90% of IT Professionals Don't Want Vista

A survey by King Research has found that Ninety percent of IT professionals have concerns using Vista, with compatibility, stability and cost being their key reasons. Interestingly, forty four percent of companies surveyed are considering switching to non-Windows operating systems, and nine percent of those have already started moving to their selected alternative. "The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability. Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista," said Diane Hagglund of King Research.

Well there you have it

Conclusive proof that Vista has flopped :) Unless the survey was rigged, but CmdrTaco wouldn't be that naive would he?...

Re:Well there you have it

Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it, very few DOS programs wouldn't work and it seemingly didn't offer enough benefits to counter-act this?

One thing that always bothers me with surveys like this is the "have you considered moving to linux/apple" type questions. That's an extremely vague question that can get a 'yes' that can have any meaning for "I've heard a few people talk about linux, I should see what it is" to "we have drawn up a feasibilty report and are waiting for a decision from upper management".

Re:Well there you have it

I'm no IT expert, but this is my impression of Vista.
Vista Pros: DX10 gaming. More secure?
Vista Cons: Slower, expensive, driver problems, compatibility issues.
I don't see a reason for businesses to switch to Vista, unless you play games at work. Does anyone see any real benefit for a business user to switch to Vista?

Re:Well there you have it

I have been having this very discussion with trifish as a part of another story.

Trifish [slashdot.org] would argue that the security benefits alone are sufficient to justify businesses to upgrade. Personally I would say that Vista may be attractive to new businesses* but not ones with an existing investment in XP or 2000, not because the security is lacking, it is an improvement over XP (especially on x64 hardware) but with all the other issues its just not justifiable.

Vista may become viable as hardware becomes cheaper or if there is a sufficiently large threat to XP that is left unpatched but does not affect Vista.

* (but they should be looking at the alternatives regardless, see what my company tries to do..)

Re:Well there you have it

The problem is, we've all spent too much time securing our Windows networks already...I don't remember the last time I had a virus take down more than a couple of machines, and the last time we had one at all was more than a year ago. Everything is isolated, anti-virused, monitored...All our email is filtered through a third party that strips out anything that looks weird.

If you're not having security problems, then saying, "This is more secure" doesn't cut any slack, and it sure as hell doesn't make it worth it to switch to a completely new system.

Re:Well there you have it

100% correct (take a look at this [slashdot.org] thread.).

For the home user Vista has many potential attractions, not least of which is that it will likely arrive on a new PC bought, not because vista is available but because a new computer is required. For business the thought of having to replace a huge number of machines, make changes to various other IT systems, solve any incompatibilities, deal with driver issues, retrain staff and then end up with an IT system that may or may not be more secure than the current one (as you said measures have already been taken) and one that will in all honestly probably deliver little or no productivity benefits, is simply repugnant. This is even more so the case since there are other OS's with similar or better levels of security that run very well on older hardware and are considerably cheaper to acquire and potentially cheaper to maintain, sure they have similar issues with regard to training and compatibility, but if you are throwing out everything else anyway, why not go in favour of something that will at least save you money in terms of licensing and hardware requirements (obviously this aproach is not suitable for all, but then those that is is not suitable for Vista as also not suitable.

Re:Well there you have it

...but if you are throwing out everything else anyway, why not go in favour of something that will at least save you money in terms of licensing and hardware requirements...

This is very true, and what I believe will be the long term result of Vista. It's not that it's horrible, it's merely ok, and it causes enterprises to change a lot of their infrastructure. Once you have accepted that your infrastructure will be changing, the cost of switching to an alternative is much easier to swallow. It's a catch 22 for Microsoft, they have to make changes to their OS to compete, but it gives people an excuse to switch. The answer, of course, it to make your new OS so great that when compared to the alternatives, there is no question which one to go with. Vista is only OK, and that isn't good enough.

As a developer I went through the same thing years ago. I specialized in COM (ActiveX), COM+, and the rest of their DNA stuff (which they had just rolled out); I mainly used Visual C++ and some Visual Basic. Then Microsoft announced .net, and everything that came before was going away; all the stuff, a year ago they were saying was the future. The point of this long story is, I was going to have to relearn everything, and because of that the price to switch platforms was equal to staying with Microsoft. At that time I switched to Java completely. That switch to Java gave me opportunity to switch to unix, which I did. Now I only use Windows when I have to.

This kind of think, IMHO, is going to happen to the IT people, like it did to so many of us developers back then.

Re:Well there you have it

Vista Pros: DX10 gaming

If the latest Crysis Demo has anything to say about it, there goes one of your "Pros."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2209704,00.asp [extremetech.com]

Re:Well there you have it

Cons: memory usage...

As another news site [theinquirer.net] points out [theinquirer.net] and microsoft themselves agree, Vista, on a per box basis, uses more memory to boot than a supercomputer...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx [microsoft.com]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/ccs/sysreqs.mspx [microsoft.com]

Oh and don't look at the disk space requirements, they are truly frightening :)

Re:Well there you have it

DX10 gaming (very nice).

