Corporate America Not Ready For Vista

thefickler writes to point out a TechBlorge article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista. The article says that the study, by Softchoice, will be released next week. The study found that 50% of the PCs inventoried (from a sample of 112,000 from 472 organizations) are below Vista's basic system requirements. Roughly half of those PCs will need to be replaced outright to run Vista. 94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition. The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh," as some analysts have been saying for a while now.

Not ready for IE7 either

[eples]

Corporations aren't ready for IE7, either.

This stuff takes time. Let's do IE7 first, Microsoft. Then push Vista down our throats.

Re:

[Marrshu]

Nonsense! They must push new DRM measures to prevent corporate workers from watching unautorized porn videos at work.

Re:Not ready for IE7 either

[twiddlingbits]

Which raises the question..are there AUTHORIZED porn videos for work? Maybe if you work for a porn website?

Re:Not ready for IE7 either

[Jugalator]

Why should they wait? Let them push their products and wait for their revenues if they wish?

Lacking Vista sales is their problem, not ours.

Re:Yea, but when is any company ready?

[jc42]

So, remind me which corporations of notable size are known to be early adopters?

Well, I recently finished a project at a rather large corporation (which I'll mercifully not name here) that hasn't quite finished upgrading all its W95 machines to W98. They also have a few NT machines, mostly in the IT dept.

No, I'm not joking. And this isn't the first case like this that I've seen.

Funny thing was that the project I worked on involved migrating software from a big IBM mainframe to a flock of distributed unix servers. Talk about having one foot in each world.

Re:Not ready for IE7 either

[pilgrim23]

Recently our shop took a perfectly functional, and working softwre interface down replacing it with a bug riddenm not ready for prime time and STILL doesn't work right months later .NET product. The Microsoft or no soft mindset is alive and well so as you see, we are ready to implement Vista, IE 7, or Tooth Fairy 4.0 as long as it shines with the light reflected from Ballmer's bald spot...

Their main market?

[tmandry]

...and the workplace is really Windows' main market. I'm willing to guess that at least half their profits come from corporations. The question is, why do they seem to be switching targets?

Re:Their main market?

[Joe The Dragon]

Windows is not switching targets. Corporations are trying to get by with the low end systems like Celeron , 256 - 512 ram, and gma And that was good for the 4-5 year old xp but not for the new and bloated windows vista.

Also M$ needs some thing to stand up to OSX.

Re:

[Sj0]

GMA is new hotness compared to what actually passes for corporate hardware. Hell, I've seen entire companies built on old Pentium IIs with lots of RAM.

Re:Their main market?

[igb]

The computer industry needs to face up to the fact that computers are now `good enough'. For most current desktop purposes --- email, word processing of small documents, web browsing, running corporate applications (usually client/server) and so on, a 2006-spec PC will do the job. There's not been a compelling feature in desktop Windows since NT 5 --- witness the reluctance for Windows 2000 shops to move to XP --- nor in Office since 2000. Except for providing toys for your younger employees to play with (a dubious benefit), why would any shop with >1GHz machines running NT>=5 and office >=2000 want to upgrade? How would you show the cost/benefit?

ian

Re:

[fimbulvetr]

I would say that if MS is correct in asserting that vista won't need A/V software, which I highly doubt, that would justify an upgrade.

Re:Their main market?

[rm69990]

I would say that if MS is correct in asserting that vista won't need A/V software, which I highly doubt, that would justify an upgrade.

I hope you're kidding, as Jim Alchin promptly disputed that he said anything to that effect, and it was shown that he didn't.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061111-8199 .html [arstechnica.com]

The state of internet journalism is truly pathetic.

Re:Their main market?

[twiddlingbits]

Cost/benefit of upgrading could be better warranty, better vendor support, both of which may mean lower support costs. Support costs are big factors in what gets chosen. How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor. Also products reach End-Of-Life where they are no longer supported by the vendor. Those would be my Top 3 reasons to upgrade.

I too don't see a lot of Apps (except Windows bloatware) forcing upgrades. Which I hope is good news for Linux on the Corporate Desktop. With GNOME and other GUIs, OpenOffice and various other open source "office" applications you can have the same functions as a Windows PC but need a lot less CPU and Memory. And the cost to "license" Linux and the apps is a heck of a lot lower than MS products not to mention the GPL (and CDL) and not nearly as bad as the MS shrinkware licenses.

Power Use?

[twitter]

Proposed justification of Visat/Hardware purchase:

How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor.

"Vista Ready" machines are going to suck more power, not less. The demand much greater clock rates, video support and RAM. Compare this to the average coporate network full of PIIIs more or less. "Vista Premium" of course is much worse.

I'll believe the better power management hype when I see it in operation. If

Re:

[twiddlingbits]

Obviously you know very little about Hardware. Faster CPUs these days are comsuming LESS Power, Memory is consuming less but not as much so as CPUs, Hard Drives are smaller and use less energy (smaller = less mass = less energy to get to speed), video uses LCD flat screens which pull a hell of a lot less power than a CRT. Go look at the Power Consumption of a PIII and of say an Athlon or Opteron and I think it will show you what I mean. Power Management while in operation is an entirely different subject.

