is IT really going to be Vista? 14

[wolluf]

could vista be the proverbial straw (that breaks the camel's back)?

MS charge ridiculous prices for their operating system(s) - given their complete market dominance.

MS have developed total paranoia over piracy - how long before WGA runs into a major legal battle with another large corporation (or 2)?

Having touted below par o/s for years (windows 3, 95, 98, ME), they belatedly developed their NT flavour - and got it reasonably right with XP (all the 'security' issues are only there because they are so successful). The operating system serves most people reasonably well. So why replace it. One word - revenue.

Complications. XP comes in Home and Pro - basically so they could charge a premium for Pro. This also increases support issues. Vista is at least doubling this (same reason again - revenue). No benefit to the customer. One version is a lot easier to support - but they can't charge premium rates for it. What are the development costs to hobble the basic o/s (which is what they do). We, the customers pay for that.

What are the development costs for 'activation' (which immediately kick-started a whole new piracy operation which wasn't there previously - Newton, he say, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) and WGA? Who pays for this - the customer of course.

I fix PCs in peoples homes. Virtually nobody is interested in the 'interface' (other than it doesn't change too much, so the little technical expertise already gained isn't lost), but look at Aero. People mainly want machines that will surf their favourite sites, send & receive email, do some word processing, let their kids run games/messenger, working at a reasonable speed.

There is no reasonable alternative (ubuntu is best linux I've tried in years, but its still not an alternative), and Vista will go on new PCs of course, so it will probably be business as usual. But having beta tested Vista for a year or so now, all I can see is it need lots more resources and gives very little extra. And has more annoying things that need turning off (another observation - people mainly are not impressed with constant 'should this be run' type questions, which Vista seems to abound in).

Sounds like a rant - oh well, its been a while!

 

[ctopher06]

I work for a major USA corporation. We are going to start Vista testing in Jan 07 against all apps, with full implementation in Jan 08.

Chris

 

[Tarwn]

I think there are advances in the latest version of Windows that are going to be appreciated. Look at Windows XP vs Windows 95. Seven years bought a lot of advances. Now compare the feature set of Windows Vista to Windows 98. Sometimes by comparing against a version several version older makes the changes more obvious.

Unfortunatly I do agree with the original poster in some ways. Forcing a new version of the OS on us every 3-4 years is painful. Especially when the new version has had a great deal of what was supposed to make it revolutionary from XP chopped out. Granted, MS is a business, they are not considering what is best for the end user, but instead the best way to make another dollar.

Personally I don't like the 3-4 year model anymore than I like the version/year model of some Linux distros and commercial software distributions. Perhaps I am getting older, but from a developers standpoint t makes me uncomfortable to cycle through both the OS and the development platform so quickly. It almost seems to negate any savings made along the way for using faster tools or defining hardware standards that could last 5-7 years but instead end up lasting 3.
I can't think of a better solution to the current model though. The alternatives are to update more often, in smaller chunks or to release a new OS less frequently. More frequent updates, whether or not they cost money, would be even more difficult to manage, as it would be like receiving Windows Updates that cause major interface or applicaiton changes overnight. Less frequent version releases makes MS unhappy because it reduces their income stream.

If I had to choose between the current method, a faster partial-update method, or a slower version release schedule, I would likely pick the slower cycle. At least with the slower cycle MS might be able to bundle enough into the OS for it to really feel like a major version change (ie, WinFS and the other big additions that got cut out of Vista).

 

[jsteph]

The point about MS being a business and all about profit is really the key. They simply won't (and shouldn't as a business) design themselves out of the market by making something that lasts forever or at least makes the repeat-sales cycle too long.

I also would prefer a slower cycle, and at this point I'd almost pay to have them *not* force an upgrade. The biggest pain is the whole installing, loading your software, finding out what now doesn't work right, etc. Then when a new feature is available that I feel I need--I'd like the option to pay for that as an upgrade to XP, but not have to completely start from scratch with a new OS and all that install pain.

Same thing as a developer--I can't afford to spend money and time learning a language that may not work on the next platform.

What gets me the most is they keep saying (about both OS and dev. tools) "This is really it--the be-all, end-all system that will be in use vitrually forever".

They said that about 95, then 98, then XP--and now we're looking at Vista--what happens 3 years from now?

