Don’t let the sales numbers fool you, the numbers look good because Windows Vista ships on all new consumer PC’s that sell in the likes of PC World etc. Business and Enterprise users are a different kettle of fish.
Lets go back in time.
Microsoft released Windows Vista to manufacturing on November 8th 2006.
Jim Allchin (the Microsoft Exec in charge of Windows Vista) said at the time:-
The team had signed off on the final code at around 10 a.m. PST on Nov. 8, Allchin said, adding that “this is an incredible, happy day; it’s exciting for us. Vista is rock solid and we are ready to ship. This is a significant milestone for Microsoft and our partners.”
Source(click for article)
Two recent studies show Windows Vista is not as solid as Jim would have us believe.
Study 1)
According to a survey of nearly 600 European and US companies that have more than 1,000 employees, 84 percent of all their PCs now run Windows XP, up from 67 percent the year before.
Gray also echoed other analysts who last week said Vista plans had been significantly scaled back by most companies. “That’s absolutely the case. In May 2006, 40 percent of the companies we surveyed said they planned on deploying Vista within the first year of its public life,” Gray said. “Forty percent were planning on deploying, but by the end of 2007, only 7 percent will have started. Enterprises are absolutely pulling back from their very, very aggressive deployment plans.”
A year after Microsoft released Vista to duplicators, 38 percent of companies claimed they had no plans at this stage to deploy the operating system. Another 14 percent said they just didn’t know.
Source(click for article)
Study 2)
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.
“The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability.
Source(click for article)
As a Windows Vista user I can see what all the concern is about. Having something swishier but less stable and slower isn’t a good sell.
On the positive side the Windows Vista Security model seems to have survived its first year without getting too embarrassed.
The fact of the matter is I have experienced many glitches/bugs during my 11 months of use. However I haven’t lost any data but those glitches are annoying and my Clients don’t like to be annoyed by technology.
Hence my decision to date of giving my clients the best information I have at the time, nearly all stick with Windows XP.
Moving forward I am waiting for Windows Vista SP1 (Feb2008) and I will do a clean rebuild and live with it for a few months before deciding if I care to annoy, sorry deploy to my clients.
The news in the playground about SP1 is:- “more stable but the performance is the same”. That means new users are going to need fast PC’s with 2gig of Ram etc, yet another hard sell.
For my clients this just creates confusion, uncertainty and doubt about future deployments, so the smart move for them is to “wait and see”. The knock on effect is slower deployment of all technology. This of course benefits no one.
Office2007 User Interface