Re:Power Use?

[twitter]

Faster CPUs these days are comsuming LESS Power, Memory is consuming less but not as much so as CPUs, Hard Drives are smaller and use less energy (smaller = less mass = less energy to get to speed) ...

This has always been the case, but power requirements for Microsoft systems have climbed from 150 to 500 watts over the last fifteen years. Most of it has been driven by Microsoft bloat, which has delivered the same features at ever greater clock cycle cost. I'm writing this on a PII laptop. Debian Etch runs well on it but XP won't even install. At the same time, I doubt you can show me a Vista ready laptop that uses less than 50 watts as this one does.

The most important thing missing from your list is GPUs which can consume up to 350 watts on their own. If you are going to Vista, you are doing it for games and eye candy and want a super card. Vista computers are going to suck power, as the usual M$ upgrade does.

Outside the M$ world, people are doing more with less. Playstation manages to provide outstanding graphics while Xbox is setting carpets on fire.

Re:

[Lumpy]

HUH? warranty? there is none. other than hardware. NOBODY gives OS support warranties.

Better vendor support?? what? If your vendors cant support 2000 then you need to find better vendors right away. there is NO REASON outside of some very very tiny reasons. Adobe tried to claim you had to run XP for their Premier product. a simple hack to fake out their OS detection is all that is needed to Run Premier Pro under windows 2000. Every single business APP out there runs perfectly under windows 2000.

Windo

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree but many companies use the "newest and greatest" to attract talent. Potential employees want it wether it is needed or not. The fact that a P3/1Ghz is more then enough to run XP/2000, MS Office and a few company specific specialized apps is not relavent (my company had Compaq EN815's which were that spec a few years ago and they worked fine). A person fresh out of a top tier law school looking for a prestigous place to work is going to use technology capabilities and gadgets as one of the decidin

Re:

[OfNoAccount]

Computers, like most complex devices have a failure rate that forms a bell curve - most failures either occur at the start of the product lifespan (in which case it'll be covered by the warranty), or towards the end. Those 1GHz machines are starting to get into unreliable territory.

Usually around the time that machines start failing, spare parts also become harder to find. When did you last see a new PII-400? Or perhaps a new Slot1 motherboard? If you can find a new one it'll probably cost more than a wh

Re:Their main market?

[techno-vampire]

You must have worked for a very strange company. From what I can see, the developers normally get big muscular machines (by then current standards) so they can do their work faster. Then, they design programs and systems that only work acceptably on their machines, not on those the target audience is expected to have.

Re:

[Sj0]

"In this slide, we can see the huge penis you'll get if you buy this product."

Re:

[afidel]

Office 2003, and specifically Outlook 2003 is MUCH better than Office 2000.

Re:

[livewire98801]

The only thing that I've really noticed between Office 2000, XP and 2003 is the UI keeps changing. The program seems to work exactly the same, after checking a few boxes in 2k that are default in 2k3.

OTOH, this UI changing has been slowly driving me mad. Seems like the only thing MS does on releasing a new version of Outlook (or any of the other Office apps) is make the edges softer on the UI and move all the menu items around! I can see restructuring the menu if your functionality demands it, but it see

CPUs Jumped The Shark

[FFFish]

circa the 200MHz era. Except for gaming, these CPUs were quite fast enough for word processing, accounting, internet access, email, etceteras.

Faster CPUs have given us more glitz. I'm not convinced they've given us more functionality: Word 2007 doesn't do a whole helluva lot more than Word 6, MSIE 7 doesn't do a whole lot more than MSIE 3, not in terms of true-blue functionality.

So I can easily imagine most businesses are in no rush to upgrade their machines en masse. Why should they? They're just gonna end up spending thousands of dollars in new hardware, software, re-training for the new software, and endless technical support as the bugs are ironed out of the new network and installations.

Vista is rightfully regarded by most businesses as an obvious case of a high-risk foot-meets-bullet fuckup just waiting to pounce on the dummy who decides to champion the idea of upgrading.

Re:

[Nordrick Framelhamme]

They are doing this because M$' entire business model is based on SELLING their OS and/or application suites.

As the market reaches saturation point, as it likely has given how long Windows eXPploitable has been out, the income from such software starts to drop off. Therefore the income stream has to be boosted again by releasing a "new" product.

By making it seem that the new OS ias more secure than the last, not really a hard task given M$'s track record thus fare, they hope to lure in the flashing lights

Re:

[tftp]

The "secure" argument may work with home users - who don't upgrade anyway, outside of buying a new box. However in a corporate setting all Win machines are behind layers of firewalls and proxies, running antiviruses, so that problem had been solved already. Vista gives nothing to the corporate user, and takes some things away, and requires massive upgrades. So there is absolutely zero advantage in upgrading, until the ISVs start dropping XP apps (not any time soon yet.)

Re:Their main market?

[ShieldW0lf]

..and the workplace is really Windows' main market. I'm willing to guess that at least half their profits come from corporations. The question is, why do they seem to be switching targets?

