Vista at Risk of Being Bypassed by Businesses

narramissic writes "With Windows 7 due in late 2009 or 2010, many businesses may choose to wait it out rather than make the switch to Vista. According to some analysts, Vista uptake at this point really depends on how good Vista SP1 (due in Q1, 2008) is. If it doesn't smooth over all the problems, companies are much more likely to stick with XP. And that holds especially true for those businesses that follow the every-other-release rule." Note for Microsoft: Allow us to natively disable trackpads.

and then....

they'll hold off on switching to Windows 7 until SP1 hits.

Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?

Upgrades Need Justification in Business

Software upgrades in business need justification. Money is a precious resource, and good managers do not squander it.

A 1-gigahertz desktop running Windows XP with ECC memory meets the needs of most businesses. They had a genuine need to upgrade from the MS-DOS-based operating systems (OSes) like Windows 98 when Windows XP was launched. The former is just too unreliable, but the latter approached Linux-level reliability.

Going from Windows XP to Vista does not buy you a quantum leap in reliability. The latter has a nicer GUI than the former, but a nicer user interface is not enough to justify spending another $1000+ on a machine for your secretary.

During this obssessive drive to faster, bigger, and badder computers and OSes, eventually the technology reaches a point at which it exceeds the needs of the customers. We have reached that point -- that knee of the technology curve. Any further technical advancements beyond the knee does not bring new customers to computer company XYZ. The computer-systems market now resembles or will soon resemble the automotive market: a replacement market for broken devices.

I do not replace my Chevrolet Camaro when a new sports car enters the automotive market. I replace my Camaro when it becomes too expensive to repair.

No spokesperson for a computer company ever talks about the arrival of the "knee". It means flat sales and thin margins for the company.

Well, the knee has arrived. The personal-computer industry is now a mature industry like the automotive industry. Welcome to flat sales and used-computer salescritters.

Re:and then....

The Vista [laptop] interrupts business presentations.

Yeah, but this is Slashdot, and it's a Microsoft OS. You can't just focus on the stuff it gets right; we want to hear about the cons too...

Re:and then....

Maybe if they did it well, it might pay off. Windows XP is ancient. For a release, it is very old. They missed on the upgrade the OS thing poorly with Vista. Many are moving on to Apple or Linux instead.

Silly question, but why upgrade all the time anyway? If something works, why replace it? What's going to come out that will magically increase productivity?

Re:and then....

People seem to forget what a big upgrade Windows 95, 98 and 2000 were. The improvements in stability, security, ease of use, and productivity were pretty significant. XP's nice, but even it didn't usurp 2000 the way 2000 did 98. I don't think any businesses "skipped" those releases because they were on some plan. If they chose not to upgrade it was either cost related, effort / time related or they had some legacy crap that had compatibility issues with the newest version. Although XP and Vista aren't quite as big of an improvement I think the real mistake with Vista was the pricing, the confusing versions, and the high system requirements - and I'm not talking RAM, RAM is cheap and XP "required a bunch" when it first came out too. I'm talking about the video and processor requirements.

Regarding your wife's laptop - boot dialog boxes? What are you talking about? Do you have a ton of crapware on there? Are you talking about waiting for the BIOS to do its checks? I've played countless DVD's on my Vista box using WMP and I've never had a problem with a single one. I've definitely never had any Java related prompts. Either your DVD came with some kind of DRM / player installer or you're using some craptastic 3rd party player. Either way, I wouldn't blame Vista because you didn't test your presentation beforehand.

Dual monitors? Of course Vista works with dual monitors, so does XP. I'm running two monitors on Vista right now, and I can hook up four.

WIndows 7 - better?

Truth is, while holding off Vista might be an idea, what guarantee is there that Windows 7 will be any better. In many ways Vista seems to be a symptom of a failed development process, bad priorities and not understanding their users. When you have five years to developer a product and this is what you get, something is wrong.

Vista is not a total failure, but its not a success either.

Re:WIndows 7 - better?

When you have five years to developer a product and this is what you get

Your grammar error calls to mind a metaphor.

If you take a badly exposed piece of film and put in the developer too long, you get out ... a bad, *overdeveloped* piece of film.

Vista is the same way. The development time is really irrelevant: the fact that they spent a long time on it just means that it has *lots* of shitty features rather than only a few.

Re:WIndows 7 - better?

Next year has been the "Year of the Non-Windows" desktop since before I signed up for a /. account.

disable trackpads?

Note for Microsoft: Allow us to natively disable trackpads.

What's this about? Anyone want to clue me in?

Re:disable trackpads?

Sure, for many the intellipoint is much less intrusive and more accurate. Some laptops have both. While typing the palm can brush the trackpad, inadvertently clicking and shifting the cursor (a pain while typing) of activating gui elements such as a back button. Most 3rd party driver/control apps allow this to be disabled. I've never seen a way to do that in vista natively.

vista system hog

The thing that bugs me the most is the additional system resources it hogs - i buy a pc to run applications not run an OS. look at anything that runs both vista an xp and xp always has lower requirments. MS would win a lot of fans if they made OS releases they used the same or less resources instead of massive bloatware, or atleast show SOMETHING useful that's hogging the additional memory and CPU time.

Re:vista system hog

The thing that bugs me the most is the additional system resources it hogs - i buy a pc to run applications not run an OS.

Actually I'm pretty happy about it -- what now gets sold as the cheap bottom level spec PCs are actually very fast with Linux. The extra resources that Vista hogs has helped drag down hardware costs on an economy of scale basis (because now every machine needs at least 1GB of RAM etc.). As long as you don't use Vista that just means a free performance boost when you buy a new PC. I've certainly enjoyed it.

Six years is a very long time...

