Intel won't touch Vista - Too broken To Deploy.

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,057
67
91
I posted this in P&N because it I thought it was news enough to that it would be an interesting discussion, there. I hope others, including my fellow mods, don't mind that I posted it, here, because I figured the OS folks would make it an interesting discussion on entirely other levels. If it's a problem, or if it's already been posted, here, any mod can lock one or the other or combine the threads.

Personally, I don't like what I've seen of Vista. It's way too nanny state for my taste. What's more important to me is that my brand new Compaq lappy with an Athlon 64 X2 and 2 GB of RAM should be more than enough horsepower to run Vista, but it runs MUCH faster since I stripped off the copy of Vista that came with it and installed XP Pro SP2.

I'm not posting this to argue that point. It's that I think that this step by Intel is serious commentary in its own right.

Da Story

Intel won't touch Vista

Comment
Too broken to deploy

By Charlie Demerjian: Monday, 23 June 2008, 4:08 PM

ACCORDING TO A memo circulating a few weeks ago, it looks like Intel is taking a wise decision and avoiding the Broken OS entirely. Yes, Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines... ever.

When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says get stuffed, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows MS has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a black and white way though. Reassuring, like a warm cup of tea, or a public kick to the corporate crown jewels.

The real question is what are they going to use? The official answer is 'nothing yet', the one where they try not to offend is 'likely Windows 7', delivered with a pained smile. Since that is shaping up to be Me II SP1a, I am not sure Intel will bite there either unless they suddenly develop a GPU that can run it in that time frame.

So that leaves two other choices, Linux and Mac. Linux is a distinct possibility, they already have an in-house distro that causes employees look nervously around the room when you talk about it. Although it is not a desktop variant, there is no reason that they could not roll one given two years.

The other one is the big white horse in the corner, Mac OS. If there was ever a company that is loyal to Intel, it is Apple. If there was ever a company that could make MacOS work internally, it is Intel. While any marriage with the turtlenecked sociopath is a match made in hell, don't count this one out either.

In the end, you have Intel flipping MS the bird, and telling them what they already know, Vista is undeployable by anyone with a grain of common sense. The impressive thing is that it just might lead to a waving off of MS entirely, they are the underdog for the next round of upgrades.
 

seemingly random

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2007
5,277
0
0
Originally posted by: lxskllr
I'd be interested in seeing an article from a reputable news source. The Inquirer carries about as much weight with me as the Weekly World News.
That's funny - I'd not seen wwn. I'll put right next to my link to the drudge report and fox cable news.
 
Sep 12, 2004
16,852
59
86
Typical Inquirer drivel. It's not that Vista is broken. It's just not compelling enough of a change over XP to migrate their systems.

And Intel moving to OS X or Linux? Talk about a pipe dream. If public user demographics changed from primarily using XP to Mac or Linux, Intel would change too. Until then this article sounds like it was written by someone with an anti-MS bias and a bubbler full of kronic.
 

Crusty

Lifer
Sep 30, 2001
12,684
2
81
That article is total crap. They don't mention any of the problems that Intel claims exists. FUD FUD FUD.

As far as Vista being too much of a 'nanny state', frankly I think it's a good change of pace. There are far too many malicious programmers out there to assume that they won't cause any harm with their shitacular programs. I welcome any and all notifications that a program is going to modify my OS.
 

tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
18,706
430
126
Originally posted by: lxskllr
I'd be interested in seeing an article from a reputable news source. The Inquirer carries about as much weight with me as the Weekly World News.
If you learn to read between the lines of any Inquirer article, you can tease out the facts. Perhaps 'read between the lines' is not the right way to put it. More like chuck 98% of the word count. Like this:

"ACCORDING TO a memo" <snipped> "Intel is" <snipped>....umm

OK, well I couldn't find enough appropriate words in the article to complete the record of facts, so I'll have to throw in some:

ACCORDING TO a memo <snipped> Intel is <snipped> not migrating to Vista at this time, which is not inconsistent with its decision to migrate to W2K fully six months after the release of XP, just like the migration plans of most large enterprise and corporate organizations lag months or years behind completely new OS releases due to the myriad of technical and economic reasons that should be obvious to anyone with some modicum of competent IT knowledge.

See? The Inquirer just needed a little help to get it right.
 

seemingly random

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2007
5,277
0
0
Originally posted by: tcsenter
...
If you learn to read between the lines of any Inquirer article, you can tease out the facts. Perhaps 'read between the lines' is not the right way to put it. More like chuck 98% of the word count. ...
:laugh:
Their breathless, whimsical reporting style amuses me. But I do think that, if there wasn't some amount of truth in their stories, companies would call them on it.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Business moves operating systems when they need to. I bet there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies that have Win98 and WinNT still in production somewhere in the organization.