Same with languages--C, then C++ and OO, then VB. Now it's .Net. Why should anyone believe that MS won't pull the rug from .Net in 3 or 5 years and say "Believe us his time for sure--now we've really, really, really come up with the new development platform".

And as far as just keeping XP--MS purposefully develops incompatibilities into so many things that it puts pressure on the rest of us to upgrade. It's planned obselesence--and as I said, I'd rather pay a fee every couple of years to keep the same core and add upgrades as they come. The only time I really feel an entire core OS may be warranted (for my use anyway) is when a new hardware platform (64-bit, for example) comes out and there are compelling performance reasons to upgrade to that hardware.
--Jim

 

[strongm]

>Forcing a new version of the OS on us every 3-4 years is painful

It has been 5 years since XP was released, and I don't anticipate huge corporate take-up for at least another year or so, which will make 6 years (which fits smack bang in the middle of your 'defining hardware standards that could last 5-7 years' thought)

 

[Tarwn]

>It has been 5 years since XP was released, and I don't anticipate huge corporate take-up for at least another year or so, which will make 6 years

Heh, you almost had me until I noticed that you measured from release of XP to proposed install of Vista, not proposed install to proposed install. Even so, you have made a valid point, it seems shorter but the numbers support your point.

I think my current company did not finish putting people onto XP until about 2005, but we had a lot of legacy applications to cleanup. So in a way we managed to balance out the upgrade times, as most of the machines were upgraded from 2000 Pro. So XP kind of fell in the middle.

I just noticed something. We have finally gotten most of our legacy applications (except the really big ones) rewritten in .Net or replaced by off-the-shelf. And here comes a new OS, followed by a new version of .Net. Will Vista have support for .Net 1.1? Or will we all be scrambling to rewrite applications until the next OS and Framework release? And based on what I have seen from 2.0 vs 1.1, they are not that concerned with backwards compatibility, so a partial to complete rewrite will be necessary.


MS has decided that 3-5 years is a good enough span of life for an application (maybe less, but I am being nice). That fits their business as a seller of software, but does it fit other business models who only want to use the tool? At what point do our companies reach a point where the cost of new OS's, new Visual Studios, and rewrites of applications hits a point of diminishing returns?

 

[fredericofonseca]

well as long as Microsoft returns remain the same they dont really caare about the other companies.



Regards

Frederico Fonseca
SysSoft Integrated Ltd

http://www.syssoft-int.com

 

[dennisbbb]

At what point do our companies reach a point where the cost of new OS's, new Visual Studios, and rewrites of applications hits a point of diminishing returns?"

Good question! I believe that point has past since Win98SE.

But they managed to slip in WinME, Win2K, WinXP. Here comes Vista.. and guess what, we're all upgrading no matter how much you hate it. You know it too. We have become a society that follows trend than practicality.

 

[pmonett]

Woah there ! Follow trend ? Sorry, but in case you haven't noticed, the hardware requirements for Vista are rather steep. Not only do you require a minimum of 2GB (4 is better), but you also require at least a mid-range 3D card.

The situation in many businesses (and private homes) today is that a lot of PCs run off the graphics chip that is onboard the motherboard - and is certainly not capable of running Aero.

This means that, for a vast amount of companies and individuals, buying Vista is going to trigger a series of subsequent purchases (or a bundle for companies).

Given that even low-range PCs today can run XP, Office and just about any browser and mail client you can think of with hardly a hassle (right, unless you want to do everything at once - but if you're a power user you already have a high-spec workhorse, right ?), Vista means replacing the PC.

Let's imagine for a moment that the millions of consumers will do it - after all Intel, AMD, Nvidia & co will be quite happy to make money there - do you really think that corporations are not going to blink when they see the total cost of ownership that Vista will impose ?

How many of you that read this thread have a dual-core CPU (Intel or AMD I don't care), 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 7800 GTX or equivalent ? I won't be putting my neck out far if I think it isn't many. And I still won't be putting my neck out much further if I state that you'll be needing that and more for Vista if you do development, or are a power user.

Windows XP was also an upgrade incentive, but for it you could content yourself with a better CPU, and/or a bit more RAM. And RAM was not that expensive at the time. Now Vista comes barreling down and people are not only going to have to double or quadruple the RAM they have (or haven't, since not many have DDR2 today), they're also going to have to upgrade their CPU and buy a video card, which many never have done yet.