Based on what? Your experience programming in it? Using the new shader techniques?

Or is it just looking at a new games graphics and saying "Oh wow that's all because of DX10"

The rest of the points pose similar questions, especially the one about Linux drivers... ATI or Nvidia? Which Distro? Which Driver version? I've never had any issues with the Nvidia driver myself so your comment seems very incorrect to me.

I see a reason for businesses to switch to Vista, especially if you play games at work.

Because playing games at work is top priority for most companies...

Makes no sense whatsoever..

Quoting from TFA: [computerworlduk.com]

Ninety percent of 961 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half said they have no plans to deploy Vista. (emphasis mine)

Quoting the headline of the /. post:

90% of IT Professionals Don't Want Vista (emphasis mine)

Hardly the same thing. Concern != Don't Want. And you have to be crazy not to be concerned when you deploy a new OS in your enterprise.

TFA even cites a Forrester Research article to back up it's claim (without linking to it). If you want the actual link, here it is. [forrester.com] That study actually claims that one third of businesses will switch to Vista in 2008, which I think is ridiculously optimistic -- but it just goes to show what these studies are worth.

Then there's this gem:

Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista

Let's consider compatibility first. Do these 961 IT Professionals think that switching from XP to OS-X or XP to Linux will give them less compatibility headaches than switching from XP to Vista? On reading this, I can't even understand how CmdrTaco decides that this post is worth our time!!

And next, let's consider stability. Stability first of all requires a definition -- it's very unclear what stability the 'study' is referring to. I'll assume for a moment we're talking about Vista not crashing. This is a very valid concern -- any time you're doing an enterprise deployment/upgrade. That's why you test your apps on the hardware you purchase. That's why you standardize on the hardware you have validated -- so you know you are buying machines with h/w, with supported drivers, etc. None of this is new to OS deployments/upgrades in general. I'm not sure what other kinds of stability they might be referring to, but it takes on an all-encompassing vagueness in a very FUDlike manner in TFA. I mean, if you're talking about stability from a support perspective, nothing has changed between now and XP. MS is not about to go belly-up anytime soon, so your vendor is not going to sell you an OS and then dissappear into the ether. Maybe stability refers to the disruption caused by transitioning OSes in the very first place. Understandable. That's why businesses aren't using Vista yet. They don't switch to a new OS just because it was released. They had (or at least should have had) very clear requirements, cost-benefi analysis etc. done when they deployed XP. If they did a good job with that deployment, and it is still serving their needs, they have absolutely no reason to switch. Windows XP will go End of Life in 2014 (i.e. MS will support it until 2014). Until then, if their requirements have not changed in a way that necessitates them to switch, they should not switch -- unless there are some other circumstances (like perhaps needing to deploy new h/w and wanting to sync the OS upgrade with that), or perhaps some cost-benefit analysis shows that they can save money by switching to Vista (just tossing that out as an example -- no need to launch an all-out assault on me).

Comparisons to XP are invalid

Just like XP flopped when people were complaining for ages that thousands of applications wouldn't work on it

I was there and this nothing like those days. There is a perfect storm of circumstance conspiring against Vista success. The devaluation of the dollar and crisis in confidence of the valuation of US investment instruments will put many big enterprise upgrades on hold. Based on just the phone calls I get, I see more companies actively seeking alternatives that will run adequately on the commodity hardware they already own.

MSFT contributed to Vista's problems by delivering late, stripping out the value functionality, jacking the prices and confusing the market with their licensing scheme.

Business is good for people writing those decision papers right now.

Uh...No.

I've been working IT for a long time, and I've NEVER liked a new operating system. New == Problems.

Unless there is a damn compelling reason, I'll stay with what is working and working well until the new thing has been out for a good while...Hell, I know shops that are still migrating to XP and while I think they're behind the times, they're not alone in that.

If you migrate up just because something new is out...That's just foolish. You're adding a fricking ton to your workload, and for no good reason.

Re:Uh...No.

I think the biggest problem with Vista is there is no compelling reason to upgrade for business users.

It's prettier. But that's about it.

Re:Uh...No.

I would largely agree, but when studying for the TS in configuring vista, I did find one feature that would be beneficial to businesses: The separate sets of security settings for networking depending on if you are connected to a public or private network. That would be fantastic for better protecting mobile users. Still, that hardly by itself outweighs the cons.

How many IT professionals...

want windows at all?

Re:How many IT professionals...

Honestly, XP has it's flaws but a fully patched machine is a fairly reliable box overall.
It still has windows general bullshit but considering the age, there's so many great newsgroup / forum and google search* posts for support, most issues are bound t be easy to fix.

* fuck experts exchange, get off the google search results.

Re:How many IT professionals...

For expert sexchange, use the cached google page. I haven't found a case yet where the answers weren't shown in the cache.

Re:How many IT professionals...

Expert or not, I will not be using Google Sexchange before it's out of beta.

Re:How many IT professionals...

Yep, I work for an Australian Govt Dept and we migrated to XP about 3 years ago and XP SP2 about 3 months ago.
Things are really quite smooth at work.

We're buying machines under 800$ with monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc and running XP perfectly fine on them.
If we were to consider Vista, the SOE manager wouldn't put Vista on a box with less than dual core and 2gb of ram (and I don't blame him)
XP does all we need it to do right now and it does it well.

Vista would be a support nightmare, I can envision workplaces looking at CTX / Ubuntu setups in the near future definately.
It's possible we would migrate to Vista but I can't imagine it happening for at least 2 or even 3 years, it'll be 4 years old then - terrible.

In Other News

90% of fish like it better in the water than out.

Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

In the end Vista will be inevitable. Drivers not available anymore except for Vista, important programs that are Vista-only. Security updates not being made available for XP anymore. (Look at how the support for Win2k went downhill once WinXP was released. For NT 4.0, they stopped giving patches before the official end-of-line) Believe me, it will happen, eventually. Give it another year or two. I didn't switch to WinXP before SP2 was very mature (Fall 2005). Before I was Win2k all the way, and before that NT 4.0....

Try running NT 4.0 these days... Won't get you very far. That's the future of Windows XP. They are going to drop it like a hot potato.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

I think you're missing the point.

It may well be wishful thinking amoungst the Linux faithful but there is a growing impatience with the endless Microsoft upgrade cycle. IT professionals are incresingly saying 'Why upgrade? We gain nothing and lose lots.' I have no major issues with XP, it does everything I want it to, but I will have to upgrade because of all the reasons you state.

So, put yourself in the shoes of a CIO faced with replacing hundreds, or even thousends of PCs because they need to be upgraded to run Vista, and the difficulty of going to the board once again with a request for huge amounts of cash for very little gain, and then maybe Linux starts to look a little better.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

It may well be wishful thinking amoungst the Linux faithful but there is a growing impatience with the endless Microsoft upgrade cycle.

Oh yes, people are equally furious about 1) Microsoft continuously introducing new versions and 2) Microsoft not providing the features they want and need.

And whats more its the same people and they don't use Windows anyway.

Vista runs just fine. I have been running it since May and not had any problems apart from a couple that are pretty squarely third party issues. Vista is fast and slick on my hardware.

Admittedly I would probably not recommend a Vista upgrade but thats mostly because the cost of the Vista upgrade is so close to the cost of a new machine anyway. I have two vista machines and three XP machines in the house. One of those is a three year old Vaio that is dropping to pieces anyway. Another is a Dell box I paid $500 for including the monitor and the other is the machine I use for surfing while I am working out on the treadmill.

Why pay $160 to upgrade when the machines are 2 years old and I can have a whole new machine thats much faster for $500? I certainly would not consider buying a new XP machine though.

The industry does not want Vista whine is wishful thinking. Many companies took two years or more to roll out XP. If you have a hundred or so users you would be a fool not to adopt a wait and see approach. But that does not say anything about the quality of the product.

Vista has higher hardware requirements than past versions. That does not make them unreasonable requirements. But most IT depts want to support a single version of the O/S so that means that they can't do the upgrade till they can afford to end-of-life the legacy machines that don't support the new version.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

No CIO will ever think that Linux looks like a good idea just because the latest Windows is still in the "unrunnable crap" phase. They don't get where they are by taking big risks, and jumping from windows to linux is enough to make anyone who has any experience break out in a cold sweat.

A migration from XP to Vista will bring with it a myriad of problems, hosts of issues, hours and hours of work...And that is the tip of the iceberg of what it would take to migrate their userbase from XP to Linux.

I've been involved in a good half-dozen attempts to move an all windows shop to an all Linux environment, and it always comes down to the same stuff. You may pry them off windows, but you won't pry them off their windows software, so either you have to put your trust in WINE (pause for laughter) or you have to invest heavily in windows terminal services so that you can run all the windows apps they need in a terminal session on their linux machines. Doing that will cause whole new levels of stress on your network, and it also throws up some new point of failure issues.

On top of all the technical crap, you're going to have massive training issues, and a lot of user resistance from people who want to be able to install stupid little desktop apps. Most of the IT staff won't be happy with you, because generally most of the staff won't be linux guys.

Even if you get it all running (and every time I've ever done one of these, we got it running, and well), you're still going to get resistance. It stays ugly for long periods of time...I've seen people roll back after two years, writing off a quarter million dollar system as a bad deal.

Until we get native software, it's going to be the deal-breaker. Selling the terminal services stuff to people doesn't fly all that well.

Re:Oh, yes, that's what we always say.

I (and I'm sure many others) feel that Windows 2000 was the best operating system Microsoft has designed to date.

Oh, I'm one of those. Microsoft peaked with Win2k, but are you sure you get all security updates? Is IE7 available for your system. Does Office 2007 work for you?

As you read in my post, I switched to XP very late. Why did I switch? There is exactly one feature that is so useful in a home setting, that I still wonder why it hasn't been backported to Win2k. For me the "killer feature" was "fast user switching".