Colleges hold off on MS Vista

[Pilgrim]

Straight from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the bible of the College biz:

An informal survey shows that most colleges are delaying the installation on campus computers of Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, released to the public a year ago.

Gary O. Roberts, Alfred University's director of information-technology services, polled colleges online and asked them two questions: Has their campus switched to Vista, or do they plan to upgrade to Vista in the next four to six months?

Twenty-eight college officials answered no to the first question, while five officials answered yes. To the second question, 25 respondents answered no, and six said yes. Mr. Roberts said Alfred would not adopt Vista until 2009.

The data confirm what Jonathan Stallings, an account manager for Matrix Integration, has been been observing about his clientele, which are largely colleges and universities. Matrix Integration, based in Jasper, Ind., is a technology vendor. "I don't know of any colleges that have plans to go to Vista this year," he said. Mr. Stallings said that Vista did not integrate smoothly with other software and that college help-desk staff didn't know the software well enough to support it.

"Super-technical people, like engineers, love Vista because it's a more powerful operating system, but the general user hates it," he added. Greg Smith, chief technology officer of George Fox University, said techie students on campus applauded and cheered when they found out the university was not planning to support Vista.

Still, colleges may be compelled to move to Vista sometime next year. That's because Microsoft is telling PC manufacturers, such as Dell and Gateway, that after this summer they won't be able to ship out computers with the old Windows XP operating system in them. So as students buy new machines, they will start getting used to Vista and expect college technical staffs to be familiar with it.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is allowing colleges with whom they have license agreements to downgrade the software on their PC's from Vista to XP. The problem for many students, though, is that CD's of Microsoft's XP-Pro are becoming more expensive at college bookstores. Microsoft is trying to nudge students to Vista. Noel Lephart, director of information services at Indiana Business College, said that the campus bookstore used to be able to buy a CD of XP-Pro for $70, but that now it costs about $90. And that price increase is passed on to students.

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I'm not surprised. Frankly, Vista is the answer to a question that no consumer has asked. Our IT staff doesn't like it either, because it's shot through with backwards incompatibilities. Getting it to work in a campus computing setting with systems and computers ranging from new to 15+ years old is a PAIN, and sometimes it's a lot more trouble than it's worth.

[PunkerTrav]

I regularly work on computers running XP, Vista, or OSX and have definitely chosen favorites.

I love both XP and OSX. Vista has some issues, however, at the level of the individual consumer it is a fine operating system with some great features. That said, I haven't heard good things about it as a music/graphics workstation from friends who use it as such. Unfortunately for Micro$oft, at the level of the institutional consumer, where I bet the majority of their OS revenue is generated, there are huge gaps in support and compatibility.

At home, I'm still more than happy to put up with XP's abysmal USB support and OSX's quirky Mac-isms.

[Eublet]

I'm a Sr. Systems Engineer for a major integrator in the Southeast, so I can say for certain that Vista will solve a large number of issues once schools and other organizations are ready to make the move. MS wasn't stupid in doing what they have done. They knew very well that there would be resistance. They finally made some bold decisions in choosing to lose a lot of backward compatibility, and in the long run that will mean things run smoother. I've personally witnessed major Vista deployments over the last 6 months in places that wouldn't have even thought of Vista a year ago, and with the release of SP1 next month, along with most 3rd party developers finally getting with the program and updating their own applications, Vista will be huge over the next 12 months.

As for what the consumer asked, that doesn't matter. Vista answers questions that the consumer doesn't even know to ask, and that's what will push everyone over. With the new BDD tools, along with SCCM, Vista deployment and management within any organization is 100 times easier than XP ever thought of being. 12 months from now, anyone who isn't at least planning their Vista migration will be seriously behind the curve, and will find themselves at a huge competitive disadvantage.

[Eublet]

Originally Posted by PunkerTrav

at the level of the institutional consumer, where I bet the majority of their OS revenue is generated...

Not even close to a majority

[69nites]

that really doesn't mean anything

there's a lot of busnesses still running windows 2000 because it's reliable.

[Philbiker]

Originally Posted by 69nites

that really doesn't mean anything

there's a lot of busnesses still running windows 2000 because it's reliable.

The ones who don't care about security......

[Eublet]

Originally Posted by Philbiker

The ones who don't care about security......

Exactly, or those who don't care about having a competitive edge, or don't need a competitive edge. If all someone needs to do is run Word and Outlook on their computer, then perhaps Windows 2000 is fine for a small number of users in an unmanaged environment. But in REAL companies with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktops, Windows 2000 is a nightmare, and XP is becoming that as well. Any company that is forbidding Vista in those environments needs to fire their CIO and IT directors and get someone in that actually knows what they are doing rather than someone who just reads a few articles by some end-user on how Vista sucks and deciding they'll believe it.

