Microsoft Responds to DOT Ban on Vista, Office, IE

roscoetoon writes "From the blog of Mary Jo Foley: What's Microsoft's response to the DOT's charges? A corporate spokeswoman sent this statement, via e-mail: (caution: microbrain double-speak ahead) ... "We respect the customer's decision. As with any of our other Federal customers, it's our job to help DOT maximize the value of its Enterprise Agreement through the adoption of our technology. We are engaged with large, strategic customers across government at every level, and are working closely with them on these products through their participation in our Technical Adoption Programs.""

Nothing New Really

[jascat]

Federal agencies are typically slow to pick up on new versions of Office and Windows. Currently, the US Air Force has a moratorium on IE7 and has since it came out citing security issues. Neither Vista nor Office 2k7 are approved for use on Air Force networks...yet. They have to be certified to be safe and secure to use on unclassified and classified networks. This is normal. Eventually, and unfortunately in my opinion, the moratorium will be lifted and approval will be given. It's more of a question of when, rather than if.

Re:Well...

[trix7117]

While I'm still pushing anyone who asks my opinion towards OS X instead of Vista, I do agree that Vista/Office 2007 are improvements on XP/2003 (assuming you're system can handle the Vista system requirements). I received a copy of Office 2007 at a recent MS launch event and am happy with it. However, there is a definite learning curve for people who are used to using XP.

Today I watched a co-worker spend 15 minutes (no exaggeration) trying to figure out how to print a Word document (I finally showed him). Just for fun, we asked his office mate to try, and after 5 minutes of searching (again, no exaggeration) he eventually found the Print Preview function and used that to print. Neither one of them ever thought to click on the logo in the upper-left corner of the application. They both are so used to double-clicking that corner to close an application that it never occurred to them to look there for common functions like print.

Re:DOT may already be paying for Vista

[greenbird]

IE: it's exactly the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

No, it's not. With RedHat I just pay for a server. I can have 5000 clients accessing that server without paying a dime for each client accessing the server not to mention being able to use something cheap or even free on the clients. Oh, and I can switch to Suse or Ubuntu without have to completely rebuild all my information systems and apps from scratch.

Re:Well...

[TubeSteak]

http://www.acs.org.au/president/1996/atm/npc/im961 009.htm [acs.org.au]

National Press Club - IM Forum
Speaker: Mr Scott McNealy
President Sun Microsystems
Wednesday, 9 October 1996

"The second big investment is to upgrade your PC. I don't have any reason why we would want to do that, but, think about it - do we really need more spreadsheets? Do we really need more word processors? I just S we did a survey at Sun. We had 12.9 gigabytes of Powerpoint slides in storage on our disk drives. Ha ha ha. It freaks me out just to think about. Do you how many person sentries that is? Of clip-art manipulations? I banned Powerpoint from our company - I just edicted it."

Earlier in that article, he mentions how he's only ever used word processors with four features: "backspace, delete, cut and paste and print"

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-19294279.html [encyclopedia.com]
Chief Executive Magazine
Date: 3/1/1997
Computing's second Punic war.
(interview with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy)

"Personally, I got so frustrated with clip art and presentation graphics that I banned Power Point from our company 10 months ago. Our earnings have skyrocketed and our stock price has nearly doubled since that time. I have seen absolutely nothing but productivity gained by banning word processors with more than four features and Power Point-like graphics, or presentations graphics programs."

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be nice if you credited that information [noblenet.org].