Hell we have some old ass 486 DX33 back here that is running some flavor of Linux\Unix from 1992. It houses some old parts database for boats built in that time period.

That said the majority of the desktops will eventually see Vista once all the applications are compatible. But in large organizations that will probably happen about 2011 :D

 

rudder

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
19,441
86
91
Every piece of software that our 3000+ user organization uses runs fine on XP. All of our hardware (even systems 3-4 years old) runs the software fine. There is no new software in the pipeline that needs any functionality of Vista. Why should we upgrade? I can't imagine why any business would need to upgrade. Especially when they are like ours... filled with a bunch people who have zero capacity to learn the ins and outs of a new OS.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Originally posted by: rudder
Every piece of software that our 3000+ user organization uses runs fine on XP. All of our hardware (even systems 3-4 years old) runs the software fine. There is no new software in the pipeline that needs any functionality of Vista. Why should we upgrade? I can't imagine why any business would need to upgrade. Especially when they are like ours... filled with a bunch people who have zero capacity to learn the ins and outs of a new OS.

You dont upgrade and I would never suggest such a time, resource, and money consuming proposition. You do this through attrition.
 

nerp

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,865
105
106
It makes sense to deploy Vista where you can because you're going to deal with Windows 7 eventually and MS is indicating that they'll share the same codebase. Getting your company compatible and functional with Vista now means Windows 7 will be a piece of cake. Transitioning from XP to 7 won't be any easier than XP to Vista.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
14,231
9,064
136
Originally posted by: nerp
It makes sense to deploy Vista where you can because you're going to deal with Windows 7 eventually and MS is indicating that they'll share the same codebase. Getting your company compatible and functional with Vista now means Windows 7 will be a piece of cake. Transitioning from XP to 7 won't be any easier than XP to Vista.

Afraid I don't understand the logic of that argument. Sure, transitioning from XP to 7 will be no easier than going from XP to Vista, but it will likely be easier than transitioning both from XP to Vista and then additionally from Vista to 7. One transition is likely to be less disruptive than two.
 

tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
18,706
430
126
Originally posted by: nerp
It makes sense to deploy Vista where you can because you're going to deal with Windows 7 eventually and MS is indicating that they'll share the same codebase.
A much larger percentage of any given organization user base will invariably have more experience with Vista via their home PCs by the time Windows 7 is released. Those that already have started using Vista at home will be old hats in two more years. From the standpoint of user familiarity and training, migrating from XP to W7 three or four years from now indeed may be easier than XP to Vista today.

Getting your company compatible and functional with Vista now means Windows 7 will be a piece of cake.
It is never the 90% of mainstream business, office, or productivity applications that are compatible, its the 10% that are not compatible, particularly if those happen to be a staple of your business such as highly customized solutions for which you paid a fortune. It remains to be seen just which applications proven with Vista will drop into Windows 7.

Many seem to think all companies use off-the-shelf software from major companies. There are hundreds of specialized or custom applications that have much longer product version/upgrade cycles than most popular mainstream commercial apps.

I did some PC work for an auto repair shop circa 1999 and asked if they wanted me to load W98 on their system instead of W95, because W98 was sooo much more stable. They were using a custom business solution that integrated POS, book keeping, job costing, appointment scheduling, parts inventory and supply chain management. Rather than support this product version under 98/98SE by releasing an update, the developer decided to completely rewrite a new version for W98 and later.

So if the shop wanted to use the software under 98+, they would need to purchase a complete version upgrade for approx. $6,000, which was more than 1/2 what the entire system cost when they purchased it circa 1996. Even better, the company would only sell this upgrade with a service contract and required their consultant/technician perform the upgrade/migration. They would not release the software to any external party. The only way to get that software was for their consultant/technician to bring it with him.

This is not an unusual scenario in the IT universe. Not every company is using off-the-shelf stuff.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
0
0
The thing that's going to make/break Vista in the corporate world is its maintenance cost. Whether it'll be cheaper to maintain than XP remains to be seen. It's SUPPOSED to be cheaper because it has better self-diagnostics and because it's more resistant to spyware/malware attack.

Right now, XP is pretty costly to maintain. Unless software restriction policies and limited User rights are in place, it's easy for employees to make a mess of their desktops and fixing the mess is difficult. XP lends no help at all. Vista, at least, gives a record of its previous performance and date/time of software installations. Those features SHOULD make troubleshooting a lot easier.
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
30,699
1
0
Charlie's a highly anti-Microsoft guy, so that troll-level reporting is all you can expect to see from him. As for me, Vista is pretty close to what I wish WinXP would've been... much more secure, much easier to run as a non-Admin (read: securely), and with some safeguards to protect even those who do run as Admin. In this day and age, those safeguards are needed, and more besides. Some people have too much hubris (or too little comprehension of security) to acknowledge that their box could get pwned by a zero-day exploit and that they do need some proactive security features.