Their market isn't the workplace, it's PCs everywhere. That market is saturated with Windows, and their product will continue to go onto newly built PCs until and unless something that makes a suitable replacement comes along.

That means they don't need to build new stuff for the user. They will get their money anyways. They're going to keep getting paid for Windows licenses as long as Windows remains the dominant platform with no more functionality than they have now.

What they ARE doing is selling their users out to media companies. They are getting paid by those companies to put support for powerful DRM on every computer around the planet so there will exist a market for DRM media. They are getting paid for this as added revenue on top of the "Windows and Office" tax.

They believe that they can get paid by third parties to design Windows so it will intentionally fuck over the people who use it and we will still buy it same as always.

Chances are, they are right.

Why release to business first?

[Thyrus]

Why do Microsoft always release to businesses first? I know that businesses will not use Vista until SP1 at the earliest surely one of the worlds largest companies should know this. I would imagine with their inside knowledge of Vista they will be staying away until SP2 anyway.

Vista is the new ME

[From A Far Away Land]

"article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista"

That's exactly the point. They want businesses to toss away the old computers and buy new ones with Vista. The know that if they try and release Vista into the public market first, it will flop as badly as ME did because it brings no significant improvements over XP, while it takes away features, and adds bad things like PVP DRM.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It took years for businesses to drop Windows 2000. There may still be many still using it. I really don't think any business is going to upgrade to Vista until their replacement cycle is up. Microsoft can't expect any business to push up their computer replacements because they have a new version of Windows, and I don't think they can expect them to just upgrade their operating systems. The best I can say is maybe the IT departments will purchase copies to test against their software inventory so they c

Re:

[Vancorps]

That's all well and good, but what features exactly were taken away in Vista that were found in XP? How is playback of encrypted content a bad thing? Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?

You may very well be right in that MS wants people to buy new hardware although this makes very little sense given that Microsoft is not primarily a hardware company. This type of move would make sense if Apple did it given that they provide both but in your context I just

Re:Vista is the new ME

[From A Far Away Land]

"That's all well and good, but what features exactly were taken away in Vista that were found in XP?"
It won't work on computers already in place in businesses, so that's a heck of a feature retraction. I consider backward hardware compatibility an important feature.

  "How is playback of encrypted content a bad thing? Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?"
It's called DRM. Protected Video Path will one day require users to have a certain new monitor to play their store bought movies and video content. When Microsoft and software vendors decide what you get to play unencrypted on your computer, it's not even your own computer anymore.

Re:

[Vancorps]

That's an interesting view of reality you have there. You believe Microsoft invented the hardware restrictions that the MPAA and RIAA are trying to force down our throats? Sounds to me like you've missed your mark completely. Microsoft is a software company and if they want to play encrypted content it is good business for them to support it. There are no restrictions whatsoever on non-encrypted content so I still don't see what your gripe is.

Backwards compatibility is not a feature, if you're going to com

Re:

[shywolf9982]

Microsoft saw that newer machines were largely going to waste with CPU usage below even 1% so they decided that they could utilize more of it and make the user experience more enjoyable.

However I agree with your post, I have to correct you on this issue:

1. average cpu utilization will be as low as it currently is with vista. Effects are calculated when actually someone does something (like moving windows, pulling down menus and whatever else), not if the computer is idle.
2. so effects are drawn when the cp

Re:

[Scudsucker]

That's an interesting view of reality you have there. You believe Microsoft invented the hardware restrictions that the MPAA and RIAA are trying to force down our throats?

Hmm. Palladium. Product activation. Windows Genuine Advantage. Plays for Sure. Microsoft has been pushing DRM (weren't they the ones who came up with the term?) with or without the backing of the AA's for years.

Backwards compatibility is not a feature, if you're going to complain about it then let's have a discussion about computers u

Re:Vista is Broken in Many Ways

[mpapet]

Let's start with some facts:

Vista's *six* SKU's are sold in various states of disabledness. For example, if you want to use a DVD burner, you must upgrade. Hmmm,.no matter the version of XP you could use a DVD burner... That's just one of many restrictions.

Let's move to your clearly uninformed question: "Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?"

Why, yes there is! The latest WMP phones home to MS when you play a song and catalogs your content. When the inevitable OS reinstall happens and you attempt to play the same songs you get some bad news. It seems it's okay to play the music on that "other" OS install, but not this one. You agree to this when you click-through licenses. Here's a link to a guy that experienced it. http://www.bandddesigns.com/blogger/arch/002942.ht ml [bandddesigns.com]
Here's Microsoft's SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/wmpsdk11/mmp_sdk/glossary.asp [microsoft.com] Search the term "component enforces those rights." on the page.

Now, Microsoft and their media friends are taking away your right to first sale as secretly as possible. Vista will help them meet that end very nicely. Set top boxes and a variety of media subscription models will help greatly as well. Add in dragging some children into court and consider it done.

I assure you, this is only the beginning. Please consider using another OS that ensures your current freedoms. Many Linux distros are good,

I'm sure the above-average PHB senses this anyway. Which is part of the reason the Vista uptake will be so slow.

