Windows *Vista*

[Tannin]

PS: Bozo, thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to deal with this mess on customer machines before too long. Not looking forward to it.

 

[ddrueding]

...though I might add a second OS/2 machine at some stage.

Why? To double the number deployed on the continent?

 

[Tannin]

You might be surprised, David - there are quite a few out there still, check the mailing lists. My reason for wanting another one is simple: no other OS can run the apps that run my business as effectively or as conveniently. Oh, and of course, it is not subject to the numerous Windows security fuckups either. I can sort-of duplicate the functionality of the OS/2 system with a Windows 2000 or XP box, but only sort-of. Is it worth the inconvenience of running yet another machine to overcome the inconvenience of running a substandard OS like Win2k/XP? Hmmmmm .... line ball. I have too many machines already. On the other hand, ever since I switched the showroom machine over to Windows (it used to run OS/2) the painful aspects of using that OS for my business apps have bugged me every time I generate an invoice - it just don't cut it.

 

[mubs]

Yikes, Tannin, I'd forgotten about support! Though I'm not in business, I have supported several "friends & family" and it hasn't been too much of a problem so far, though it hasn't been fun either. Vista will make that exponentially worse, and I have no desire to educate myself on its complications and intricacies. The only positive development is that recent changes in my life have led to a drastic drop in the number of m/cs I support.

I wonder for how long XP will still be available; W98 is still available in some places, but I don't know if that's because of stock in the channel (can't be) or MS still ships it (can't be). The biggest worry is activation. I can see a desperate Ballmer pulling the plug on that to "encourage" the switch to Vista.

Looks like I'd better get familiar with a *nix sooner than I had anticipated.

 

[Mercutio]

VMware, Tony. Running virtual machines used to bother me a little bit, since they always felt constrained. Nowadays, with 3GHz CPUs and 1GB+ RAM as standard components, the guest OS is snappy enough for continuous use.

 

[ddrueding]

To me, Vista looks like tons of money. Just converting one of my medium sized clients would be thousands in hardware (with margin) and 100+ hours of labor (upgrades, data migration, training). My biggest client will probably take a month or more of full-time effort to get moved over. Sure, support will be tricky at first, until I (and others on the internet) discover all the tricks that it takes to get it running just-so; but there isn't an OS on the planet that comes off the disk the way I like.

 

[Mercutio]

I can't justify the changeover for any client I have right now.
Over time, migrations for 95 to 2000 or 98 to 2000 or 2000 to XP have been very valuable to me. But in each of those cases, I could see a real benefit (even XP, if only for 802.11 and some other hardware support) that I'm just NOT seeing with Vista.

 

[timwhit]

Well, if none of you can think of a good reason to upgrade your corporate clients do you think that big companies with thousands of computers are going to see a good business reason to move to Vista?

Can you imagine the cost involved in upgrading the hardware to be able to run Vista?

My computer here at work is a P4 3.0GHz with 512MB RAM. This thing is slow as sin just running XP, there is no way it would be able to run Vista well. Everyone at my organization is running similar hardware. So, it would require IT to replace around 800 systems. Not going to happen, at least I hope it doesn't; there are better things to spend that money on.

 

[Bozo]

The learning curve for the people using Vista will be straight up. (no curve at all) The IT depts will be going crazy.

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

A very simple reason will drive most of my clients to upgrade; the stated "reccomended configuration" on some piece of software. Most of the mainstream apps say they'll support older OSes, but the nitche products don't bother. For the most part, their "reccomended" system includes the latest OS, even if they haven't finished testing on that platform yet!

 

[Mercutio]

What the hell are you talking about?
I've got servers out in the world that're stuck on Windows 2000 SP2 and SQL Server 7 because the vendor for Vertical-Line-of-Business-App XYZ won't support anything newer.

Pearson VUE's testing software (the software used to deliver Microsoft and Cisco certification exams, among other things) breaks if Java gets updated past a specific revision on the client or the server. Updating Flash will also break it.

The only software I see that wants only the latest and greatest updates for everything are games.

 

[Bozo]

I still have to install Access 97 for some of our apps to run.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Tannin]

Reminder to self: must try VMWare one day. Never even looked at it.