About the only use I still have for WinXP, is to run Mechwarrior4 games, and that's only because all my joysticks are ancient gameport sticks that Vista doesn't support. I gotta get me a modern USB joystick sometime... :confused:
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
Originally posted by: mechBgon
About the only use I still have for WinXP, is to run Mechwarrior4 games, and that's only because all my joysticks are ancient gameport sticks that Vista doesn't support. I gotta get me a modern USB joystick sometime... :confused:
Welcome to the 21st century, Mech. How about a nice X52 Pro set to get you going?;)
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
0
0
Originally posted by: mechBgon
About the only use I still have for WinXP, is to run Mechwarrior4 games, and that's only because all my joysticks are ancient gameport sticks that Vista doesn't support. I gotta get me a modern USB joystick sometime... :confused:
I still have two nice full Thrustmaster HOTAS systems (joystick, throttle, rudder pedals), that I purchased new when I was a Falcon3 fanatic in the early 90's. At one point, a full Thrustmaster system was going for $600 on eBay, since nothing similar was available and they weren't made anymore. But they are GamePort-only. Guess I should have sold mine then, but I'm sentimental. :heart:
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
And Intel moving to OS X or Linux? Talk about a pipe dream. If public user demographics changed from primarily using XP to Mac or Linux, Intel would change too. Until then this article sounds like it was written by someone with an anti-MS bias and a bubbler full of kronic.

While the overall sentiment is probably correct, Intel moving to Linux or OS X would depend on how much they have invested in Windows infrastructure right now. If they've got a ton of apps that only run on Windows that screws them, if they're relying heavily on Exchange and AD that screws them, etc. Sadly this is the case in most organizations, even if everyone in a company wanted to migrate they couldn't do it without huge costs.

It makes sense to deploy Vista where you can because you're going to deal with Windows 7 eventually and MS is indicating that they'll share the same codebase.

So? It's not like Vista was a rewrite, Vista is based on XP and XP was based on Win2K. There's no way Win7 will be 100% compatible with Vista unless MS doesn't add any new features.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
0
0
Intel won't touch Vista
If there was ever a company that is loyal to Intel, it is Apple. If there was ever a company that could make MacOS work internally, it is Intel.
[/quote]
Quite a bit of irony here.

Apple has only been "loyal" to Intel for a couple of years. Before that, it was "loyal" to Motorola for 20 years.

I worked at Motorola, producing PowerPC processors (for Macintosh) for many years. During this time, Motorola switched from Macintosh to Windows, deciding that Macintosh wasn't going to "work" in the corporate workplace.
 

Pabster

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
16,986
1
0
Originally posted by: rudder
Every piece of software that our 3000+ user organization uses runs fine on XP. All of our hardware (even systems 3-4 years old) runs the software fine. There is no new software in the pipeline that needs any functionality of Vista. Why should we upgrade? I can't imagine why any business would need to upgrade. Especially when they are like ours... filled with a bunch people who have zero capacity to learn the ins and outs of a new OS.

That's the real story. You don't fix what isn't broken. And cost also plays a big part, particularly in a down economy. This has nothing to do with Vista being "broken" (it's not) but everything to do with simple economics.

Vista FUD seems to be at an all-time high about now.
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
30,699
1
0
Originally posted by: ViRGE
Originally posted by: mechBgon
About the only use I still have for WinXP, is to run Mechwarrior4 games, and that's only because all my joysticks are ancient gameport sticks that Vista doesn't support. I gotta get me a modern USB joystick sometime... :confused:
Welcome to the 21st century, Mech. How about a nice X52 Pro set to get you going?;)

/me puts on bib :Q

 

VinDSL

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2006
4,869
1
81
www.lenon.com

LoL!

My sister-in-law is a 'big shot' at the Intel campus in Chandler - let's just leave it at that.

I should call her up and see if this story is true...

In a way, it wouldn't surprise me!

Years ago, I remember she told me Intel was hung up on WinNT - wouldn't upgrade despite NT not supporting any of the hardware they were using in their corporate offices.

She said everybody was forced to buy their own W2K Pro upgrade - Intel wouldn't pay them.

The next time I saw her, a few months later, she said Intel finally acquiesced and upgraded everyone...

I get the impression Intel is a bunch of cheap bastards - that's all! ;)
 

VinDSL

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2006
4,869
1
81
www.lenon.com
Originally posted by: tcsenter
ACCORDING TO a memo [snipped] Intel is [snipped] not migrating to Vista at this time, which is not inconsistent with its decision to migrate to W2K fully six months after the release of XP, just like the migration plans of most large enterprise and corporate organizations lag months or years behind completely new OS releases due to the myriad of technical and economic reasons that should be obvious to anyone with some modicum of competent IT knowledge.

Heh!

I should have kept reading! :)

This is 100% true and 'consistent' with what I was *trying* to say above...