Re:Vista is the new ME

[Foolhardy]

That's all well and good, but what features exactly were taken away in Vista that were found in XP?

The backup program has been nerfed, for one. I'll summarize what I posted [shellrevealed.com] on the Shell: revealed forums (a forum set up by MS late in Vista development to get feedback on the RCs) as of RC2 that Vista Backup (stclt.exe) can't do but ntbackup.exe from previous versions of Windows (which is not included and not compaitble with Vista) could:

• You can't actually select the files you want to back up. You have to pick an ambigious category of files or back up the entire hard disk.
• You can't backup EFS encrypted files, either in their raw format or unencrypted. NTBackup could archive the encrypted form, for use with seperately archived keys.
• It's unclear if it backs up extended attributes, alternate file streams, security descriptors, reparse points, and hardlinks.
• It can't back up registry hives, except in a full-system backup.
• The scheduling options are much less flexible than before.
• You can only include local (not network) files in an archive.
• The help is awful: there are at least two different hyperlink-in-dialog style help links that both go to a single generic FAQ that doesn't actually include the linked questions.
• You can only back up to DVD or network, or for non-full backups: CD. Nothing else. You can't put the archive on another hard disk. NTBackup let you put the archive anywhere. The question of why you can't use a HD is one of the unanswered question links.
• You need admin access to back up your OWN files. Another unanswered question link pretends to offer the rationale for this.
• Vista backup doesn't seem to have any command line support. NTBackup had tons.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Vista is the new ME

[RobertLTux]

did you hapen to know that bitlocker is basically volume level DRM? so that means if any of the following happens

1 you lose the password to the account and your "root" admin gets run over by a bus
2 some random Zero day borks the account
3 a DDOS on the authentication server burns your block of COA serials
4 Microsoft just one day "decides" that your system is unauthorized (maybe you are in Their way)

You are shall we say "traversing the proverbial polluted tributary without visible means of propulsion" or "afixed via a rotated metal rod with a spiral fin"

we are holding off

[p51d007]

Our company isn't in any hurry to upgrade, nor are a lot of companies I talk to. Most like ours, have spent a lot of capital in the last 24 months upgrading from NT4 to XP, from Office 2000 to Office 2003. We have XP tweaked out, locked down, patched up and running perfectly, sort of the way we had NT4/Office2000 tweaked. If we were to upgrade to Vista, to get the same performance, we would have to dump an extra 512 meg of ram into every box, since we have them running 512meg now. XP for our purposes runs pretty well with 512 meg of ram, but on a couple of test boxes, 512 meg with Vista is like running XP on 256. Yeah it runs, but you do a lot of swapping. For now, we are holding off on Vista/Office07, until at the earliest Q2 of 07. Any NEW computers bought/built, will be built with an OS update in mind, but will come configured with XP, NOT Vista.

Re:

[reemul]

Big corporations are going to take months if not a year or more to actually start a large-scale rollout of any major software change, much less a new operating system. MS and everyone else releases to them early so they can start the process. (Well, and it makes the companies feel special.) The corps will test on boxes that approximately match what they think will be on the desks when the new system would go into production, not what is there now. They're the ones that drive the patches and the service

Re:

[PCM2]

Why do Microsoft always release to businesses first?

Maybe because businesses buy in bulk and only require OEM-style white-box packaging? It probably takes a while to gear up a full marketing blitz for the retail channel, complete with ads in magazines, end-of-aisle displays at CompUSA, etc. Plus, it probably makes more sense to market Vista directly to consumers once the majority of new PCs in the stores are shipping with it pre-installed.

Re:Why release to business first?

[dan828]

The big reason for pushing out the business editions first was because MS sold a lot of Software Assurance licenses with the understanding that Vista upgrades would be included. The first licenses are going to begin expiring this month, so MS would have been in the position of having to extend those licenses to meet their promises. The enterprise sector would have looked on software assurance for the OS as being just a bill of goods that MS was trying to sell them if Vista hadn't shipped within the license date.

Re:

[kimvette]

Isn't it obvious?

By shipping to everyone who has a software assurance/volume licensing contract, Microsoft can then proclaim "(n) hundred thousand seats shipped" prior to anyone even installing it, let alone actually forking over cash for an OEM or retail copy. It's PR, pure and simple, and Microsoft knows darn well that very, very few seats will get installed at companies which subscribe to these services for at least a year thanks to the hesitation to upgrade out of (reasonable) fear that Vista will break

Look, I'm a psychic guru!

[Inf0phreak]

Surprised? I sure am not. I don't think a lot of corporate PCs out there have 1Gb memory -- let alone half a gigabyte. Heck, most computers out there probably struggle just to run Fisher Pri^W^W XP... At least Dell/Gateway and the memory makers is going to (eventually -- i.e. when MS stops support on 2k/XP) make a killing off of that OS.

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

I'd say corporate PCs have a higher probability of having half a gig of RAM than one whole gigabyte.

The whole story is, of course, retarded. Nobody will be going around thousands computers to reinstall the OS the day it becomes available (legally) for business.