 

[mubs]

Well, if none of you can think of a good reason to upgrade your corporate clients do you think that big companies with thousands of computers are going to see a good business reason to move to Vista?

AFAIK, there are only 2 ways businesses end up with the new OS:
1) They need to run a piece of sw that requires the new OS - an unlikely scenario
2) They are buying new machines anyway, which come with the new OS

In the case of #2, in many instances, the end-user company will specifically ask the vendor (Dell, HP etc.) to provide the machines with the previous OS. Or they will have a volume licence already, and will downgrade the OS with a prepped image tailored to their requirements.

The learning curve for the people using Vista will be straight up. (no curve at all) The IT depts will be going crazy.

:rotfl:wneddnce:

A very simple reason will drive most of my clients to upgrade; the stated "reccomended configuration" on some piece of software. Most of the mainstream apps say they'll support older OSes, but the nitche products don't bother. For the most part, their "reccomended" system includes the latest OS, even if they haven't finished testing on that platform yet!

Strange. My experience matches Merc's. We have been unable to use the latest SP for server/clients because the apps vendor claims it will break the app. This has been a perpetual source of concern.

 

[Mercutio]

There's another way that OS upgrades happen, mubs. In poorly managed environments, new PCs will come with whatever is getting shoveled on to PCs that week.

I run into that one a lot. I see a lot of companies that have a mix of XP Home and XP Pro or Office 2000/XP/2003/Works Suite/Perfect Office because no one paid any attention to what software came with the machine.

Even worse is the land of un-upgraded hand-me-down PCs (aka a lawyers' offices). From a contracting standpoint these are a lot of fun: They'll have a 10-year-old Netware server with about as much storage as the thumb drive I'm carrying, a bunch of Windows 3.1 or Win95 client machines, and a few people whose PCs are new enough to support such high technology as USB ports.

On one hand, I'm glad that companies like that are still out there, 'cause I like being able to make car payments. On the other, it frightens and confuses me that anyone would want to work in places like that.

 

[ddrueding]

One example I have is Harddollar. They are always using the latest version of .NET and SQL/MSDE with every release. Their docs may say otherwise, but when you talk to their support guys, the first thing they'll do is have you upgrade everything. I've had to upgrade the server for this product 3 times in 4 years due to increased system reqs.

An even more absurd example is the absurdly named Cheetah. This POS app up until very recently used Pick as the backend in a crappy Unix VME accessed by Raining Data's poxy console emulation interface into a Win95-esque scripted "GUI" frontend. And guess what, these guys want a 2Ghz+ machine running XP as a client!

 

[mubs]

An even more absurd example is the absurdly named Cheetah. This POS app up until very recently used Pick as the backend in a crappy Unix VME accessed by Raining Data's poxy console emulation interface into a Win95-esque scripted "GUI" frontend. And guess what, these guys want a 2Ghz+ machine running XP as a client!

POS indeed! Sheesh, I thought Pick died out several years ago. And what a kluge to make it all work.

 

[Adcadet]

I've got a new "job" of sorts doing some research. Anyway, OSes came up and the question about what we'll do in regards to Vista. We're very dependent on many different types of common and specialized statistical software (SAS, SPSS, Stata, and some weird ones I never want to hear of again). Somebody mentioned that our file server is a VAX. Not a modern computer that happens to be running VAX or VMS/openVMS (although I think it is running VMS), but an actual VAX machine made by DEC. Fitting, given that we're working on a project that started in the mid-1970s.

 

[ddrueding]

Great. Replace it with one of these and you're finished!

 

[mubs]

That's a testament to the quality of the hw & sw that Dec used to make. There are uptime stats for VMS that are stunning.

 

[LiamC]

An even more absurd example is the absurdly named Cheetah. This POS app up until very recently used Pick as the backend in a crappy Unix VME accessed by Raining Data's poxy console emulation interface into a Win95-esque scripted "GUI" frontend. And guess what, these guys want a 2Ghz+ machine running XP as a client!

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33181

BTW, do you mean Point of Sale or piece of sh..?
:twistd:

 

[ddrueding]

It's not Point of Sale software