Gartner Analysts - Ignore Vista until 2008

stateofbeasley

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Jan 26, 2004
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http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9590_22-5947521.html

Companies shouldn't rush to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista, according to analysts at Gartner, who believe most could safely hold back until 2008.

The majority of improvements in Vista, the update scheduled to arrive in 2006, will be security-related and most of this functionality "is available via third-party products today," Gartner analysts said in a research note published on Friday.

While Vista will "offer incremental, evolutionary improvements" over its predecessors, Windows XP users should "pursue a strategy of managed diversity," the analysts recommended. That means they should only bring in Vista on new machines and that not until 2008.

2008? Ouch. That's a 12-18 months after Vista is released.

How is this going to affect Microsoft's bottom line if companies adopt Vista as slowly (or more slowly than XP)? I'm not knowledgeable about the price differential between a 2k and XP license... maybe someone can help me out here.

I remember reading on CNET that almost 50% of corporate clients still run 2000. My office just migrated from 2k to XP a couple weeks ago :Q

Would companies hold off on Vista because they are afraid of bugs, or how the OS will interact with their current infrastructure?

<--- Concerned MSFT shareholder.
 

MrChad

Lifer
Aug 22, 2001
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Corporate adoption of new operating systems will always be slower than enthusiast/home user adoption. This was true when XP was released and it still holds true today.

Most companies are reluctant to replace a proven infrastructure they have invested (in some cases) millions of dollars on with "the latest and greatest." I don't know how this will affect Microsoft's bottom line, but I can't imagine that they're expecting the corporate world to unanimously embrace Vista out of the gate.
 

bsobel

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Dec 9, 2001
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About the same speed at XP, not really a surprise (or a bad idea).
 

Malak

Lifer
Dec 4, 2004
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Your concern should be more about their new ad-driven software releases than the acceptance of their latest OS. MS Office costs more than Windows.
 

fr

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Oct 10, 1999
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My company still uses 2000. Whenever we get new PCs, the techs wipe off XP and install 2000.
 

spyordie007

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May 28, 2001
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I wouldnt be overly concerned, see above replies.

Also keep in mind that longhorn server wont be released until the end of '07; companies are going to have more of a reason to upgrade their clients when then can begin taking advantage of the server technologies...
 

rmrf

Platinum Member
May 14, 2003
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I'm sure we'll be using vista as soon as it comes out. We are so far in bed with microsoft, it's hard to tell what company we really are.
 

ModemMix

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Dec 21, 1999
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my company just upgraded from NT tp XP 3 months ago, and im talking about tens of thousands of computers. We will get vista in 2012 or so.......
 

The Linuxator

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Jun 13, 2005
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When there is alot on the line, companies will not replace an infrastructure that has most of it's bugs fixed, and the OS stable(kind of), with a new OS that will cost big dollars to replace and not know if it will work or not.

To show you an example of this in a critical enviroment, NASA has tons of code that hasn't been changed since the 80's and before. Why ? Well because that code has been time tested to be very stable, and there is a high risk & no point of replacing that code with something new that might or might not be stable.
 

PingSpike

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Feb 25, 2004
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When you run a business, you basically only replace something when its broken or will improve productivity. If your system works as well as the new offering, then there is only an extra cost to incur and no real benefit so it doesn't make sense to upgrade. If you've got some kind of custom app that you have working like a champ with your current setup, why would you want to move to a new, unproven and probably at least slightly buggy platform that there is a real chance it may not work on? A lot of corporate clients still use 2000, because there's nothing wrong with it, they already have it paid for and it works fine. XP adoption has been slow because frankly it doesn't really offer anything signifigant over 2000 in a corporate setting.

No real surprise here. It looks like sound advice to me.

You can see microsoft taking steps to try and force they customers to upgrade, like being unwilling to release IE7 on windows 2000. I can't think of any technical reason whatsoever to this, only a business one.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
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Corporations rarely move quickly on someting like this. The last place I worked at which was a fortune 250 company finally moved their servers from NT 4.0 to 2000 last Spring.
The desktops we finally migrated from 98 to 2000 the previous summer. They were in the initial stages of evaluating WindowsXP which means it probably wont even start happening until late 2006.

Vista for that company is probably a 2010 or later project.