Re:

[Ironsides]

Last place I worked, All the PCs had at least 512MB, and those were 4 years old. That vast majority had 1GB and the ones that just came in this year had 2GB. 4 year replacement cycle and every PC in that building should be capable of running Vista.

What about Universities?

[reaktor]

They are like corporations, size-wise. Heck one of my last schools just recently made the switch from Windows 2000 to XP SP2. I begged them to get rid of Netscrap and use Firefox on the computers, but the IT department said no. I don't know why Universities want to hang on to Netscape so much. Nescrap and new Win XPSP2. That's the computing life in public US Universities. So it will be at least two years before Vista makes it to computers there.

That isn't the computing life in my university

[technoextreme]

That's the computing life in public US Universities.

Says you. My university has Macs, Unix computers, and of course Windows.

Corporate America Not Ready For Vista

[Bradac_55]

How's that different from Win2K and WinXP? Same thing happened then. Microsoft's monopoly isn't on good software it's there ability to tie up all the major hardware vendors into all or nothing licenses to push Windows on new computer sales. It must be another slow news day.

Re:

[grasshoppa]

While you are spot on with XP, with 2k the upgrade from NT 3 was immense. 2k was lightyears beyond NT or 98, which is why it replaced everything else as quickly as it did.

In fact, MS really shot itself in the foot with 2k, in a way; It was so good that it's still a viable OS today.

XP was merely an incremental improvement. In fact, in a corporate environment, it was a bigger hassle to work with than 2k was. Why everyone upgraded is remincent of lemmings.

Re:

[RollingThunder]

The only thing I found in XP that wasn't in 2K, and which drove me to upgrade my work laptop, was mixed-resolutions on multiple monitors. Under 2K, even with the special ATI drivers, I couldn't have different resolutions on the laptop screen and on the external monitor. Given that the internal could only do 1024x768, that really sucked.

Re:

[nine-times]

How's that different from Win2K and WinXP?

Win2K was worth it, and WinXP was such a small upgrade that, you could tell it to use the "Windows Classic" theme and no one would know the difference.

From the Captain Obvious department

[ScrewMaster]

The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh."

Well ... duh.

Re:From the Captain Obvious department

[aj50]

This is exactly the point the article is missing.

Vista needs to be out now, so that next time people roll round to a hardware refresh, Vista is available.

Why do people seem to think that this is dumb?

I honestly can't think of any corporation...

[Durrok]

... that I have worked for that has changed operating systems on anything besides their servers except when they did a hardware "refresh" (read: PC broke). I know the company I work for is getting ready to start using Vista on their new PCs that they order when Microsoft stops letting HP put it on their PCs but until then it's XP.

Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago. Unless your corporation is very small you keep PCs around until they die or become so obsolete they can no longer run the programs you need them to. In this case we had an active directory upgrade so we had to get rid of all the NT 4.0 machines as they were no longer going to work with the upgrade.

Re:

[WuphonsReach]

Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago. Unless your corporation is very small you keep PCs around until they die or become so obsolete they can no longer run the programs you need them to. In this case we had an active directory upgrade so we had to get rid of all the NT 4.0 machines as they were no longer going to work with the upgrade.

Lucky you. I'm still trying to retire Win98 machines. Although, if things go well, we'll be done by next summer. Hopef

Re:

[Durrok]

True, what I meant was the cost to replace an office of 6 PCs is a lot less then trying to replace the PCs in 92 stores, 6 DCs, and a corporate office with over 1k working in it.

Re:

[Vancorps]

The total cost is higher in your scenario but the cost per machine is much much lower.

Re:

[dbIII]

Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago.

Legacy software had me installing Win98 around two months ago! Still have an NT4 machine - it lurks on the floor of my cube under a pile of 15" CRT monitors replaced by LCDs. It's a small place and we do a lot via X windows anyway, so old machines get their memory maxed out and a PCI card added to make them dual head. You can do a surprising amount with a 600MHz machine in linux - especially if you feed it 1GB of me

Vista Premium?

[trimbo]

"94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition"

This analysis must be right, because there is no Vista Premium Edition. Outside of Home editions, there's only Business and Ultimate.

I've been running Business and Ultimate for a while, on machines with 512M-2G of RAM, and haven't had issues on any configuration. I install it because I'm a chronic early adopter and because I work for a software company.

Anyway, like home users, businesses will upgrade as they buy more machines that have Vista pr

J. Random CIO's thoughts:

[paeanblack]

1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.

2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.

3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.

4) I don't the the budget headroom for an off-cycle hardware overhaul.

5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.

6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.

Re:

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, a lot of corporations have yet to upgrade from Windows 2000 Professional, for gosh sakes! Windows 2000 Professional is still a pretty good OS for business environments, though there's a chance we could see a movement towards a good Linux distribution that can be used in corporate environments (e.g., SuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and so on).

