is not the University of Pennsylvania

[tietack]

I know it's important only to alumni and friends of these schools, but Penn State (Twitter's Firehose title) is different from the University of Pennsylvania.

Re:I throw Vista away all the time

[techno-vampire]

Showing my age again...

That you are. And, unless I miss my guess, showing how long it's been since you took a good look at Linux. It now comes with drivers for most common peripherals, and almost every mainstream distro (except Gentoo, of course, but that's a special case) provides precompiled kernels. If you need to work with MS Office files, OpenOffice reads, edits and saves in that format if you need it to, and I've never had the slightest compatibility issues. Linux is much easier to work with now than it was ten years ago, and for somebody with your computer experience, it's more than ready for Prime Time. Again, I'm not saying you must or even should switch, just making sure you understand that it's a viable option now.

Uh, not Penn State

[Tickenest]

It's saying "Penn State" in a couple of places on Slashdot, but this story is from the University of Pennsylvania, which is not the same school. Penn State is in Happy Valley, PA, while the University of Pennsylvania is in Philadelphia, PA.

Re:I throw Vista away all the time

[bzipitidoo]

My brother uses Vista. He likes to think of himself as relentlessly practical on computer decisions. I built a 64 bit PC for him, and made it triple boot: 64 bit Windows XP, 32 bit Windows XP (just in case), and 64 bit Xubuntu Linux. And he threw it away for a computer with Vista. Why? He wanted to keep using an old Canon laser printer he had. Canon wasn't going to make a 64 bit Windows XP driver for it, they weren't going to help the Linux people make a driver, but they did make drivers for Vista. He said the machine with Vista preinstalled "just worked", and mentioned some other software (VPN stuff I think) that gave him troubles. Also was afraid to use OpenOffice to create doc and xls files. Afraid that they might not work in MS office, and creating them in OpenOffice then switching to MS to check was too much bother. I suggested his email recipients also switch to OpenOffice, but that of course was a non-starter.

He doesn't care why. When something doesn't work, he doesn't care whether it's MS's fault. He wants to use computers, not screw with them. I keep wondering how long this can last before something bites him in a tender spot and Vista (fairly or unfairly) gets blamed or excused.

Temple University Recommends Against Vista Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome: A Message from Timothy O'Rourke, [temple.edu]
Vice President of Computer and Information Services

Microsoft Vista coming soon
For the past few months, Computer Services has been preparing for the release of Vista. This preparation has included testing the system with University critical applications and Web sites, working with vendors, consulting with representatives from Microsoft, and researching and determining the most effective methods for delivering the product to the University community.

Our aggressive research and testing of Vista have identified a number of applications and sites that do not work and some that function less than optimally with Vista. Currently, we are waiting for vendors to release updated software that is compatible with Vista. As we receive software updates, we will continue our extensive and thorough testing to ensure that each package complies with our high standards and expectations.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista introduces some good stuff. For example, the new graphics system is more stable. When a video driver crashes it reinstantiates itself. Also, look at the MSDN documentation of the Win32 API. They've added some good stuff. Like, for example, some synchronization primitives that Win32 has lacked for a long time: condition variables and RW-locks.

Vista is it the new Microsoft Bob ?

[EEPROMS]

Im the company IT guy and recently one of our female staffers purchased a brand new dual core Compaq laptop to replace her ageing P4 model. What she found is two of the USB ports refuse to work and her wireless modem would not work even though they were all certified by Microsoft. She took it to an IT "Windows" specialist and and he was stumped and said the laptop must be faulty. Out of curiosity I had a look at the machine booted up both my XP live and Ubuntu Live CD and everything worked. The fix was simple just install XP and recommend she find a new Windows support shop. PS on a side note she said the new laptop running Vista was way slower than her old machine running XP.

I'm getting a kick out of these replies

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually work for one of the many IT departments at Upenn, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

Saying "don't install this the day it comes out" is officially not news, okay? We've got plenty of custom research and buisiness systems all over the university, and getting everything to work is a bitch. I'm sure ISC will recommend installing it later after they are done testing all their systems.

Slow news day I guess?