So, they already waited for Longhorn, which cratered. There's a very slow uptake of the 1 1/2 year rush-job that they called "vista", and now businesses are expected to wait for another MS development cycle of indeterminate duration?

I really don't know why MSFT's shareholders haven't lynched Ballmer by now.

-jcr

The problem with waiting for MS

At first glance this doesn't appear that bad for Microsoft -- so businesses wait, and then buy a different product from Microsoft; it delays income, but isn't that bad. The problem for Microsoft here is that it gives desktop linux an extra year or two to keep improving. The reality is that Linux on the desktop, whethr you consider it "ready" yet or not, has been improving at a far faster rate than Windows has. Just compare Windows98 and the contemporary releases of Linux (around Redhat 5.2 I think, back when they were still using Afterstep as the default environment) and then compare Vista to Ubuntu 7.10: any gaps have narrowed dramatically. Give linux another couple of years to make comparative gains and things may look inteesting when it comes time for businesses to look at OS upgrades -- do you move to Windows 7, or Linux? Both will probably represent almost equally large changes and require as much retraining as each other, and by that point Linux may well be a very good desktop option. Combine that with the fact that Linux (via wine) might actually be as good as Windows 7 at running your old win32 software (given Vistas difficulties with such things) and Microsoft may have a potential revolt on their hands.

The simple reality is tht, once you all out of step on the treadmill, then working to stay on it doesn't continue to look as attractive as it used to. Lock in is quite important to Microsoft's business model, and failing to keep businesses in step with current MS trends is actually quite a serious potential problem brewing.

Re:The problem with waiting for MS

Linux as it is now will NEVER be any sort of viable replacement to Windows. The biggest problem Linux has is its lack of a central authority. There are too many distributions with low standardization.

Linux could most certainly power a strong desktop client but with the direction it has at the moment and always has had that won't happen.

Not to mention that my PC at home running Vista will run any Windows application you throw at it. You claim of "Vistas difficulties with such things" seems a bit unfounded to me. I agree that you sometimes might have to drop into emulation mode which should be transparent to the user and therefore needs some attention. However, I have yet to find any app that won't work on Vista.

Re:The problem with waiting for MS

The reality is that Linux on the desktop, whethr you consider it "ready" yet or not, has been improving at a far faster rate than Windows has. Just compare Windows98 and the contemporary releases of Linux (around Redhat 5.2 I think...

That's been my experience with Linux and Windows. Back in 1998 colleagues were telling me that Linux is great, and can do everything Windows can. So I took a look (at RedHat 5.2 actually) and saw their default desktop, Afterstep, and thought "what a joke!". At the time I was using Windows NT at work, and it just ran beautifully, in stark contrast to Linux, which couldn't do anything without a lot tweaking. Since then, I've tried Linux from time to time, and noticed the gap closing rapidly, and wha'ts more, the things the Linux has always done better (the command line, open standards, loads of free software, etc..) it still does better. I personally have no intention of handing over hundred's of dollars for Vista, ie. I'm getting off the treadmill, and now might be the time when businesses start doing that as well. The main problem will be legacy applications.

M$ need to move corporate keys back to XP system..

M$ need to move corporate keys back to XP system.
Businesses do not like the idea that there vista system must call in to M$ to check there key from time to time or go in to limited functionality mode or use a key sever that calls in to M$ and systems can also go in to limited functionality mode if the sever / network goes down.

And if vista starts to gain more ground this may end become a big problem that limited testing be for a big roll is something that you may not run in to at that time and you may have to hope for a fast fix it your key gets blacklisted by mistake and most of your systems go in to limited functionality mode.

Vista was 3 years late!

If Vista was 3 years late, why would anyone trust Microsoft's projections now? If "Windows 7" is going to hit in 2009, that's probably going to mean 2012 or 2011 at best.

We're already bypassing it

At my company, we don't have a single Windows machine in sight. Do we miss it? Not at all. Our desktops are all macs, our workstations Linux, our servers are Linux and FreeBSD. After having worked at several companies that used Windows extensively, I can say I have no desire to ever go back to an environment like that. OS X and Linux are just so much more flexible, and have far less management overhead than any Windows environment.

Re:What is so bad about Vista?

It makes the hardware look old.

The same things that're bad with XP

Let's see--

0. DRM throughout the system.

1. If a dialog box pops up, you can't move or resize the parent window. WHY ISN'T THIS FIXED YET?

2. It's slow and bloated, even on modern hardware.

3. Its user interface is inconsistent. (OK, KDE and Gnome are pretty bad this way, too, but OS-X isn't, for instance.)

4. DRM.

5. Intrusive security model.

6. Requires re-training of end-users, which is expensive. (Had to add this one, as it's always used as a "reason" to not move to Linux or OpenOffice.)

7. Invasive anti-piracy model.

8. DRM.

9. No compelling reason to upgrade from XP.

As you can see, there are lots of reasons MS-Windows Vista is not good, even on modern hardware. However, if it floats your boat, continue using it.

Re:What is so bad about Vista?

So does Leopard, and do you hear people whine about that? OSX is a memory hog too.

Re:What is so bad about Vista?

I think you missed the point. I can google "Flamingo" and "problems" and get over a million results - does this mean a million people are having problems with their flamingo?

Re:too late, too early, too in-between ...

Or maybe, just maybe, Microsoft released an unfinished operating system, which was a spectacular failure, and now everybody is trying to avoid paying a huge chunk of cash because there is a good chance Microsoft will try to wipe the problems under the carpet and get something better out ASAP.

Or in other words:
Vista is the new Millenium.

Re:Linux

I think you underestimate what most people do on their PCs, especially at work. Most business PCs run many proprietary pieces of software that will only work properly on Windows. Admittedly, this could be solved with Citrix / WTS but it involves lots of business change (plus served apps generally blow for general usability, especially when the network gets busy).