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I was wondering if Microsoft could help my son Waethorn. He needs some support for his extension.

Windows XP will be 13 years old then.  That would be like using Windows 95 up till last year. I think Microsoft should let go of XP when windows 7 is released.

You cant expect your 8 year old os to work forever!

If you are a business which foolishly wrote in-house web apps which depend on IE-6, yes you hope XP lives forever.  (And that's a prime reason IE 6 still shows up in share numbers--never change what came out of the box is another.)

"Windows XP will be 13 years old then.  That would be like using Windows 95 up till last year. I think Microsoft should let go of XP when windows 7 is released."

Considering that they're still licensing it for use in Netbooks, I don't understand your point. Are you saying that the Netbook you buy today will be completely useless when Windows 7 is released?

13 years?  That's amazing, frankly.  Barring some fundamental change in the way we interact with computers, could XP be good enough for most people for many years to come?  Is the operating system's set of services, at this point, essentially complete?

And might this be true of office applications as well?

@lotsa,

"Considering that they're still licensing it for use in Netbooks, I don't understand your point. Are you saying that the Netbook you buy today will be completely useless when Windows 7 is released?"

I do understand his point. XP's architecture was designed for a completely different era. The computing landscape has changed dramatically since the debut of Windows XP on October 25, 2001. XP's original recommended specs were 300 Mhz processor, 128 MB of memory (256 for SP2 or higher), Super VGA monitor capacity, and 1.5 GB or higher (additional 1.8 GB in SP2 and additional 900 MB in SP3). We're talking Pentium MMX, Celerons, Pentium 2, and Pentium 3's era machines.

Today's nettops blow away these standards with Ghz processors, huge hard drives, in some cases hyperthreading, and GB of memory. Security wise, XP has had security surgically stitched to augment its original concepts. However, XP wasn't built for the mutli-core, over 4 GB, blu-ray, and greater security demands of the present. With all due respect to the OS, its come along way, but XP's time is up.

There's no reason to carry it even further. By the time Windows 7 comes out, the vast majority of nettops should be able to transition to Windows 7 without many issues. If Windows 7 can run on PC hardware from the 2003 era, the nettops should handle Windows 7 just fine.

Everyone knows that a new OS doesn't render machines built a year earlier obsolete. Even the EeePC's can run Windows 7 which debut in October 2007. The later models will run the OS even better, thanks to better hardware. Even Gizmodo ran an article on that.

XP was good for its time. But really its time to move on. Heck when Vista SP 1 came out, it was time to move on. All Windows 7 needs is a virtualization app for any troublesome applications and there would be no reason for XP to be dragged out any further.

"There's no reason to carry it even further. By the time Windows 7 comes out, the vast majority of nettops should be able to transition to Windows 7 without many issues."

So you're saying that the netbook that you buy should automatically require an upgrade and be obsoleted just because there's a new, shiny OS available for it? Do you want to *force* them to upgrade? Talk about screwing your customers.

Don't get me wrong...I agree with you in principle, but there's no need to force anyone buying a netbook with XP today to be told their OS won't be supported in the forseeable future.

Thankfully, Microsoft is smarter than that.

But if all the apps move to the cloud and use the browser then what does the OS matter in the long run? Or the CPU speed. Faster CPUs may no longer be needed.

@subzero stop looking at it from a geek standpoint.  Put on your business cap brother.

At a company its about Value > Cost.  Nothing else matters.  For most companies the Value only gets better when support runs out for the current product.  It then becomes "expensive" to keep that old product.

The cost of switching to a new OS is huge and if you have ever been in IT management at bigger than a company with 500 desktops you would understand the cost of migrating.  The cost of licensing is easy fixed cost.  Support costs are huge and some of its hidden.  If you build up IT staff, help desk, desktop deployment teams that spend many manweeks developing training, support training, corporate builds, that are tested against a hardware and software, that costs lots of $$$$.  Now you have to do all of it over again.  That does not even begin to calculate the cost of lost productivity when Windows 7 is unleashed on users.  Even with good user training, a new OS is going to generate support calls, lots of them.  My company over the last few years has been able to draw down the support staff because the environment is so stable and we have not unleashed anything drastically different or new on the user community.

I have lots of friend at different corporations and none of them has said they plan to move off of XP anytime soon.  It works, users dont like change and there is NO compelling reason to move off of it.

If you are moving to VDI's, as in the case at my company then XP is better since you can setup a typical VDI user with 512meg of RAM and a 10gig drive.  If we move to 7 we would have to double that, if not more on the disk space side of things.  Which means way more SAN space, and bigger/more ESX servers to support the same # of users.

I am not saying stick with XP forever, but you better have some really good reasons to make the move and be able to justify the enormous costs.

This is interesting.  I guess sticking with XP for at least another year would be the majority move.

news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10217917-75.html

"So you're saying that the netbook that you buy should automatically require an upgrade and be obsoleted just because there's a new, shiny OS available for it?"

What corporation uses netbooks?