I remember a 2002 report that said a large % of corporations are still using Win95 and 3.1.

 

Link19

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Apr 22, 2003
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Let Windows XP and Windows 2000 stick around a lot longer. Honestly, who needs Vista? Windows XP is already a good OS and there is a 64-bit edition of it for when 64-bit applications start becoming more common. It would be just fine with me if Vista gets deleayed forever and the world keeps on using XP for the next ten years. Why give technicians more of a headache to have to learn a whole new OS which I really don't see benifiting anyone because Windows XP can do pretty much everything one would ever need.
 

hooflung

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Dec 31, 2004
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Originally posted by: Link19
Let Windows XP and Windows 2000 stick around a lot longer. Honestly, who needs Vista? Windows XP is already a good OS and there is a 64-bit edition of it for when 64-bit applications start becoming more common. It would be just fine with me if Vista gets deleayed forever and the world keeps on using XP for the next ten years. Why give technicians more of a headache to have to learn a whole new OS which I really don't see benifiting anyone because Windows XP can do pretty much everything one would ever need.


Because the IT users NEED 3d office applications and CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT a weatherbug_free desktop weather module and Microsoft be damned if they allow someone like StarDock to enhance the desktop environment they invented... oops... hehe sorry I couldn't resist.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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I dunno why most users would want a 3d office application. I spend about forever showing people how to use the 2d one.
 

Smilin

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Mar 4, 2002
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Good old Garner. Full of sh*t as always.

They don't even have a completed copy of Vista and won't for months to come. It will be the easiest OS to migrate to and deploy ever written and they recommend not rolling it out based on ??

:roll:
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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Originally posted by: Smilin
Good old Garner. Full of sh*t as always.

They don't even have a completed copy of Vista and won't for months to come. It will be the easiest OS to migrate to and deploy ever written and they recommend not rolling it out based on ??

:roll:

Sound business sense?

He's not saying never roll it out...just that there's no good reason for most people to roll it out right away. I'd tend to agree. There aren't really going to be any applications that require it, there's no way to know for sure if it will work easily with your existing infrastructure right away and it costs money over the system you currently have in place.

Look at it this way. You bought a car in 2003 and its working fine for you. The car was redesigned for 2006...do you immediately buy the new car? Of course not. You already have a car. And you aren't even done depreciating the asset. :p
 

gsellis

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Dec 4, 2003
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This is just normal. The corporate stance is wait until SP1. The time between SPs is at least 1 year. So, Release in late 2006, SP1 release in late 2007, deploy in 2008.
 

hooflung

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Dec 31, 2004
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Originally posted by: Smilin
Good old Garner. Full of sh*t as always.

They don't even have a completed copy of Vista and won't for months to come. It will be the easiest OS to migrate to and deploy ever written and they recommend not rolling it out based on ??

:roll:



Maybe because its the same damn core system? I don't think computers will be ready for vista since most people are just rolling out 3.0ghz P4s in major quantity. What is the point in running Vista in XP mode when you could easily run XP? There were reasons before to jump from 98 to XP since users didn't use 2000 in a lot of cases.

If Microsoft gave a FULL version of windows to users at 39-69$ like the old DOS days I think they would be a tip top company. When they started pushing windows 95 down our throats they really messed up. They needed to supplant OS/2 Warp and now we still let them get away with the same tricks. If Vista was cheap... I'd think about buying it. I would pay for a Linux Distro for cheap if it had similar support.

But with the High Price lead to warez, warez leads to fear, fear leads to the dark side of the activation enforce(ment). And I just can't go that route past XP and neither will my company.
 

MrChad

Lifer
Aug 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: hooflung
Originally posted by: Smilin
Good old Garner. Full of sh*t as always.

They don't even have a completed copy of Vista and won't for months to come. It will be the easiest OS to migrate to and deploy ever written and they recommend not rolling it out based on ??

:roll:



Maybe because its the same damn core system? I don't think computers will be ready for vista since most people are just rolling out 3.0ghz P4s in major quantity. What is the point in running Vista in XP mode when you could easily run XP? There were reasons before to jump from 98 to XP since users didn't use 2000 in a lot of cases.