I think the barrier to entry for Vista is going to be too high for it to be a success in the short term. And I don't think Vista is going to be widely adopted before mainboard makers have an onboard chip that runs Aero adequately - which means that it needs to be DX10 compliant, will be able to run games, and will be either a child of Nvidia or ATIMD, or a direct competitor from Intel or (eventually) IBM.

In any case, it won't happen tomorrow.

Pascal.

 

[Tarwn]

One note, though I agree with the general thrust of your post:
I believe it is supposed to be poissible to run Vista on less than the requirements above, but some of the whizbang features go away. I'm not sure what you have left after the features are disabled, maybe Windows XP SP3?

 

[pmonett]

I would agree with that. Already in XP I disabled a lot of the useless UI gimmickry - even if I have the best components I can afford, I prefer to have them working on what I want and not on supposedly cute graphical effects I have no care for.

I will disable everything I do not need whenever I go to Vista, but I do not expect that to improve performance in this case - just reduce annoyance. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has a proven history of bloating the OS with trinkets that may impress the layman, but just put themselves in the way of doing actual work.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[Grenage]

I detest the hardware requirements for Vista, and have a hard time seeing how they manage to justify them. While I have personally moved over to an alternative operating system, most people will not. That's always understandable.

I just wish that schools would perhaps not be windows-biased (again, understandable). Some *nix, mac, whatever in proportion would allow younger people to see that there are other solutions.

I suppose change keeps us in a job, in many ways, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen some marked improvements in the way Vista will operate, over XP.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[Glenn9999]

I can post a rather lengthy review (actually a list of observations) I did from when I evaluated Vista RC2, but the short of it is that Vista doesn't offer a single thing beyond Windows XP other than Aero and DirectX 10. If you don't care about the different UI or DX10, Vista is a huge waste of money, IMO. Perhaps the most significant change in functionality to the end user (nevermind the security "crimps" put into Vista to satisfy the RIAA, MPAA and the like), is the Windows Sidebar, and there's a freeware program out there for that, that was IMO better.

(the rest of the "major enhancements" in Vista are separately downloadable for XP SP2, like IE7, WMP11, .NET 3.0, Windows Defender, and the like). And no doubt, some of the underlying OS changes of Vista will make it into XP Service Pack 3, so I'm not holding my breath for the release date of Vista, and am going to rather noisily suggest to NOT upgrade to those that want to know my opinion.

 

[pmonett]

Ah, but Microsoft is going to do its damndest to get people to switch anyway, like locking games into Vista, and dragging feet over getting stuff done for XP for longer than anyone would consider reasonable.

Plus the fact that new OEM machines are going to be Vista starting the day of the launch, which will seed the market and create a need (atificial though it may be). Then Ballmer will set back and say "see, Vista is a success ! You have to develop for it now !".

And developers will start developing for it, rabid gamers like me will sob when faced with the gorgeous graphics and yet-unexperienced abilities of the new games made for dual-core CPUs, and more and more people will jump ship.

In the end, we're all Borged anyway, but I will fight the inevitable as long as I can.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[ctopher06]

A lot of developers are using Vista Beta now. They have already started developing for new apps.
Most users will be switching to Vista when it comes out, like it or not.

Chris

 

[Stevehewitt]

Come on now, this is all a bit dramatic guys.

Hardware Requirements
My Athlon 2800+ with 1Gb of RAM and a 4 year old 128Mb graphics card runs Vista RC2 with no problems at all. Say it's a bit faster than my previous XP Pro install actually.
(And I am running Aero on Ultimate Edition).
pmonett - I have no idea where you are getting your information from, but MS Partners are being advised directly from MS that 512Mb on a modern processor will provide a good experience with Vista. I haven't tried it, but I have with my 1Gb on a 3 year old system and it runs fine. 2Gb minimum? 4Gb ideal? Seriously, most my servers don't have 4Gb!!! Where did you get that information from?!


Cost
Let's get somethings cleared up. Vista Home Basic costs the same as Windows XP Home Edition. (Or spend a whopping $36 more for Premium) Vista Business is $341, XP Pro is $386. That's $45 cheaper than a product released 5 years ago. And when you look at inflation that means that Vista is actually a hell of a lot cheaper than XP)


Revenue
"So why replace it. One word - revenue." - You work for a charity or are you a CEO of a company that is currently making a loss. Of course it's for revenue - you thought it was for the good of humantiy?! What about Intel, AMD, NVidia, Belkin, Creative, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP - new releases are for more income, which is what businesses aim to do. On top of that, technology has moved on dramatically since 2000/2001 (which is when a vast majority of the decisions regarding XP and it's security model were planned and implemented). By moving to Vista, or the latest version of RHES, or HP-UX you are moving to a product that has a more modern security plaform than the last version. Rather have a product designed for today than yesterdays version with a few hundered patches.

