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I understand that - it's just that in our case IT downgrade to XP (from Vista) and then.. we put Vista back onIt's so efficient!
I understand that - it's just that in our case IT downgrade to XP (from Vista) and then.. we put Vista back on
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
I thought for a second there we might be doing the Hexus version of the Monty Python "when I were a lad" sktech.
I think Windows 7 will prove to be a better OS than Vista, but MS's biggest problem is that Vista simply tends to perform worse than XP on similiar hardware, and UAC is a proverbial pain in the derriere. I'm not saying that I think Vista is bad, but perception of it certainly is, and a good many people I deal with are happier with XP than Vista and that matters a great deal. Laptops for example seem to spend a great deal of time disk thrashing on Vista compared to XP and battery life seems worse too - how can that be an advantage and help persuade people to upgrade? Directx 10 should have been a selling point and has fell flat on it's face...again, why upgrade? Windows 7 can't come quick enough for me, this beta I'm running performs so much better than Vista on this system....
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Absolutely. Where I work (large international), we've only been on XP for a couple of years, and until very recently the standard desktop build was 256Mb of RAM.
Upgrading an O/S on this sort of scale is an exteremely expensive and lengthy process, and there has to be a very good reason to do it. For most enterprises, this comes down to security / support.
I'm probably one of the few who are in agreement with MS on this one.....
I shudder when I hear the words "ah but Vista won't work with our app....." - Fix the app, NOT the OS. Attitudes like that are what kept NT4 going for so long! I see companies still running XP on pentium 3's with 256mb of ram "because it does it's job" - doesn't stop the user phoning up and telling us that their system is running slow though. Funnily enough, accounts departments always seem to have super fast PC's.....
People hailing windows 7 as the best thing since slice bread need to realise it's simply a more finely tuned version if vista. Had one person recently raving about it because of "this amazing snipping tool that built in" - Yes, the exact same one that's built into vista.
We're urging business's to get vista on now and get testing because if you really think windows 7 is going to deploy seamlessly, you're in cloud cuckoo land; The battle for security has long since shifted from the servers to the desktops, so if you're not spending money on new ones, I hope you're investing heavily in perimeter security.
I don't think that Microsoft are wrong...just they face an uphill battle to get people to part with their hard earned cash when the upgrade doesn't actually seem like an upgrade....more a different take on things! Like I said, in my personal experience, which can always be different, people simply don't want Vista, I see plenty of "slow" laptops, mainly due to low system specs, but a lower spec xp laptop usually beats a lower spec Vista laptop in the snappy OS sense. Difficult to get people to spend money to make something slower isn't it!
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
But oh how quickly we all forget....
Remember W2k launching? People screamed blue murder about how 98SE was quicker.
Then came XP - Oh how it was bloated and tellytubby like compared to good old w2k....
People don't like being pushed out of their comfort zone.
If an app and NT4 are doing the job, and have been for years, they doesn't need fixing. Nor do a very large number of business PCs need either Vista or anything remotely resembling the current state of hardware.
The idea of needing heavyweight hardware do do jobs many of us have been doing for 20 years on older hardware is farcical, and the idea of having to upgrade an OS just because the vendor comes out with a new version is just buying into their hype. Oh, and it's the job of support departments to support the rest of the business, not to upgrade everyone to state of the art hardware so they get an easy life.
You don't need either a fast PC or Vista to run an accounting app, or invoicing. Credit control don't need state of the art PCs of multiple GB of RAM to look up account details while they're on the phone to slow-paying customers. If 256MB works, then it works.
That's why MS are wrong. Their perspective is to sell as much as they can of whatever it is they're currently flogging, which they regard as absolutely essential for every business right up to the point they decide they've got something else, which they have to do because otherwise, once everybody is up to date, their revenue dries up. But the perspective of any sensible business is to decide what they need to do the job, and then to compare any benefits they get from change to what it'll cost (overall) to change, and to not change. It isn't the job of the average business to upgrade for the hell of it, just to ensure MS the revenue stream they'd like.
MS is in part the victim of it's own success. They've sold most of us, businesses or private users, OSs and apps that, while perhaps not the latest and greatest, are perfectly adequate to get the job done, thanks. But if they let that status quo rest, their revenue dries up. So they won't. Just because they bring out a newer, "improved" version doesn't mean we need it. After all, the washing powder I was buying five or ten years ago washed my clothes every bit as well as the "new improved" (by several generations) versions they flog now. I certainly wouldn't ditch packets of the old powder just because Unilever want me to buy the new version.