@Lindy - You hit the nail on the head...but of course you and I have been called bad at IT before for having such a real workd view of things. Read my posts on basically the same view in today's other thread. The evangelists, sales people, and basement kiddies do not see it from our viewpoint. It is obvious who they are on this site...it doesn't matter if it is Windows, OS X, Unix, or a Mainframe OS, like zOS/OS390. Upgrades take time and are costly in our world.  As a home user and generally a gadget freak...I say, "bring it on...I want to play with it"; but that does not work in a large production shop.

--tayme

IT people need to understand first and foremost.....IT is a cost.  It almost never makes money, unless you code something in house you can turn around and sell, which is very rare.

You can either be an efficient cost, hitting on all cylinders or you can be a wasteful cost and cowboy your way around, which usually will end up in your replacement.

Fiduciary responsibility to the share holders is a big part of your job. IT systems are usually just a tool, one of many, that your company uses as a means to and end.   Its not your money your spending.  Or it is if your wrong moves end up in costing the business so much that your job is hanging in the wind.

Another article :

>>survey results indicate that Windows 7 will suffer for the sins of Vista. The leading reason for resistance to Windows 7 adoption, according to the report, is Vista compatibility problems as well as "a negative public perception of Vista that seems to have helped build this layer of distrust with Windows 7," says Diane Hagglund, senior research analyst for Dimensional Research and author of the survey.

Some other concerns that IT professionals listed in the survey about moving to Windows 7: software compatibility, cost of implementation and the economic downturn. <<

www.cio.com/.../Economy_Vista_Reputation_Slowing_Windows_Adoption_Plans

"And might this be true of office applications as well?"

I say there is merit in that statement.  I spoke of XP VDI's with 512megs of ram for a normal user.  Which do you think would perform better in that situation, office 2003 or 2007?  

2003 is more than enough for 90% of office users.  Ever hear anyone say Office 2007 is fast?

Something else:

>>Bad numbers from HTC last week:

   Taiwan smartphone maker HTC on Monday posted a 30 percent dip in its first-quarter earnings, as the economic crisis sapped demand for the company’s feature-jammed mobile phones.<<

What did we learn a while ago?

>>At Microsoft’s press conference yesterday at Mobile World Congress, if you tied two threads together, you learned a very interesting fact about HTC, one of the company’s closest handset makers — the Taiwanese company is responsible for 80 percent of Windows Mobile phone sales.<<

That's what that whistling sound I heard was.  Windows Mobile market share crashing down...

daringfireball.net/.../htc-winmo

@tayme and Lindy,

So you're going to keep running a security prone, higher costing to maintain OS, when you've had 2 years and 2 months to test and roll out Vista? When other businesses already HAVE tested and migrated to Vista? A second part is that businesses SHOULD be testing Windows 7 while in the Beta and upcoming release candidate version to solve compatibility issues before it becomes available to businesses or the general public. Many businesses and IT departments fail miserably because they aren't proactive in testing for the future. The smart businesses are already testing Windows 7.

Then you can be just like the University of Utah, creating more work for yourselves and your businesses when viruses like Conflicker come around.

Maybe I'll take a Mac users argument here and play devils advocate. One I've heard in this site and many others across the net. You're simply feeding the anti-virus companies profits and IT guys paychecks to justify inflated budgets for maintaining an unhealthy IT environment.

You'll either pay for it now in downtime, clean up labor cost of XP desktops, upgrading legacy hardware costs, and continued patch testing of an 8 year old operating system. Or you'll pay for it by migrating. IDE hard drives with large capacities is pretty much impossible now. Older memory gets harder to get as newer memory becomes cheaper and more accessible. Especially in notebooks where they discontinue memory and accessories quickly to make room for current hardware.

Or you can bite the inevitability bullet, since change is absolutely inevitable, and get with the times. Vista or Windows 7 is more secure, will end  up costing less in the long haul. The startup change is expensive. You guys have that. However, dragging on this inevitable change for some short term gain is not good business.

You may get lean and mean for now, but then you'll create more work for yourselves in the future. The proof of this was the very costly rollout of XP upgrades in the DISD. MILLIONS of computers being rolled out to 352 schools, support buildings, and the Admin building. What were we upgrading from? A hodge podge of Macintosh, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, 98, and in some cases Commodore 64's. If DISD had maintained a serious environment and training, it wouldn't have been so painful. I saw the thousands upon thousands of tickets generated daily.

So I get your argument clearly. However, this change comes regardless of the OS or the economic conditions. However, the longer you wait, the worse it ends up. I wonder how painful the migration cost will be when you guys finally get your businesses migrated to Windows 7?

Although I'm in the "time to move on" camp, face it a lot of people still need XP for some programs, and some of these are in government and enterprise. I think they should keep selling XP and supporting it because its better than losing sales, and these days who is turning money away when someone try's to hand it to you.

Personally using XP is not something I enjoy, finding documents and search in general has always been Vista's "killer app" and hate not having it.

"So you're going to keep running a security prone, higher costing to maintain OS, when you've had 2 years and 2 months to test and roll out Vista? When other businesses already HAVE tested and migrated to Vista?"

Thinking like a home user again.  

XP has been around a long time, 2000 before that, both with the same basic security model.  Corporations for years now have solved those problems with XP.  Firewalls, Proxy servers with AV/malware scanning, AV scanning on email in multiple locations (off site, dmz, email server, client).  Use of proxy software that blocks internet usage of your users totally or limits them to exactly what they need for their job.  Lots of network appliances that watch network traffic on your trusted network and report stuff.  

My point is layer upon layer has been implemented by corporations outside of the desktop OS, so that the desktop OS secure or not is protected.  No matter how much more secure the desktop OS becomes those layers are here to stay.  So XP is no less secure than Vista inside of a well maintained corporation.  Vista/7 security features dont mean squat really inside a corporation.  For the consumer that has a broadband modem plugged directly into the ethernet jack of their PC at home that is a totally different story.

As far as testing Vista at our company, been there, done that, moved on.  Value < Cost and Vista lost.  I read recently that 4% of corporations have adopted Vista, so I am guessing that whole Value vs Cost thing did work for them either.

As far as testing 7, man who is your boss?  What a major waste of time.  I am sure that your list of stuff to do for your company has more important stuff on it that testing a beta OS.  If not then they need to eliminate your job.  I have a list right now of today that I wont finish inside of 360 days.  Adding stuff that IS NOT needed, is not going to get support anytime soon.  Will it become needed someday?  Sure with out a doubt.  I bet in 3-4 years there will be software that a company will want to run that WONT run on XP and at that time XP will cost you and the VALUE of moving to a new OS will be greater than the cost.

"I wonder how painful the migration cost will be when you guys finally get your businesses migrated to Windows 7?"

It wont be, because we will have IT people like you pulling the wool over the business side of the house, by telling them its imperative to migrate the day after it comes out.  You will do your best to hide the costs.  So whatever you and other like you must spend to get there, will translate into lots of lessons learned for us to avoid.  Plus you will help drive down the cost by being a early adopter and finding the problems for the rest of us.

In the meantime I will keep getting my bonus for keeping the costs down and up time where the business likes it.

Because corporations don't want the hassle of using Vista. As they won't with Windows 7. People have started to realize that they don't need to have to use Windows. They are also realizing the enormous Microsoft tax you pay once you buy in to the Windows camp.

@subzero - "So you're going to keep running a security prone, higher costing to maintain OS, when you've had 2 years and 2 months to test and roll out Vista? When other businesses already HAVE tested and migrated to Vista?"

Nope...my company has Vista approved for most applications....but there are some that still will not work. Plus, if you are relying only on the OS for security, then it is no wonder that you have to fight malware constantly. There is also W7 testing going on right now, but I guarantee that we will not have 7 approved for desktop use for at least a year. No surprise there. In the datacenter, we still have Windows servers running 2000, but most are on 2003. Our bigger OLTP stuff runs on Solaris and IBM zOS...we are generally 1 version back on those. We have NEVER had a virus attack in the 15 years that I have been with the company. We occasionally get spammed so bad that our Exchange environment gets bogged down filtering out the spam, but nothing malicious.

So, now I hope you understand what I am saying...without a plan, upgrading is costly and time consuming. Even with a plan...but at least with a plan, there is less that should go wrong. I do not condone continuing with non-supported, unsafe environments. The non-support people here do not get that, the true support people do. Which are you?

--tayme

"People have started to realize that they don't need to have to use Windows."

So is that's why the sales of PCs, running Windows, have increased while Apple ones, running OSX, have fallen?

<<still waiting for Ocean's off-topic link on that story>>

Not to mention that Linux is being booted off the netbook market by Windows XP and 7.

Seriously does the use of Apple products rot the brain of idiots like you and Ocean to the point where you cant even realize how stupid you sound?

Trouble for Windows Mobile: www.moconews.net/.../419-mwc-we-learned-just-how-great-of-a-partner-htc-is-to-microsoft

"IT people like you pulling the wool over the business side of the house"

That reminds me of a story from my company...The marketing department insisted that they needed to use Macs...they still do today. Management approved it. OK, not a big deal, we can handle that. The firm that sold them the Macs and software for their use convinced them that they also needed a pair of Xserve boxes to store the files on. Blatently lied to them stating that they could not store the files on a Windows file server. OK, again, we can handle that. 3 years later, the yare telling them it is time to upgrade the Macs AND the servers. This time, they were called on the carpet about using a NetApp filer as file storage. They still insisted it would not work. They about crapped when we told them that they are wrong, because people logging into the Macs had been connecting to the filers for a couple of years as their user homes and department shares and only using the Xserve to store the marketing art work and such. Like I said earlier about the difference between a used car salesman and an IT salesman...

--tayme

For clarification purposes...Bobbi Jo fits into the basement kiddies group in my posts here. Bobbi Jo obviously knows absolutely nothing about real IT. Only that his daddy's Mac has that shiny apple logo on the aluminum case and it looks cool in the dark basement!

--tayme

@tayme, NetApp filers are the shinitz!  Our Windows file servers are loooooong gone.  Serving up CIFS file shares right off a NetApp Filer is the only way to go.  Performance is 10X any Windows server.

NetApp is also an exellent back end to VMware, dedupe of storage is also the shiznitz hands down.

@sub: agreed with your entire first comment

@lindy:  clearly you've never tried proper deployment of Windows Vista, otherwise you would know how much easier it is.  Image deployment is fast on any platform, but building those images is the complicated part, and XP just can't compare to Vista.  HAL independence is one of the primary reasons why Vista deployment is leaps and bounds over XP.  If you actually had a clue, you'd use the virtualization offerings in a Microsoft Enterprise agreement without having to pay extra for VMware on the desktop.  Also, I know of two local companies that are using cheap netbooks as loaners to mobile workers.  They both use Vista Enterprise on them.  The new netbooks that offer 2GB of RAM and the N280 processors are a good value for a mobile worker at well less than $500CDN.  Plus, they're usually a bit more rugged than a standard laptop because of the density over size ratio of the plastic casing.

As far as your statement about Office 2007, you've clearly never loaded it on a clean Vista install.  I use an E8400 with 2GB of RAM with Office Enterprise 2007 and Exchange on SBS 2008.  Outlook loads up as fast as the Aero fade-in can draw the windows, and my personal email database is 1.5GB of just email.  I don't get big attachments that offten, so that's thousands of messages that it loads everytime it loads up.  Outlook 2003 on XP was NEVER: even close to that fast.

@losta:  you always miss the point. sub was talking about selling XP.  Nobody needs to suffer that experience when Windows 7 gives you Vista's multimedia, security, and deployment benefits with XP's memory requirements.

@Ocean:  people are waiting for the Windows Mobile 6.5 phones that were announced at the MWC.

"The smart businesses are already testing Windows 7."

@sub:  That's not the company that Lindy works for.  IDE hard drives are pulling in a 50% premium cost over SATA, and DDR1 RAM is double the price of DDR2.

"The marketing department insisted that they needed to use Macs...they still do today. Management approved it."

My question is:  Who the H3LL runs your IT department to let something like that be dictated by marketing directly to management?  I'd hate to work for the company you work for.  That company obviously doesn't have an IT manager filtering IT purchase requests before they get to the BDM.  It's no wonder you don't take any initiative.

@all:  I'd like to see how you can validate cost savings of running new hardware on old software when a lot of the drivers that allow the newer hardware to work don't take full advantage of it on XP.  Likewise, when you look at deployment on new hardware, adding drivers and rebuilding images is a PiTA on XP, unless you're using expensive third-party software to eliminate a lot of the manual scripting required.  On Vista, even mid-sized businesses can get away with using the free Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, which supports XP, but is still a major PiTA.  Vista deployment is simple, since you can reuse images on multitudes of hardware configurations without rebuilding images.  You can inject drivers offline (if necessary), and literally push out an XYZ-hardware software image to an ABC-hardware computer.

BTW:  Gigabyte has a system out that is almost identical to the Asus EeePC 1000HE, which is considered the best value netbook shipping at the moment.  The Asus has an Atom N280 (1.66GHz vs. the typical 1.60 N270), 1GB of DDR2-667 RAM upgradeable to 2GB, 160GB upgradeable hard drive, WiFi-N, Bluetooth 2.1, multi-touch trackpad, 1.3Mp webcam, and a *9.5 hour battery*.  The Gigabyte T1028 is nearly the same, but lacks the long battery life (it's 6hrs instead), and AFAIK also lacks the multi-touch trackpad, but it's a convertible tablet PC.  Both are 10" screens.  The Gigabyte is supposed to be very cheap (ie. ~$100 more than the Asus for the touchscreen).  Both are very good machines that will run Windows 7 well when it comes out later this year.  The Asus is very durable too.  A little heavier than an Acer, and has many more "premium" features over the Acer (namely the BT, WiFi-N, long battery, and multi-touch) for only about $15 more.

Lindy,

"I am not saying stick with XP forever, but you better have some really good reasons to make the move and be able to justify the enormous costs."

Exactly.

No one, not Paul, not Microsoft, not anyone, has ever articulated the business case for Vista or Windows 7. It's hard for all the reasons you stated.

In this context, there is an interesting quote from Kevin Turner, chief operating officer for Microsoft, about Windows 7,

"Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today. Everything that we've learned in Vista will be leveraged in Windows 7, but certainly when we broke a lot of the compatibility issues to lock down user account controls, to lock down the ability to manipulate states and all the things, that was a very painful process for us to grow through, but we had to do it. And the reason that Windows 7 will be successful is because of the pain we took on Vista. Because from a compatibility standpoint, if it works on Vista, it will work on Windows 7. If it doesn't work on Vista, it won't work on Windows 7."

Aside from the self aggrandizement, the salient point is this "If it doesn't work on Vista, it won't work on Windows 7."

That's why so many businesses are not going to rush to adopt Windows 7, any more than they did with Vista.

@tayme: "Bobbi Jo obviously knows absolutely nothing about real IT"

I'm sure I could run circles around you when it comes to knowing about IT.

@chuck, that state about not working on Vista/7 is a big one.  More so for corporations than consumers.  Lots of applications busted when Vista shipped, because they were coded to run with a full admin logged into the box.

All commercial applications that are going to be fixed are now fixed for Vista.  Fixed or upgraded at the cost of the consumer.

That brings up another "cost" of migrating for a corporation.  Corporations will have in house created applications some small, some HUGE, that took years to code, rev and support, that may tie into so many other applications some shrink wrapped, some in house created.  If a corporation has such an application and it wont work with Vista or 7, then they wont move, until that app can move.

Now they maybe able to deliver up that up, via Citrix, or 2008 published TS app or app V, so they can move to Vista/7, which will just add another layer of complication to migrate off of XP.

@ weathorn "clearly you've never tried proper deployment of Windows Vista"  Nope I got WDS down.  Its much nicer than RIS, especially when using Vista and 2008 WDS server.  That is the easy part, and just a very small part of it.

Testing 300+ corporate applications with Vista, and having roughly 78 of them fail to run, shot down Vista pretty fast.  Most of those were in house, some were not, like our Cisco VPN software.  There is now newer VPN software now, but at the time there was not and even then ripping out what worked to replace it, test it, configure it, educuate users on how to use new VPN software from home etc, was not worth the cost.

This is what you dont get.  Just replacing VPN software to make it work with Vista was costly, and that was just one application of the 78 (if I remember correctly) that did not work.

Again for you, slower now

V a l u e < C o s t = No Vista

V a l u e > C o s t = Vista

I could send you a Visio diagram with pretty pictures if that is not sinking in.  Probably pretty tough to get running a small computer shop.  Think about migrating 110,000 users and all that would cost???

I get your points about some new hardware not having drivers, especially on consumer lines, but Dell keeps providing us with our XP installed image on hardware as new as of April 2009.

We are moving rapidly to VDI's for anyone that does not need a notebook or a powerful desktop.  We are thinking 75% of our users and that is a very conservative estimate.  With XP on a VMware server, I wont have any driver issues, period.  I wont care what CPU's are in them, deploying XP from a template is faster and better than WDS will ever be period.  Flex cloning on a NetApp SAN means I minimize the disk space by only having one disk image per volume.

@waethorn - you fall into the salesman category on my post above. It is so obvious that you know absolutely nothing about corporate politics and decision making. That's OK, stick with what you know...you know how to build one he11 of a good gaming  machine...and that's about it. Try working in a company of any size and you will fall flat on your face, as most sales people do that try to delve into the real corporate IT world. Shoot back your insults...its OK. You are predictable.

--tayme

@Lindy - You are right...NetApp filers do the trick in almost every environment. OLTP still needs the 10g SAN though...at least it is outperforming NAS at this point in our shop.

--tayme

@Lindy,

Even Gartner disagrees with you and tayme on this one. Gartner's position is that its more important to upgrade to Vista OR Windows 7 than stay on XP.

mediaproducts.gartner.com/.../article3.html

Also, if you buy from Dell, each copy of Windows XP on certain machines are going to cost $50 dollars more per machine versus a Vista machine.

www.computerworld.com/.../article.do

Many others like Lenovo, HP, Acer, etc are doing the same around the prices of $20, $50, and up to $99 per machine. That could get very costly in a large deployment. At $50 per machine and you buy say 100 machines, thats an additional $5,000! You could buy a lot of machines for $5,000. Or if you bought 500 machines and downgraded to XP at the $50 cost, brings you an additional cost of $25,000! That doesn't sound like savings to me.

As Paul has pointed out, you're going to pay more if you need support from Microsoft.

During the Extended support phase Microsoft will provide paid support (example: per-incident telephone/web support, Premier and Essential support, etc.) for all customers.

During the Extended Support phase, non-security hotfixes will be available to Premier customers for a fee via the Extended Hotfix Support (EHS) program.  

So, after today I am wondering where are you going to find these savings? According to everything I've checked out, its going to cost more to maintain an XP environment versus transitioning to a Vista environment. Since many of the computers since Vista's launch after Jan 2007 were downgraded to XP, you wouldn't have any licencing cost to upgrade back to Vista.

So you tell me where your going to save after tomorrow?

Also, for companies who have successfully transitioned to Vista, they are noting a 30 percent drop in security related calls. Other savings come with the better energy saving features in power management. Wae's covered the deployment tools in great details, so I don't need to rehash that.

As far as inhouse and incompatible apps, virtualization is available to solve that. Microsoft's Virtual PC can take care of that. Good news for those worried about cost? Its a free download.

www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx

That should take care of all your Vista incompatibilities. Along with new deployment tools, lower security calls, energy savings, cheaper hardware costs, and no downgrade charges, you'll probably ending saving money.

@subzero - Where did I say that it is more important to stay on XP? I said that it is important to make sure that you test every application and transaction type before upgrading any OS...whether it is Windows, OS X, zOS, Solaris, HP-UX...it is all really the same.

Do you work in IT? I am curious how big is your user base? Where I work we have over 200,000 users, thousands of servers(Win & *NIX), several IBM mainframes, many mid-range systems, half a dozen datacenters, and over 15 petabytes of storage. Politics plays into many purchasing decisions.

--tayme

Windows 7 is really Vista 2. Businesses will not upgrade to it any time soon.

www.techspot.com/.../34255-study-83-of-businesses-to-delay-upgrade-to-windows-7.html

People are waking up to the enormous Microsoft tax. You don't have to use it and it's not the best out there.

@robertsjoe

Does this..... REALLY HAVE TO BE FUGKING EXPLAINED TO RETARDS LIKE YOU AGAIN!

That other idiot, Ocean already tried running that troll.

Paul, will you PLEASE institute some blanking moderation on this blog other than blanking out swear words!

@Bobbi Jo - shouldn't you be updating your website? Its a little out of date. http://macteens.com/magazine/

--tayme

Master you seriously have anger management problem.  Get some help.  My free advice.......why even read his posts?  He is pushing your buttons and when you respond with that temper of yours its like saying "may I have another"

It is entertaining though.

@tayme: Updating it now. Thanks! ;)

Yes please. Can we ban accounts like @master3 please? Those sorts of insults and swearing is not (and should not) be welcomed here. Thanks.

@subzero, "That could get very costly in a large deployment. At $50 per machine and you buy say 100 machines, thats an additional $5,000!"

???????????

I am thinking you have what 200 PC's to support, maybe half a dozen servers?  Buy PC's a few at a time, maybe 20 a year?

MS makes 80% of its money off of Windows and Office, enterprise agreements with corporations and large government contracts.

Dell will for FREE, put a corporations build of XP on any new PC you buy from them.  Its a service they offer for customers, provided the customer has the right software agreement from MS.  Dell is a very large seller of MS software so they will even sell you PC's with out a OS license if you buy the MS software from them.  Amazing concept.  Only been around for 10 or more years, HP will do the same thing.

You need to think outside of ordering your mother a new PC and her having to pay extra to get XP installed on it.

I'll hang on to XP till support ends and serious security vulnerabilities start going unpatched. Until Microsoft adds back critical en.wikipedia.org/.../Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista and en.wikipedia.org/.../Features_removed_from_Windows_7. I'm a loyal Windows user and Microsoft have to right to remove some lesser used features, some of which were not even obsolete though not all. I prefer the successful Windows XP user interface to Vista's/Windows 7's mess. Give me back all the lost features and I'll upgrade in the blink of an eye.

@Master3,

First, on this,

"Paul, will you PLEASE institute some blanking moderation on this blog other than blanking out swear words!"

it's probably not going to happen for two reasons. The "blanking moderation"---unlike automatic deletion of certain text patterns---takes a lot of time. I suspect Paul is just too busy.  Of course, he could just turn off comments completely (which is why the old Nexus site was never a "blog"), but I suspect that you'd miss that too.

In the end, I think Paul *likes* the screaming, at least that's what he says,

"I like a good cat fight as much as anybody — God, how I used to enjoy wicked flame wars on Usenet — but I hope this settles into a simple recognition of disagreement between two reputable and talented journalists"

www.edbott.com/weblog

I like the part where he promotes himself as a "talented journalist"! Little memo on that one: Your READERS make that decision, not you.

Anyway. That's why the comments will continue, unmoderated. Obviously.

This is an amusing discussion to watch, really.

Lindy, tayme, you're both right.  Vista wasn't a great choice for corporate environments.  The new driver model and UAC did, indeed break a lot of stuff--particularly custom apps.  And, yes, Win7 could be essentially labelled "Vista SP2 (3?)".

BUT, Win7's going to be a success anyway.  Here's why:

1) Pretty much all of the commercial software that broke in Vista has been fixed now.  I see nothing to indicate that Win7 is going to introduce any unique compatibility problems.

2) A lot of the software that had problems with UAC did so for good reason; in many cases, custom apps were horribly insecure, even when limited to a firewalled corporate network.  Hopefully, in most cases these apps have been fixed by now.  

The shop I work in still has an NT server in production.  I know about legacy.

3) For those apps in 2) that HAVEN'T been fixed, the options for virtualization and remote access have improved considerably, and gotten cheaper to boot.

4) While I know there are still a lot of VB6 programmers out there, the world is slowly moving to .NET, even for custom corporate apps.

5) Most importantly, Win7 looks on target to actually OUTPERFORM XP!  It's a smaller footprint than Vista, and it seems to run much more efficiently.  There may actually be an ROI argument for Win7 that was never there for Vista.

@Lindy - sure.. you're right. Realisticly it is like you say.

But in this small company (~10 ppl) I work right now, and for a SMALL amount of money they are giving me, I'd rather move them all to Win Server 2008 R2 + Windows 7, just for fun.. and if they don't like it they can fire me. Sure, it's enthusiastic gadget freak talking out of me, I'd never do it in a company of 500+ people.. or even 50+. But as soon as Windows 7 is out they will get converted.

Ofcourse that there are reasons beyond my freakness. A lot of people here need access from the outside, so DirectAccess will be a blessing with it's always-on, always-connected mantra. there are other things too, as we'll probably do some server consolidation at the same time, and Win 2008 seems perfect for it.. And o on..

But again, I agree - corporations will stay away (for now) just because XP is "good enough" for office use, and for them..

LuxZg you are right as well.  

If I was setting a new small business, or one that wanted to revamp it all right now, then I would go with Vista/7 and SBS 2008.  Those products are better overall.  I think Windows 2008 is a great product.

With a new or small company its a lot easier to do.  The only thing that would stop that is there might be a specific application that a small company runs that has not been updated to run with Vista.  Lots of small companies use industry specific software made by vendors that dont move very fast.  That is the reason most wont ever switch to Mac.  Most of those should be Vista aware by now though.

@chuckb84: "(which is why the old Nexus site was never a "blog""

Comments do not make it a blog. It is still a blog without comments.

Just a part of what makes up the enormous Microsoft tax that people have to pay: www.computerworld.com/.../article.do

Not just that specific incident. But similar things that happens thousands of times, over and over.

"Master you seriously have anger management problem."

Only when comes to these idiotic iTrolls.

It's not that they even provied a good counterpoint, just some morons that shouts how we have "no taste", and how superior everything from Apple is, or posting off topic links, usually bashing some aspect of PCs or MS or just flat-out calling Paul an idiot.

But instead of telling these twits off, or yanking them off this site, I'm told that I have the problem?

 "Get some help.  My free advice.......why even read his posts? "

Yes, I do ignore most of them, but sometimes they are so stupid you cant help but say something.

Master 3-

You keep saying Mac sales have dropped, please provide the link to Apple's monthly sales that prove this. I'll be surprised if you can find it since Apple does not release monthly sales.

In short you have no idea what their sales are...

"I'm sure I could run circles around you when it comes to knowing about IT."

Thanks, I needed that morning laugh.

I'm sure tayme and Lindy have seen your type come through their doors, as have I.  Because these people set up a home network for a friend and have a ton of Facebook "friends" they think they know everything.  It is very quickly seen that they know nothing.

"It is so obvious that you know absolutely nothing about corporate politics and decision making."

I can smell a lemon IT management team that has no cojones to step in for IT purchasing decisions a mile away.  Keep sucking tayme.

@sub:

Enterprise agreement customers get support as part of the agreement.  The big problem is, sucker IT people think they need to get an Enterprise agreement to get Software Assurance and support, which is a fallacy.  All you need to do is buy your software via OEM channels (ie. included with the hardware) and add SA as an add-on.  It's stupid to pay double for licensing when it already comes with the hardware.

You see, Waethorn...that is why you are no longer taken seriously here. You know Windows well, that is evident. But you do not know corporate business. When the CIO of a company as large as the one that I work for plays golf with the highest executives of companies like IBM, HP, Dell, MS, Sun, etc, and hand down orders to go a certain route, the datacenter managers like me can stand up all we want for something, to no avail. But really, that is unrelated to the matter of OS upgrade cycles. Remember, in corporate IT, we are not revenue generating...we are a cost center that provides a service to the revenue generating business units within the organization. Insult me all you want, that will not change the way that it works in companies this size. IT will only continue to diminish your reputation on this board...which used to be a rather good reputation until you became a pompous know it all in your own mind.

--tayme

"When the CIO of a company as large as the one that I work for plays golf with the highest executives of companies like IBM, HP, Dell, MS, Sun, etc, and hand down orders to go a certain route, the datacenter managers like me.....IT will only continue to diminish your reputation on this board...which used to be a rather good reputation until you became a pompous know it all in your own mind."

AHA!  Since, by your own admission, you obviously don't hold a high enough title within your company, you have no credentials to speak on making actual IT decisions with your company, so your comments are void and meaningless.  You're just another IT drone whose opinion means nothing.  It's no wonder you back up Lindy.

"Remember, in corporate IT, we are not revenue generating"

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.  If you can't validate IT expenses with a valid ROI, then you're in the wrong business pal.  Of course, someone else is the BDM and they do the thinking for you, so it doesn't matter.

Waethorn,

"I can smell a lemon IT management team that has no cojones to step in for IT purchasing decisions a mile away.  Keep sucking tayme."

That's not quite fair. Sometimes the "let's let our IT infrastructure rot for a few years and we'll save money" isn't a lack of cojones on the part of IT managment.

Sometimes is the old trick of showing short-term savings to boost the CIO's reputation as a "business guy" rather than being "one of those wierd techies". And, unfortunately, the trick works because by the time the massive long-term costs of letting upgrades slide catch up with the company, the CIO who pulled it off has used that reputation to move on to a new company and it's his successors who are left picking up the pieces. Often while spending half of their time trying to explain why IT costs have gone up so much compared to their predecessor.

(It's the same as how our national infrastructure fell apart in the Reaganomics inspired cost-based government era - the savings from not maintaining the roads, bridges, power grids and airports are credited to one administration now long gone while fixing the damage caused by those decisions is a cost borne by their successors)

And if anyone knows about a lack of cojones, it's my boy Waethorn. *Sniff*... you'd think the monster truck would compensate enough, but no, only senseless ramblings on tech blogs makes him feel like a man.

OK, Waethorn...you are a hopeless case. Believe what you want, we will consider your lack of knowledge in this arena as we read your comments. I will personally continue to be entertained by you and the rest of your type, like Bobbi Jo.

--tayme

"Since, by your own admission, you obviously don't hold a high enough title within your company, you have no credentials to speak on making actual IT decisions with your company, so your comments are void and meaningless."

This is what an argument looks like when it's stretched about three ticks beyond the breaking point.  