Features
UAC, .Net 3.0, DX10, new UI (more than just the aero glass effect), BitLocker, IE7, new Windows Backup, Windows Defender, Parental Settings, Movie Maker, WMP, new Group Policies, Management and Deployment Tools.

These are just some of the new features in Vista. Just look back over the list and think about these new tools and applications. Each one such as IE7, Defender, WMP, UAC - they all take a huge amount of time when being implemented into the newest release of the worlds most popular OS.
Yes, features such as WMP, .Net 3.0, IE7 and Defender will be released for WinXP - but what about the complete re-write of the networking protocols, or support for the hundreds or new GPO's. Maybe the BitLocker or ReadyBoost features appeal, possibly the re-work of the event viewer or superb (and I mean this, it's great) management and deployment tools. Running Longhorn Server and Vista Business together in the same environment have resuled in huge management benifits. Gone are the dodgey batch and VBS scripts cobbled together, no more crap RIS images that don't quite work due to a different NIC installed. There's a vast array of features in Vista and Longhorn. People who install the latest build when they are bored and have a play around are not testing the OS, they are testing the installation. When you actually look at NAP and other features that are not as well advertised (but documented on TechNet and MSDN) then you can start testing the OS - installing it and waiting for something magical to happen whilst you launch the start menu is not testing any features and to say otherwise is incorrect and inaccurate.

Compatability
So far I've got Adobe Reader, Doom 3, Look@LAN, Etheral, Office 2003, WinRAR, Nero and The Sims all running fine on Vista. (Plus numberous other including in-house .Net 2.0 apps) All the drivers were added out-of-the-box. In terms of locking games into Vista, I believe DX10 and .Net 3.0 are avaliable as free downloads for XP. And if you care to look at the vast compatability tools such as emulation modes and registry/system folder redirection that MS have implemented combined with the high avaliablity of beta and RC releases I've got to ask what compatability issues?!
Oh, and yes Vista will support .Net 1.0 if it's installed on the machine. (As I'm sure you know a .Net 1.0 app won't work on a WinXP machine without the .Net 1.0 framework, even if .Net 2.0 is installed - the same applies for Vista)


Sorry for the rant guys, however there's a hell of a lot of inaccuracies in this thread and from my through testing of Vista I personally think that it's a great new OS with a lot more features in it compared to XP - and in fact more additions in it than the Win2k to XP upgrade.

Cheers,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[jsteph]

My Athlon 2800+ with 1Gb of RAM and a 4 year old 128Mb graphics card runs Vista RC2 with no problems at all

Many corporate environments, ours included, do not have that level of PC on everyone's desktop. The bulk of our PC's are P4 1.2 ghz, with 256 Meg ram. That was well above MS's Min. req. for XP, and even above what some pc techs recommended as minimum.

I doubt very much that Vista would run well on that platform.

Sure, our personal, home pc's may be faster, and being in the industry many of us like to keep up with the hardware, but in the real world, with real budgets, when you propose replacing 1000 perfectly good P4 Pc's, then you think twice. So for us, anyway, we won't consider Vista until our next hardware upgrade--which happens in shifts--is fully complete.
--Jim

 

[Glenn9999]

The bulk of our PC's are P4 1.2 ghz, with 256 Meg ram. That was well above MS's Min. req. for XP, and even above what some pc techs recommended as minimum.

I doubt very much that Vista would run well on that platform.

It won't, at least not very well. In fact, one feature of Vista is the "Vista Experience Index", which is basically a performance benchmark. If your machine doesn't measure up it will lock out many of the applets and features. For example, it locked out the movie maker applet and the DVD writing applet. Strange because I have third-party software which performs both jobs admirably on XP with my current computer.

Ultimately, it is something put there to encourage hardware upgrades - basically you're going to need DVD drives in every computer (the Vista install disk will take care of that in itself being 2.6GB), a high-end video card, and an upgrade in both memory and processor.