Re:J. Random CIO's thoughts:

[afidel]

3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.
Bitlocker for laptops
Better power management via group policy for desktops, just to name two biggies
5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.
Unless you need hardware upgrades there likely won't be a funding need since the upgrade is likely covered under your SA agreement.
6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.
This one if completely legit =)

Re:

[tftp]

Working as a CIO here, I can comment:

Bitlocker for laptops

Neither wanted nor permitted, ever. Employees do not own the work files, the company does. EFS is OK as long as recovery keys are available and user's own keys are backed up. BitLocker gives the keys to the user, and expects the user to maintain the backups (such as on a Flash disk, per MS's recommendation.) There is no reason, from corporate POV, to permit this.

Better power management via group policy for desktops, just to name two biggies

Re:J. Hasaclue CIO responds:

[Zero__Kelvin]

(I am not saying the OP does not have a clue. We are in agreement here, at least to some degree, from what I can see. I'm just adding the next logical step in the analysis.)

1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.

That is a lot like getting comfortable with a thorn in your foot. It is not comfort; merely numbness.

2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.

They are going to have to switch to Linux at some point. There is no time like the present to start the pr

Re:

[erpbridge]

Biggest questions with switching to Linux, from a firm of 3000+ computers. This is all written from the standpoint of a discussion I, the IT director, has had with my current staff and my direct manager, the CFO. These are honest questions raised by the CFO and myself, who don't know enough about Linux yet to answer them.

Application compatibility - Most applications that our users currently run have been written for Windows. How do I run those inside Linux, without resorting to a Windows emulation program?

Re:

[Pecisk]

Disclaimer: I have done lot of migrations from Windows to Linux, so I have experience to talk about. In short - Windows to Linux is doable, and it is not so nightmarish, as someone would like to paint it. However, it asks one thing from your IT departament - discipline, which is very rare thing to find among Windows sysadmins. So usually you should look for human factor when something is blocking your migration.

1. Windows apps, custom apps - WINE simulator is aimed to be fully blown simulator of Windows lib

Irrelevant

[plasmana]

Large/medium sized corporations rarely "upgrade" their workstations. They roll out new hardware periodically. I imagine that most will roll them out as Vista PC's.

Re:

[Spruitje]

Well, some companies still buy Windows 2000 workstation with their new PC's.
They haven't switched to XP yet.
And a lot of companies is thinking about switching to thin clients.

What about...

[postmortem]

Corporate Africa? Are they ready?

Re:What about...

[Almahtar]

They've all got Ubuntu :-)

Dupe?

[Frankie70]

Dupe [slashdot.org].

Is this like a daily feature?

Spend $ on Vista, or on necessities? My choice.

[lancejjj]

Upgrading to Vista from our current XP standard is a non-starter. There is no way that I'm interested in upsetting my worker's day-to-day productivity by having a desktop admin perform an upgrade. If my employees cost me $500/day each (with salary, benefits, and per-employee expenses such as office space), and they lose a day's worth of productivity, then upgrading to Vista is an extreme waste of money (since I don't see any benefit).

I'm sure I'll start to move to Vista once I start procuring new hardware. But I have good equipment now. The benefit of brand new Desktop PC's for my people isn't clear at all to me. I'll replace my old equipment once it makes sense to do so, but I'm not going to drop $2000 on a new desktop until I can see a clear benefit in doing so. I'd rather allocate that money to something that can make a real difference to operations (like bonuses).

Maybe I'll see a Vista productivity benefit in six months - or maybe in two years. But right now, I say "no way" to an upgrade - it looks like a money sink to me.

Re:

[mythosaz]

$2000 desktops? Good lord.

Few organizations are going to go and re-image every computer with Vista. What's going to happen is that every company of significant size that regularly purchaes machines from a large vendor is going to start getting Vista LICENSES shipped to them with their regular purchases of hardware. Your large-organization IT staff is going to keep deploying the standard image while stockpiling Vista licenses and working on the "when the suits are ready" Vista image.

And, those $500 Dells

Re:

[mythosaz]

"$500 for a complete PC system installed? Your $500 machines aren't nearly as powerful as my 2.5 year old equipment!"

A new Dell GX6xx in quantity is about $500. I'm not sure what machines you were buying 2.5 years ago with core duos, but, I'm sure you might have been buying things that powerful. In our environement, a box from Dell shows up post-sysprep with our enterprise standard image on it (imaged AT Dell from our prepared image). A technician takes it out of the box, types a machine name, it auto-jo

Re:

[Vancorps]

If your employees are losing an entire day to an upgrade then you need to fire your IT staff and hire some people capable of deploying software in general.

With a basic RIS setup and SMS you can have the machines upgraded including the new office and whatever custom apps you have in an hour completely unattended in the middle of the night. So your employees don't lose any work time and immediately can enjoy the advanced search capabilities so finding files is much much faster which saves your workers a mea

TCO is waaaay out of line.

[pair-a-noyd]

The OS itself is priced way out of line but then when you factor in all new hardware, it's insane.
I've talked to several customers of mine and many of them just bought new machines in the last 18 months.
They have no intentions of replacing them all over again just to run this new OS that's not all that revolutionary.
I'll bet that's the general consensus. In general of course.

well, duh

[delong]

Why is this even news to us? Of course current computers aren't ready for Vista. That's the selling point for OEMs. It's part of the endless upgrade cycle that keeps the OEMs in business.

Some people are happy about this, I am sure.

[elgee]

The Linux crowd for instance. If this doesn't drive more companies to Linux, I am not sure what will.

Re:

[NineNine]

If this doesn't drive more companies to Linux, I am not sure what will.

For my business:

1. Applications, applications, applications

2. Developer tools that are as easy to use and functional as Visual Studio 6.0

3. The ability to administer and fix a machine without having 20 years worth of Unix experience.

4. A sane release schedule (not every 6 months).

5. Complete and seamless ability to integrate with Windows.

6. Reasonable pricing.

7. Some kind of liability insurance.

8. Distributions that work with as much ha

Not where I work....yet

[Nordrick Framelhamme]

I know my employer won't be upgrading any time soon. In fact the main reason we are using XP is because the hardware supplier we use switched to a chipset that did not include drivers for NT.

As we are looking at moving to a 3 year rollover on hardware most of the hardware will not be Vista ready for at least the next two years, by which times there will be at least 2 service packs and numerous packs for the inevitable MSism in the OS.

Lucent

[chill]

Lucent (now Alcatel-Lucent) is in the middle of a hardware refresh. I still have a 5-year old laptop running Win2000. The current refresh will run thru about March 2007, when everyone has brand-new Thinkpads with WinXP.

Vista will, most likely, come with the NEXT hardware refresh -- 5 years down the road. Big companies don't give a damn what OS comes pre-loaded, because the first step on all new hardware is to install the approved image.

They shouldnt pumped it up with DRM stuff then

[unity100]

At the behest of riaa members, universal and other crap, microsoft pumped vista with so much drm crapola that it hogs memory and cpu.

now, to appease 3-4 corporations, they will not be able to sell their own product to many of the world's corporations.

no corp. would like to upgrade their WHOLE pc infrastructure in order to run something that offers almost nothing new to the office, but loads of drm.

Good news!

[gweihir]

Personally, I think the Vista requirements are insane for business machines. They are pretty stupid even for gaming machines. I have no idea how they are going to build Vista-ready laptops that actually get some hours of battery life. There is no need for these specs, except that MS needs to give users a ''new experience'' by any means necessary, since theri business model is fundamentally flawed.

What MS forgets, or has to ignore, is that a PC is a tool. A tool schould behave the same over a long time. You don't want a new ''experience'' every few years. You want to mater the tool once and then keep using it for a very long time. Hence you want it to work the same over a very long time.

This will prompt more people to look for alternatives to MSes greed and insanity.

Re:

[NineNine]

Wait... you just said that PC's are just a tool that should work consistently over a long period of time. I agree with you. Then you say, "This will prompt more people to look for alternatives to MSes greed and insanity." That doesn't make sense. All it does is make people not want to upgrade. They're certainly not going to go running to find a non-Windows product, because their Windows stuff is already working just fine, as is.

What you say would be true if MS was going to send some kind of "se

Next hardware refresh?

[rah1420]

Hell, our CIO has just slammed the brakes on hardware refreshes. Now instead of every three years it's every 4 years, and every machine gets a Win2K image on it.

When people start using Vista in droves, we'll be the ones that will be dribbling XP onto these boxen. But I don't see us making any quantum leaps to Vista.

Of course, I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

LOL VISTA is crap

[Archfeld]

The very LARGE corporation I work for is still running more than 20K windows 2000 machines. We've found ZERO reason to upgrade to XP much less to consider Vista. The ONLY upgrades we've done is 2003 server on certain backend machines that can take advantage of the 64 bit architechture. For business XP and Vista are USELESS expenditures that provide nearly ZERO return for the dollar, while increasing operating costs by more than 20%.

"Premium Edition"?

[Jugalator]

94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition

1. There is no such thing as a "Vista Premium Edition".
2. If they mean the closest -- "Vista Home Premium Edition", that's not supposed to be a common Vista edition for corporations.
3. Are these talking about meeting recommendations or requirements? I see few corporations being willing to run Aero Glass, and without that, you can easily get by with 512 MB or 1 GB RAM and no special graphics card to speak of (assuming it meets XP requirements).

The company I work for already has vista machines

[farker haiku]

Granted, they are only RC1 (us tech support folks have to learn the ins and outs before we push it on the end users), but we've got several in the environment. We're looking at a major deployment in mid 2007. I mean, we've only got 65k end users, so we're not the largest kids on the block, but we're a chunk - and we're moving to vista, like it or not. We've also started to introduce some linux servers into the environment. Whee! I think we have 4 out of 2000 or so. But it's a start.

well you see folks... this is why:

[toby]

It's so handy to be able to DeActivate your XP license at will...

A.k.a. "subscription" model, or as Al Capone might be paraphrased, "you get a lot further with a new product and a dead license for the old one, than just a new product."

This is weird.

[SeaFox]

I'm so used to seeing the phrase "not ready" after the word "Vista" I had to read the headline twice to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the story.

Think forward compatibility

[edwardpickman]

Bet you wish you have gone for the Cray laptop now.

To me, Vista needs one key thing.

[CFD339]

There are some things Vista could have that would really draw me in. Sadly, I can't seem to find out if any of these are part of the product or not. In posting this, I'm hoping someone can either answer or point me to an answer for some of the questions.

Number one on my Windows Vista wish list is that they virtualize the screen more.

What I want is actually very simple. I want to tell Windows - in one place - that my screen resolution is not 72dpi, but is in fact 125dpi. Once that is accomplished, all Windows elements should be scaled to that result.

For any application which does not specify drawing size, but rather specifies pixels - the new AERO graphics engine should do a simple calculation "X pixels * (125 / 72) = Y pixels" and draw it as Y. For fonts and other "vector" based drawing objects, this should be even easier as the curve calculations are already based on this kind of math.

If this is done properly, an 8pt font will take up the same physical area on a high resolution monitor as it does on a low resolution monitor. What's more, it will fit properly in buttons because the number of pixels on the button have been properly sized and should match.

Some people may WANT that optimized screen real estate. That's easily handled. They just need to set the DPI setting on back to 72, and their ultra-sharp tiny little fonts will be right back again. The only thing that could suffer - in theory - is looking at pictures. If something is supposed to be 10 pixels, it ends up being 17.36 for me. Rounding is where you get the "fuzzy" aspect.

Why does this matter? Right now, I'm looking at a 19" monitor which is optimized for 1280 by 1024 pixel resolution. The laptop is more extreme. It's a 17" monitor that is 1920 by 1080. Making some simple assumptions that the pixels are square and aligned uniformly (which they are not, actually) the two monitors come out to about 86 and 125 pixels per inch respectively.

LCD screens are not like the bulky old "tube" based screens. The pixels aren't projected onto a phosphor screen; they are actual hardware - like little light bulbs. If you decrease the display resolution, you're getting less crisp representation at each point than you would at the optimize resolution because the dots themselves cannot change size. They must therefore be approximated.

Where this becomes a problem is that many aspects of the Windows screen are designed to be a set number of pixels in height or width. The unit of measure is in pixels, not inches. This includes fonts, title bars, buttons, icons, and all kinds of other things. Much of the time, Windows doesn't know how many of those pixels fit on a linear inch of screen space on my screen. What people don't realize is that the old standard has been to assume about 72dpi for screen resolution. That means on my laptop, with nearly twice that resolution, things tend to be on half the ideal size.

Re:

[kevmo]

You can set a custom DPI in Vista.

Right click on the desktop, choose Personalize. On the left, choose "Change Font Size (DPI)".

Applications that are DPI-aware will scale their fonts to match Vista's setting. For those that are not DPI-aware, Vista will scale it for you. The downside is that if Vista has to scale a small font up to meet your DPI, then it will look fuzzy.

Bzzzt. word I'm getting is Vista has it.

[CFD339]

Here's the information according the one of the developers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2006/12/0 2/dpi-scaling-in-windows-vista.aspx [msdn.com]

Bzzt back to you

[melted]

The argument would be a lot easier if I didn't actually run RC2. Applications not compiled with DPI-aware manifest look like a steaming pile of shit when scaled due to blur. And that, of course, includes the vast majority of your "old" apps, and even some "new" apps as well, even the ones that ship with Vista - e.g. Calendar. Even apps that _are_ compiled as DPI aware show broken UI and ugly icons in places. I didn't even have to dig deep for this. If most of your apps are not DPI aware, you'll probably be

Uhh,

[ElephanTS]

Microsoft isn't ready for Vista, let alone corporate America.

Vista not ready for Corporate America

[Zero__Kelvin]

This shows how deeply embedded M$ spin is in the memes of the masses. For years evryone asked "Is Linux Ready for the Desktop", not "Are Desktop users ready for Linux." Now, M$ releases Vista, and the question is reversed?

Is Vista ready for Corporate America? No, it never will be! I am a Vista Beta Tester, and I can tell you that Vista sucks wind. It is garbage. It offers nothing that Linux hasn't had for years, lacks some important features Linux has had for years, forces DRM on an unwitting public, and requires a hardware upgrade in most cases in order to be marginally useful. The new approach to security is to exude the appearance of security , rather than simply ignore it per the old policy.

I have one question for M$ execs. Linux is secure without having to ask the user "are you sure you want to do that" ever. Why does your "wonderful new OS" have to ask the user 752 times a day? It is no longer good enough to do the spin in the press. Now the OS is doing the spin as well. If the user can use an "OK" hotkey to authorize an action, what stops a virus from emulating the hotkey-press? Answer: It does exactly one thing. The same thing M$ always has done. It gives the uninformed user a false sense of security.

"... from the tail-wagging-the-dog department"

[NickFortune]

You have to love the spin on this article. Vista as a product isn't suitable for the needs of Corporate America, so suddenly that's Corporate America's fault? I thought it was the vendor's responsibility to create a product customers needed to buy, not the responsibility of the potential customers to create a need for the product.

Never mind, I'm sure the usual mixture of blackmail and bribery will see vista deployed in some high profile corporate site before too long.