Vista: Get it now or wait?

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Add me to the list of people that would recommend not upgrading. I admittedly use XP Pro, and refuse to use the "Home" versions of Windows in any form, but XP Pro works fine.



I went in to interview for a temp job doing clerical work, and every training program they had was in Win2k, and Office 2000. When I commented on this, they told me that there was a significant percentage of companies that haven't upgraded.

One of my bigger clients is still 90%+ Win2k workstation and Office 2002, and most of the servers as still W2k. Aside from a couple developers and artists, there's no reason to upgrade. The first real issue just came up (DST changes) and I've already got a fix in place for that.

They're scheduled to upgrade the PCs at the end of the year, at which point we'll use one of the Vista business variants.

I see a lot of places with really foolish upgrade policies who then wonder why their IT budgets are so high yet they never have the money to do anything right.

 

[John Crichton]

I work at Yale and we are still mostly in the 2000 environment. Our newest computers are now coming with XP on them. I started there in 2001 and it took at least 2.5-3 years until I saw a single workstation with XP on it. I don't work in the IT department, but I work closely with them.

Sounds like Vista won't be must have at all for regular business work. At least not anytime soon.

 

[drothgery]

Sounds like Vista won't be must have at all for regular business work. At least not anytime soon.

... but it will still get rolled out a lot more quickly than the naysayers seem to think, largely because there hasn't been a new desktop Windows since 2001 (you can argue that XP SP2 was effectively a point release of Windows, but it was never marketed as such). A lot of businesses were slow on moving to XP because they were already in the middle of moving to Win2K (or had already moved), and it was at best a marginal upgrade. But you really don't want to be working on an unsupported OS in a corporate environment, which dictates moving away for Win2K ASAP, and away from XP in a rather short timeframe.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Sony? What does the HD-DVD format have to do with Sony, the proponent and developer of Blu-Ray?

I can understand the visual degradation part. If I can't watch a commercially published hi-def DVD or video on my PC and monitor/HDTV in its intended original high quality, then I agree, that's not good, especially if you're providing an OS platform to replace the Media Center OS. I can understand copying said video -- which is something I cannot understand why a copy of an original must be deliberately degraded -- but not when viewing.

To be clear, if you do a search about BluRay or HDDVD, these DRM things are a part of the movie industries paranoia. TV sets without a certain setup will also play a downgraded signal, unless something has changed since the last bit I saw some time ago.

The DRM in Vista is not something Windows dreamed up, but something that the two companies require for Microsoft to be able to access their content. Some feel that MS should have been able to force the two formats to be more open, but they didn't, so now it's MS's fault that the formats are hindered with crippling DRM.

 

[IronWolf]

... but it will still get rolled out a lot more quickly than the naysayers seem to think, largely because there hasn't been a new desktop Windows since 2001 (you can argue that XP SP2 was effectively a point release of Windows, but it was never marketed as such). A lot of businesses were slow on moving to XP because they were already in the middle of moving to Win2K (or had already moved), and it was at best a marginal upgrade. But you really don't want to be working on an unsupported OS in a corporate environment, which dictates moving away for Win2K ASAP, and away from XP in a rather short timeframe.

I agree that a company doesn't want an unsupported OS, but when the OS coming down the pike has stiffer system recomendations than the majority of apps a business runs (save for the engineering and graphics departments) - there is a problem.

As for a rush to move away. XP Pro is supposed to supported through mainstream channels for 2 years from the release of Vista. Plenty of time to plan that conversion to Linux! ::joking::

 

[trancejeremy]

Sony? What does the HD-DVD format have to do with Sony, the proponent and developer of Blu-Ray?

Beacause Sony bashing is the in thing these days. Everything is Sony's fault...

(Seriously, Sony's not even entirely in charge of Blu Ray, it's a bunch of companies. But it's always "Sony this", "Sony that")

 

[trancejeremy]

To be clear, if you do a search about BluRay or HDDVD, these DRM things are a part of the movie industries paranoia. TV sets without a certain setup will also play a downgraded signal, unless something has changed since the last bit I saw some time ago.

The DRM in Vista is not something Windows dreamed up, but something that the two companies require for Microsoft to be able to access their content. Some feel that MS should have been able to force the two formats to be more open, but they didn't, so now it's MS's fault that the formats are hindered with crippling DRM.

While it's true that the companies wanted that, I also don't think MS had any qualms about it - look at their Zune - it's got DRM all over it, even to the point of adding to files that doesn't have it (if you want to share them)

 

[LightPhoenix]

(Seriously, Sony's not even entirely in charge of Blu Ray, it's a bunch of companies. But it's always "Sony this", "Sony that")

Except that Sony was the one that spear-headed the Blu-Ray format. Being the leader means you tend to take criticism as well as praise, warranted or not.

 

[IronWolf]

Beacause Sony bashing is the in thing these days. Everything is Sony's fault...

Install one little rootkit and suddenly you're the left holding the bag for all things evil in the industry...

 

[Agamon]

Install one little rootkit and suddenly you're the left holding the bag for all things evil in the industry...

I´ve been a Sony hater since the beginning of EQ. That rootkit thing just seemed par for the course to me.