[Philbiker]

Originally Posted by Eublet

Exactly, or those who don't care about having a competitive edge, or don't need a competitive edge. If all someone needs to do is run Word and Outlook on their computer, then perhaps Windows 2000 is fine for a small number of users in an unmanaged environment. But in REAL companies with hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktops, Windows 2000 is a nightmare, and XP is becoming that as well. Any company that is forbidding Vista in those environments needs to fire their CIO and IT directors and get someone in that actually knows what they are doing rather than someone who just reads a few articles by some end-user on how Vista sucks and deciding they'll believe it.

+100

[69nites]

many general office computers are only connected to an internal network and need little to no security

schools have even less to worry about...

[Lalabadie]

My town's univ still runs on a DOS system...

I guess delaying Vista isn't that bad

[bertbassplayer]

Some of the reason for this is simply a lot of programs universities use just aren't supported by Vista yet. One that really comes to mind is a math program called Maple... and even in the music Protools isnt vista supported yet either.

Another reason is simply cost... there's a TON of cost in converting all your computers to vista. After all your talking about 10,000-30,000 computers each at even a discounted price of $6 a computer... that's a lot of money to work into the budget.

[Vandelay]

Yeah, this is not particularly surprising news. Large businesses and large schools are usually very slow to upgrade desktops. They need to spend time certifying that their specialized apps will work with the upgrade. At my company I just got XP on my desktop a couple of years ago, after several years on Win2000, and a few years on OS/2 (!) before that.

[Pilgrim]

Vandelay and Bertthebassplayer are on target. If you noted, in my original post I noted that a campus computing environment is full of computers and legacy systems (some PC, some mainframe) that vary in age and compatibility. Heck, we just upgraded our registration system from one that was bought in the early 90's! In that setting, it really does take a long time to change systems. Further, public universities have small computing staffs and extremely limited budgets for such conversions.

I agree that Vista is a decent consumer system - my daughter has a Vista computer and aside from a pesky problem with hibernating and not waking up until it has been unplugged and then plugged back in (a mere detail, right?) she finds it easy to operate. But on a consumer level, it doesn't do anything for her that my older daughter's one-year-older XP machine doesn't do.

[69nites]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

Vandelay and Bertthebassplayer are on target. If you noted, in my original post I noted that a campus computing environment is full of computers and legacy systems (some PC, some mainframe) that vary in age and compatibility. Heck, we just upgraded our registration system from one that was bought in the early 90's! In that setting, it really does take a long time to change systems. Further, public universities have small computing staffs and extremely limited budgets for such conversions.

I agree that Vista is a decent consumer system - my daughter has a Vista computer and aside from a pesky problem with hibernating and not waking up until it has been unplugged and then plugged back in (a mere detail, right?) she finds it easy to operate. But on a consumer level, it doesn't do anything for her that my older daughter's one-year-older XP machine doesn't do.

windows has always had a problem waking up from sleep mode

[Philbiker]

Originally Posted by 69nites

windows has always had a problem waking up from sleep mode

And Sleep/Hibernation, though still with some problems, is significantly improved with Vista.

[SuperDuck]

I work for a "real company" (thousands of desktops) and we still use 2000 for the majority of those computers. Some are XP and we will be making the switch soon to all-XP. XP has been out for how many years?

No large institution will be switching to Vista this early. The fact that they won't isn't a slight against Vista, it's just how big companies (and colleges) do business.

[Geezerman]

I work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and we have all XP running Novell 7.0. We have a few mac's running around, a few Linux boxes, and are test piloting vista. It won't come for a long while, but i know its coming. I already unofficially support xp for external customers here, and it sucks. Office 07' switch wasn't as bad as I expected, internet explorer 7 sucked for a few months, just because of the weird security settings, not to mention the weird security settings on a normal firm user's PC. Definitley not looking forward to vista.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by SuperDuck

I work for a "real company" (thousands of desktops) and we still use 2000 for the majority of those computers. Some are XP and we will be making the switch soon to all-XP. XP has been out for how many years?

No large institution will be switching to Vista this early. The fact that they won't isn't a slight against Vista, it's just how big companies (and colleges) do business.

Same for my organisation which has over 30k network users interfacing with the rest of the world - we have had problems with viruses/trojans - but this was dealt with by our big IT dept - as I don't have such a thing at home I am very happy using Vista on my home laptop!

[Eublet]

Lag is always going to happen when moving to a new OS, especially one that is a big leap like Vista. But now the time is ripe for it depending on the applications the company uses. Still, any company that isn't in the Vista strategizing phase will so find themselves behind the curve. The companies that are using old legacy apps are already behind the curve with their applications, so you can't blame Vista for them being so passive with regard to their app support. Legacy apps are also harder to manage, secure and deploy. Perhaps if they would have stayed on top of that, then a move to Vista wouldn't be such a big problem.

[tplyons]

I'm surprised my school moved to Office 2007. The summer after it came out, and no student's computers can read the files sent to us by staff. Brilliant.