I evaluated it on an Athlon XP 2000+ with 512MB RAM and a 64MB video card. It locked out many features, VEI considered this computer to be "low-end", and most programs ran slower than molasses.

I doubt it would run at all on that platform. In fact, my minimum suggested platform would be around 3 Ghz processor, 1 gig RAM, and 256MB for video card. For those that are wise and research, Vista is going to be a non-starter, especially in the wider computer using world.

So for us, anyway, we won't consider Vista until our next hardware upgrade--which happens in shifts--is fully complete.

Wise choice. A Windows Vista upgrade means a hardware upgrade in about 90% of the cases. And the worst part of it is that hardware upgrade is a trade-off for no significantly additional functionality beyond the 3D eye candy (especially since you can download most of the new features for XP either from Microsoft or a third party) and DirectX 10.

(thinking, I might have to copy my Vista review/observations in here - might be a discussion starter).

 

[wolluf]

Beta testing Vista on 64 bit Athlon 2800+ with 1GB RAM (but onboard 64MB graphics). 32 bit version uses 4-500MB RAM on startup with nothing else loaded. 64 bit version uses 600+ MB RAM. Given that XP uses less than 128MB (with nothing else installed - in fact usually < 100MB) and there's no way you can run it comfortably with < 256MB (and if you've Norton, 512MB!), suspect pascal's figures are not going to be too far off.

Someone's given Stevehewitt a star - must be another M$ employee. I can't see anything in vista for the average user.

Historically, it would seem likely that M$ and windows are replaced/superceded by something nobody saw coming (likely a small idea in existence now...). The trouble is, that will spawn another company just as bad - because of the the old power corrupts situation (Google seems to be doing ok at avoiding this situation so far, but..). What would benefit most people would be for the next big idea to be in the public domain - but so far it never is.

Oh well, back on your 'eads!

 

[Stevehewitt]

Guys, I can only comment on what I have tested and what MS have documented.

If you have used the Beta versions then I can believe where pascal is coming from in terms of hardware specs - however I don't believe that 512Mb/1Gb RAM and a 2800+ processor is unreasonable. Works fine on the systems I have tested (did try it with 512Mb on a PIII but gave up after waiting 15 mins for it to boot!).

Generally speaking, the hardware requirements for smooth running are going to be most PC's purchased in the last year or so and new machine being brought today. Um, forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that about right? Why should MS design a OS for 3, 4 ,5 year old technology? We live today, here - now. Vista will be fine on all but the budget machines purchased in the last year and will be fine on all modern machines. As of 2007 I'd rather have my OS designed to take advantage of the graphical power, processing cycles and gigabytes of RAM at my disposal than be limited by old technology. I paid for Vista today, I want it to take advantage of what is on offer today.

I'm very interested as to why people have replied with nothing new in the posts. I have suspicions that people are commenting after loading up a Beta for 15 minutes or from what they have heard off others.

Comments like no new features other than DX10 and Aero show peoples ignorance and a complete bias against MS. NAP, TCP/IP Rework, Management and Diagnostic Tools, Deployment options - this is where businesses will find the benifits.
What would people say the major new features of Windows XP was over Windows 2000?

I wouldn't advise anyone with a 1.2Ghz 512Mb client network to perform hardware upgrades just to get Vista. However our corporate network consists of 700 machines, all of which run on a strict three year replacement cycle. All current machines are fine in terms of running Vista (tested RC2 on the 2 oldest machines we have) thus I have no issues with rolling it out.
(We have Software Assurance so it won't financially cost us to roll Vista out)

I'm not hearing anything against Vista so far with any basis other than moans and groans as people either haven't got decent hardware management and budgeting plans in place (seriously, 2.2Ghz and 512Mb hasn't been high spec for the last 2 to 3 years) or haven't done any research into what is actually on offer in terms of business benefits.

Once again the anti-MS crowd look at comments around the beta and make more incorrect comments with little to base it on. Try reading TechNet to see what is actually in Vista before saying there is nothing new. It's like saying that my 1996 Peugeot 106 1.5d has nothing changed to it since the 2002 model. Yeah, looks better - but it's still a car. When I go in it and turn the key it still starts. It's now heavier than before which slows it down a bit, and it also isn't as fuel efficent etc...

Do some research on the product you are trying so hard to slate before mouthing off incorrect information regarding product features simply because it's "cool" to bad-mouth Microsoft.




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson