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Digest Archivevista update
Created by:Randall Fullerton, Information Technology, Charlotte, NC
Date: February 6, 2008, Number of Replies: 7
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This was pulled from Information Week...
The Slow Pace of Upgrades to Vista
As evidence of Vista's success, in addition to those 100 million sales, Charney cited CDW's third annual Vista tracking poll. The IT services company concludes that 48 percent of corporate IT departments in the U.S. are using or evaluating Vista. This number is up from 29 percent a year ago, which is good news for Microsoft. But that still means half of enterprise users are sitting tight, and indicates a slow rate of adoption for the OS. As InformationWeek reporter Paul McDougall calculated recently, Vista has not made the same inroads in the marketplace as Windows XP did in its first year.
The consumer market seems to be taking its time to decide about Vista, as well: Microsoft's figures for sales growth are about 2 percent higher than the growth in PC sales during the past year, which increased about 11 percent. It appears that when new PCs come with Vista installed, consumers are accepting it, but there's no substantial movement to upgrade existing PCs.
Are both businesses and consumers shying away from Vista? "It's certainly been adopted by enterprises fairly slowly, and I hear normal everyday consumers that don't know that much about technology say they're wary about moving to it, which is odd," said Gartner analyst Michael Silver, responding to emailed questions.
When asked about Vista's pluses and minuses, Both Charney and Silver respond by talking about Windows XP, but in different ways.
Silver responded not with specifics, but with a comparison: "Really, the biggest issue is that Vista is not 'better enough' than XP in visible ways, and there are always pains in any migration. Windows XP was so much better than what came before it (Win98 and ME for consumers), that the pain was worth the benefit and quickly forgotten. When the benefit is harder to see, the pain becomes an issue," said Silver.
When asked what had been the positives and negatives of Vista's first year, Charney spoke first about the extension of Windows XP's lifespan as having been "pushed back out to normal. We'd shortened it when Vista came out and we extended it [from January 31 to June 30 of this year]. "We want customers to move when they're ready. We've recognized that it takes time to make this move."
A slower-than-expected pace of corporate adoption doesn't surprise Silver, who predicted before Vista shipped that the enterprise market would take 18 months to begin to move to Vista. He said, "In the enterprise, you'd really need to compare Vista with Windows 2000, the last major release there (Windows XP was a minor release and easier to adopt). I don't think Win2000 got the negative reputation Vista has now, but it also took enterprises a good 12 to18 months of planning and testing until they really started moving."
Compatibility remains an issue
The biggest issues with Vista have been application compatibility and general stability, and, Michael Silver noted, "Microsoft has gotten quite good at sending down updates each month to address these items. Of course, it's still hard to replace a stable and compatible platform with one that is even a little less so."
There are a couple of issues at work here, he said: "First, Microsoft made some conscious decisions to sacrifice some compatibility for security improvements and in many cases, those were probably the right decisions because they really needed to get security right. And second, Microsoft did a lot to maintain compatibility, but inevitably they had to break something. The number of legacy applications continues to grow and there's no way they can support everything. With the huge installed base, it's next to impossible to make sure everything works."
Enterprise customers have complained that Vista is incompatible with custom applications and software like terminal emulators. Consumers have found that Vista broke widely used utility applications like iTunes and Adobe Reader, and the cost of upgrading to Vista also included an outlay for new versions of some applications like Adobe Photoshop.
Historically, Microsoft has done an exceptional job of keeping new versions of Windows backward-compatible with older applications, which has made Vista's compatibility issues even more visible. The biggest cause of compatibility issues appears to be new security features like User Account Control, which tightens up administrator control of the PC, something older software was sometimes casual about.
Microsoft remains committed to User Account Control despite negative reactions from reviewers and users, at least on the evidence of the first service pack for the OS. The beta versions of Vista SP 1, which is due in the first quarter, have made only minor changes -- so far just two fixes address UAC, and the one most likely to be noticed reduces the number of UAC prompts from four to one when you create or rename a folder at a protected location.
Microsoft has warned that SP 1 won't make a major improvement in Vista's compatibility with existing applications: "We've tried to set expectations for folks," said Charney.
Hope you enjoyed it...
Randall Fullerton
mailto:help@peritusit.com
704 605 4950
The Slow Pace of Upgrades to Vista
As evidence of Vista's success, in addition to those 100 million sales, Charney cited CDW's third annual Vista tracking poll. The IT services company concludes that 48 percent of corporate IT departments in the U.S. are using or evaluating Vista. This number is up from 29 percent a year ago, which is good news for Microsoft. But that still means half of enterprise users are sitting tight, and indicates a slow rate of adoption for the OS. As InformationWeek reporter Paul McDougall calculated recently, Vista has not made the same inroads in the marketplace as Windows XP did in its first year.
The consumer market seems to be taking its time to decide about Vista, as well: Microsoft's figures for sales growth are about 2 percent higher than the growth in PC sales during the past year, which increased about 11 percent. It appears that when new PCs come with Vista installed, consumers are accepting it, but there's no substantial movement to upgrade existing PCs.
Are both businesses and consumers shying away from Vista? "It's certainly been adopted by enterprises fairly slowly, and I hear normal everyday consumers that don't know that much about technology say they're wary about moving to it, which is odd," said Gartner analyst Michael Silver, responding to emailed questions.
When asked about Vista's pluses and minuses, Both Charney and Silver respond by talking about Windows XP, but in different ways.
Silver responded not with specifics, but with a comparison: "Really, the biggest issue is that Vista is not 'better enough' than XP in visible ways, and there are always pains in any migration. Windows XP was so much better than what came before it (Win98 and ME for consumers), that the pain was worth the benefit and quickly forgotten. When the benefit is harder to see, the pain becomes an issue," said Silver.
When asked what had been the positives and negatives of Vista's first year, Charney spoke first about the extension of Windows XP's lifespan as having been "pushed back out to normal. We'd shortened it when Vista came out and we extended it [from January 31 to June 30 of this year]. "We want customers to move when they're ready. We've recognized that it takes time to make this move."
A slower-than-expected pace of corporate adoption doesn't surprise Silver, who predicted before Vista shipped that the enterprise market would take 18 months to begin to move to Vista. He said, "In the enterprise, you'd really need to compare Vista with Windows 2000, the last major release there (Windows XP was a minor release and easier to adopt). I don't think Win2000 got the negative reputation Vista has now, but it also took enterprises a good 12 to18 months of planning and testing until they really started moving."
Compatibility remains an issue
The biggest issues with Vista have been application compatibility and general stability, and, Michael Silver noted, "Microsoft has gotten quite good at sending down updates each month to address these items. Of course, it's still hard to replace a stable and compatible platform with one that is even a little less so."
There are a couple of issues at work here, he said: "First, Microsoft made some conscious decisions to sacrifice some compatibility for security improvements and in many cases, those were probably the right decisions because they really needed to get security right. And second, Microsoft did a lot to maintain compatibility, but inevitably they had to break something. The number of legacy applications continues to grow and there's no way they can support everything. With the huge installed base, it's next to impossible to make sure everything works."
Enterprise customers have complained that Vista is incompatible with custom applications and software like terminal emulators. Consumers have found that Vista broke widely used utility applications like iTunes and Adobe Reader, and the cost of upgrading to Vista also included an outlay for new versions of some applications like Adobe Photoshop.
Historically, Microsoft has done an exceptional job of keeping new versions of Windows backward-compatible with older applications, which has made Vista's compatibility issues even more visible. The biggest cause of compatibility issues appears to be new security features like User Account Control, which tightens up administrator control of the PC, something older software was sometimes casual about.
Microsoft remains committed to User Account Control despite negative reactions from reviewers and users, at least on the evidence of the first service pack for the OS. The beta versions of Vista SP 1, which is due in the first quarter, have made only minor changes -- so far just two fixes address UAC, and the one most likely to be noticed reduces the number of UAC prompts from four to one when you create or rename a folder at a protected location.
Microsoft has warned that SP 1 won't make a major improvement in Vista's compatibility with existing applications: "We've tried to set expectations for folks," said Charney.
Hope you enjoyed it...
Randall Fullerton
mailto:help@peritusit.com
704 605 4950
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