Comments on: Skipping Windows Vista — What’s the Best Strategy for IT Pros?

By: Windows Server HQ by Train Signal.com » Why Skipping Vista & Going Straight from XP to 7 is the Best Option - For Some of Us

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:01:10 +0000

[...] Today, Vista sales are still quite low. Some people think that Vista is not being adopted due to the fact that there is an increase in sales of systems with base-level OS that boot into an online access (check out Brian Nelson’s articleon skipping Vista). [...]

By: SA

SA — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:43:28 +0000

Vista was rushed to market too early, and there are many posts supporting this. Even information such as internal emails within Microsoft that were sent between Steve Ballmer and Steven Sinofsky claiming the problems by doing so. When you are dealing with commercial software, you will frequently run into this problem of a product going to market too soon. This may help the vendor by increasing profits, but it hurts the consumer. Users that purchased Vista with a new computer are now stuck with it unless they want to shell out more money to upgrade to Windows 7. This isn't right. I myself have been in the IT industry for over 12 years. What do I use? Fedora Linux 10. Why? Because I can finally be free of all of these Windows problems: COST, maintenance headaches, user re-training between versions, backwards compatibility, and much much more. Now that I've made the move, I've even published my own article explaining why this can be a great move for any business or individual: http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux

By: Ron

Ron — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:09:24 +0000

I agree with the article as far as most of the criticism I have seen about Vista comes from folks who did not want to learn something new. Trust me when I say I was not thrilled the first time I wanted to change my nic settings. Just those little things can definitely put people off. Out in the field I see quite a bit of Vista. Many of our clients run Vista Business and yes we ran into compatibility issues but nothing we were not able to fix. I run Vista Ultimate on my laptop and will never go back to XP. My big test for an OS has always been my wife. With XP I still had to help her out when she had issues. I am not sure why but she has not asked me for any assistance since I loaded Vista on her computer. She loves it and is not techie by any means. Every OS has its issues but for me and for my clients Vista has not been a major one by any means.

By: Ken McAvoy

Ken McAvoy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:06:47 +0000

Most of the criticism from IT Practitioners who actually have to break/fix PC’s on a daily basis quickly saw that VISTA was not going to be an OS of choice because it failed to include a decent Repair/Restore option like the one included in XP which whilst not that elegant helped most of us get out of jail a lot. The driver issue whilst a pain was not as big a deal as you writers like to think. It was actually the fact that VISTA offered nothing new , except cost of course , did not actually make systems significantly more secure and actually was a heck of a lot slower and the user interface and design was changed in areas like the Start Bar and Control Panel and that was not welcomed or appreciated and my take is that it just alienated users and support personnel alike.It was seen as just having change for the sake of change and a lot of that change was cosmetic , not as appealing as Microsoft would have you believe and certainly an awful lot of X P users rejected that outright. Microsoft in its blind arrogance and ignorance is doing the same with Windows 7 so what hope have we got. I am working on missing Windows 7 as well. Heck by the time someone in Microsoft actually decides to listen to the views of other people who remain unimpressed by what Microsoft are NOT doing I will be in a Nursing Home so it really is not going to matter that much to me is it .

I do not think Microsoft or many of the Technical Writers out there really appreciate how much of the baby they have tossed out with the bathwater. There is an old business adage ‘ if it is not broke do not try to fix it ‘ well Microsoft’s tinkering with the new is annoying a lot of people who would have preferred they fixed what they already had. The days of issuing a new OS every 18 months are gone. We are heading back to longer term cost benefit analysis , very tight budgets and buying things that we want and can use our way – as for Microsoft go surf in the clouds most of us ordinary folks don’t own nor can we fly planes.

Ken
IT Director
Melbourne

By: KG John Justin

KG John Justin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:08:51 +0000

It is natural phenomenon that people are relcutant shift to another stage from the standing one. They feel comfortable and consider themselves secured and safe to use aged system on pretext of some silly excuses.

Microsoft was in hury to launch new in operating system in 2006 due to 5 yrs gap between windows XP. They visisoned less and realsed new OS with full of new code. They forget to do complete testing of features and security of it. It leads to lot of bugs and security threat in Vista. Otherwise it could have been another successfull OS from Ms for user. Microsft has to understand from its mistake to correct the Windows 7.

Sudden switching over from Windows Xp to Windows 7 will have umpteem problems like drivers and compatability of softwares etc. The corporate sector will develop software for windows XP whereas direct jump will give them more problem than expected solution. Since MS going to stick with architecture of Windows Vista and hardware compatabilty for new OS. Now, the time has come to prepare and upgrade them for shifting over to windows 7.
Windows 7 is MS committment not a tested and successfull OS verison, lets wait its turn play and how market and user going to react after seeing its performance. MS spends lot of money for ads of Vista. Bad product eating market is difficult.

By: Nery Barba

Nery Barba — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:35:17 +0000

I think there its no necesari upgrade to windows vista its just a OS whit god face. I upgrade all my laptops to ubuntu Linx even those vista preinstaled.

By: Fred Stam

Fred Stam — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:27:59 +0000

While it’s inevitable that both users and support people will have to face the new Vista paradigm, the consensus here is that it would be better done with a “fixed” version 7 then with the current offering. Most new systems coming across our desks are being downgraded to Windows XP. Not because users mind learning something new, but more because the features in Vista are not necessarily an improvement. We have applications that function well under XP. Upgrading to Vista simply increases the cost for hardware, applications and support while doing little to improve productivity. As an example consider Vista’s woefully inadequate accessibility features when compared to Apple’s.

Many support personnel remember Windows Me (while MS does it’s best to forget it), and just as many have likened Vista to Me. Having just completed upgrades to Vista SP1 on 3 different systems with an additional 137MB Windows update, I can agree with the comparison.

Daily I have the option of working on different platforms including Vista, Apple and Linux. However I’ll stick with my 3 year old HP notebook running a fast and well plotted XP Pro and wait as many others will for the new fixed Vista (Win 7).

By: David Lawlor

David Lawlor — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:11:28 +0000

Great article Brian! One of the annoying things that come out of Gartner and Forrester is that their analysts even within the company don’t agree on forecasts and depending on who publishes that month can send mixed messages.

IT departments need to look past the hype from both sides and really get into what their departments need. Heck I would still be running Windows 2000 Pro if it was up to me, the last OS I truly loved from MS, upgrading to XP caused me to say everything that people said about Vista when it came out. I have been playing with the PDC build of Windows 7 and I can tell anyone who thinks it is something radically different then Vista they are going to be disappointed. I could definitely see waiting to a Server 2008 rollout and then looking at upgrading clients under that umbrella as it might be an easier sell to the higher ups.

Anyway, again great article!

Dave