If Microsoft gave a FULL version of windows to users at 39-69$ like the old DOS days I think they would be a tip top company. When they started pushing windows 95 down our throats they really messed up. They needed to supplant OS/2 Warp and now we still let them get away with the same tricks. If Vista was cheap... I'd think about buying it. I would pay for a Linux Distro for cheap if it had similar support.

But with the High Price lead to warez, warez leads to fear, fear leads to the dark side of the activation enforce(ment). And I just can't go that route past XP and neither will my company.

Err, have Vista prices even been announced yet? :confused:
 

Brazen

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Jul 14, 2000
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Originally posted by: fr
My company still uses 2000. Whenever we get new PCs, the techs wipe off XP and install 2000.

We did that too until about 2 months ago. We do not plan to upgrade our servers to 2003 at all. We do plan to upgrade our servers to the Longhorn/Vista server, but not untill it's been around for awhile. Plus with SAMBA4 promising an Active Directory replacement, I'm considering (slightly) moving to Linux servers instead of ever upgrading to a version of Microsoft's server again.
 

WobbleWobble

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Jun 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: hooflung
Originally posted by: Smilin
Good old Garner. Full of sh*t as always.

They don't even have a completed copy of Vista and won't for months to come. It will be the easiest OS to migrate to and deploy ever written and they recommend not rolling it out based on ??

:roll:



Maybe because its the same damn core system? I don't think computers will be ready for vista since most people are just rolling out 3.0ghz P4s in major quantity. What is the point in running Vista in XP mode when you could easily run XP? There were reasons before to jump from 98 to XP since users didn't use 2000 in a lot of cases.

If Microsoft gave a FULL version of windows to users at 39-69$ like the old DOS days I think they would be a tip top company. When they started pushing windows 95 down our throats they really messed up. They needed to supplant OS/2 Warp and now we still let them get away with the same tricks. If Vista was cheap... I'd think about buying it. I would pay for a Linux Distro for cheap if it had similar support.

But with the High Price lead to warez, warez leads to fear, fear leads to the dark side of the activation enforce(ment). And I just can't go that route past XP and neither will my company.

It's not the actual cost of the OS that will hold most companies back since they would have some sort of an Enterprise Agreement. It's the cost of deployment that's expensive. You have to look at thousands of computer and look at which custom/legacy applications that might break with an OS upgrade. I don't see companies upgrading on nice to haves, but on necessity.
 

Smilin

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Mar 4, 2002
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So in 2007 when machines are shipping with Vista are you going to get them in then reimage them with XP?

Silliness.

I bet you have NT 4.0 in your environment somewhere don't you? Come on admit it.


:D
 

boran

Golden Member
Jun 17, 2001
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Originally posted by: Smilin
So in 2007 when machines are shipping with Vista are you going to get them in then reimage them with XP?

Silliness.

I bet you have NT 4.0 in your environment somewhere don't you? Come on admit it.


:D


that's not silly when all your machines run XP and installation is automated. that single vista machine has a totally different behaviour, bugs etc. so you need two people or one person doing twice the work to support it.
 

Brazen

Diamond Member
Jul 14, 2000
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Originally posted by: Smilin
So in 2007 when machines are shipping with Vista are you going to get them in then reimage them with XP?

Silliness.

I bet you have NT 4.0 in your environment somewhere don't you? Come on admit it.


:D
yes

and yes

Administering and supporting an enterprise IT infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of workstations is a little different than the 3 computer domain running Active Directory from a warezed copy of Windows Server 2003 that you have running at home.
 

rmrf

Platinum Member
May 14, 2003
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Originally posted by: Smilin
So in 2007 when machines are shipping with Vista are you going to get them in then reimage them with XP?

Silliness.

I bet you have NT 4.0 in your environment somewhere don't you? Come on admit it.


:D

what part of the IT chain are you in. if you are in support, I feel sorry for your co-workers. it's not the cost of the operating system, but the cost to maintain and hold the people's hands that you support. I was part of a 95 -> 2000 rollout, I was hired as an extra person on the team just to help handle the rollout, it was for a company of ~1000 people, and it was my fulltime job for a month just rolling it out to the local site (~350 people). The trouble tickets to the helpdesk tripled, and over the next year, never seemed to go down.

cost of rollout/cost of education/cost of extra staff > cost of OS

if it isn't broken, don't fix it.