And I remember when it was all fields...
Can you see what I did there? eh?
You owe it to yourself to click here really.
Whilst your old washing powder may clean your clothes just the same, the new one does so in half the time at a lower temperature with minimal impact to the environment.
I guess I'm just a glass half full person; I see benefits in the change. Not just because it keeps me (and several thousand people like me) employed, but because I.T is a tool; It should work for us.
Life administrating Vista has become easier for me; I fully expect 7 to become easier than vista (though no doubt a few bumps along the way).
Life for my users on vista has become easier - even if not everything about it is immediately visible to them.
But when no one notices, that's when your doing it right
windows 2003 GPO doesn't lock down vista very well either. Its a real ball ache to lock vista / 2008 server down via 2003 GPO and you really dont want to be using 2008 as your DC yet.
The problem with threads like this is that a lot of people dont have to deal with ground up network builds so wont have come across the issues that Vista/2008 bring at enterprise level. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is stupid, the cost of the license is nothing when put next to the cost in time and wages to deploy the OS, then reconfig everything and retrain staff. I think Microsoft have forgotten that Windows was supposed to be a business tool and not a flashy home entertainment system.
Last edited by Jay; 07-02-2009 at 01:29 AM.
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More than enough 2k8 DC's deployed to ask "any reason why NOT?". Stable, secure and additional benefits and with R2 just around the corner, there's plenty more to come!
Really while at work I was more concerned about my wages and how secure my job was not what OS I was using. Given the choice I dont think that many people are going to really be that concerned about the OS if it came down to having a pay rise or say changing from Windows Xp too Windows 7. This goes especially if the OS and Computer you are using are capable of doing the job they are tasked with doing.
Given the current working climate would anyone turn down a job if they went for a interview and the computer the company was using had XP installed?
I would only deploy RC2. I just never think its wise to deploy a new OS as a DC.
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Would I carry on buying the old powder? I would if buying the new powder meant spending hundreds of pounds on a new washing machine, if I had to spend days working out how to use the new machine, and if the long-term benefits in terms of didn't justify the increased cost of buying the new wonder powder and upgrading the machine.Whilst your old washing powder may clean your clothes just the same, the new one does so in half the time at a lower temperature with minimal impact to the environment.
I guess I'm just a glass half full person; I see benefits in the change. Not just because it keeps me (and several thousand people like me) employed, but because I.T is a tool; It should work for us.
Life administrating Vista has become easier for me; I fully expect 7 to become easier than vista (though no doubt a few bumps along the way).
Life for my users on vista has become easier - even if not everything about it is immediately visible to them.
But when no one notices, that's when your doing it right
If the soap manufacturer can convince me the powder will cost me less, and will make my clothes last longer, so that it pays for itself over a period, or if the new powder has some other benefit that I'm not getting right now that is sufficient to justify the cost, then I'd consider upgrading the machine.
But unless there's sufficient benefits to the upgrade to justify the total cost, I'm sticking with my existing washing machine and powder, at least until it's time to change the machine anyway, perhaps because it died.
Analogies only go so far, and I think I've exhausted that one. The point remains, though. Convince me, or enterprises, that the benefits justify the costs (all the costs) and the upgrade will be a practical proposition. But I'm not going through the hassle, let alone the costs, unless there is a sufficient payback either in terms of useful facilities added, or of reduced long-term costs. And I suspect that for enterprises (and for some I've referred to I know it applies, because we've discussed it) the reluctance to make this kind of change unless it has such a payback is a lot bigger.
If MS want to win that argument, all they need to do is make the payback big enough. A lot of corporates, big and small, have voted with their wallets, which is why MS keep putting off ditching XP. It certainly isn't because they don't want to ditch it. It's had it's life cycle for them, in terms of revenue generation. It just hasn't yet exhausted its productive life cycle for a lot of users, big and small, and won't until and unless the payback is big enough.
We're commited to upgrading to vista - somethign in the region of 170,000 Workstations globally
from a hardware point of view , it gets refreshed every 3 years , so most people havn't had to put up with it on a "slow" system.
One of the driving forces for us behind 2008 upgrades ( aside from security ) is that certain other products which the business requires have know issues on 2k3 , which MS have no plans to resolve , making 2008 an inevitable upgrade for us.
my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net
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