BTW, glad to hear that your IT department is a revenue generator.  What do you do, charge employees a monthly fee for desktop support?

Have you ever looked at a corporate balance sheet?  If yes, have you ever seen the IT dept. listed on the revenue side of the ledger?

Sheesh.

You guys are a hoot. You stretch a persons statements to make you sound intelligent...when you have no clue what you are talking about. Where did I or anybody except mikegalos and Waethorn say "let's let our IT infrastructure rot for a few years and we'll save money"? I haven't seen it. Classic! Thanks for the entertainment, yet again!

--tayme

According to mikegalos own words, even Microsoft is guilty of not developing "compelling new technology" and letting IT infrastructure rot for a few years. Remember, he is consulting for them, so he would know!

--tayme

As an FYI, that is my example of stretching words posted by others to fit my needs...just like mikegalos, Waethorn, robertsjoe, and Ocean do. They are all cut from the same mold and have zero credibility.

--tayme

tayme,

Really? Now, where did I say that?

Oh yeah. That's right. I didn't.

Lindy

"Testing 300+ corporate applications with Vista, and having roughly 78 of them fail to run, shot down Vista pretty fast. "

Testing on a new piece of system software is good (and was hopefully done during the beta). The difference between a competent vs "I'll be out the door to my next gig before my decisions bite you" CIO is what they do with that 78 items.

The good CIO says, "OK. Good data. Now let's roll out a pilot where we can. Fix the problems we can fix. Track the rest with our vendors to see when they get fixed so we can move on with the rest of the migration."

The bad CIO says, "See. I told you all that geeky new stuff is bad. See. I'm a "business guy" and not some techie. Now, when's my tee time with that head hunter?"

Show me where I or Lindy said "let's let our IT infrastructure rot for a few years and we'll save money" Precisely, you can't!!! Now are you beginning to understand your hypocrisy? The rest of us are! You make it too easy.

--tayme

Um, Mikey:

"2) If you go back and reread what I said, you'll find that there's no contradiction between your statements here and what I actually said. I called the situation tragic but didn't claim it wasn't the current state of affairs. *It's precisely the lack of compelling new technology that allows antiquated architectures to continue to be viable.* Again, tragic because it does reflect the real world."

LOL!  What the biggest laugh is, is that so much of these incompatible applications that Lindy mentioned are actually in-house applications.  There's absolutely no excuse to not make those compatible with current platforms, nor is it any excuse coming from a so-called IT "pro" to have those run with full admin privileges.  You only have yourself to blame for incompatibilities with platform architectures or incompetent security practises.

tayme

Show where I said you said that? Oh, right, I didn't. For some reason you assumed when I was talking about incompetent and corrupt IT managers I was talking about you even though I never said or even implied anything of the kind.

Now, there is that old bit about shoes fitting but you're the one who seems to think that's the case.

"what they do with that 78 items."  I could not agree more Mike.  If those 78 apps are running fine they why change them.  Are you suggesting that they spend large amounts of man hours to replace them, just so they can then replace desktop OS that works fine????

In some cases those applications have been replaced.  Most have a time table of when they will be replaced. Of course that can be pushed by the changing economy, laws that get passed that require immediate attention, SOX, PCI, etc.

Some have been updated as of now, often moving from a old windows gui to a Web based app, some on Sharepoint no less.  Its all about available resources and needs of the company that sets the priority.

I am quite surprised Mike you don't understand this.

"Are you suggesting that they spend large amounts of man hours to replace them, just so they can then replace desktop OS that works fine????"

It shouldn't take "large amounts of man hours" because applications should be maintained just like systems.  Working platform compatibility into that schedule should be a natural decision.

@Lindy - mikegalos and Waethorn both know that they are wrong. That is why they have twisted your words and mine to meet the limits of their knowledge on hardware and software lifecycle management. Because we understand that there has to be a balance in value and cost, that twist that in ways that they feel are creative and non-confrontational to sound like we are "let(ting) our IT infrastructure rot for a few years". Like I have been saying, they are as bad as the most rabid Mac fans that post on Paul's sites...actually, probably worse because they feign outrage that there are many that are much more versed in IT managment than an evangelist and a salesman.

--tayme

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@Lindy

""what they do with that 78 items."  I could not agree more Mike.  If those 78 apps are running fine they why change them.  Are you suggesting that they spend large amounts of man hours to replace them, just so they can then replace desktop OS that works fine????

In some cases those applications have been replaced.  Most have a time table of when they will be replaced. Of course that can be pushed by the changing economy, laws that get passed that require immediate attention, SOX, PCI, etc.

Some have been updated as of now, often moving from a old windows gui to a Web based app, some on Sharepoint no less.  Its all about available resources and needs of the company that sets the priority.

I am quite surprised Mike you don't understand this."

Its called planning ahead for the future. Testing your software ahead of time and making the right compatibility changes so that you are ready to transition to future platforms. Businesses that do have a competent IT department do this when upcoming platform changes are anticipated. Is Windows XP going to be the operating system for the next 20 years? Or have we established an OS history and pattern where updating and migrating to newer platforms is part of the standard operating procedure?

Yes we have.

This happened with with both client and server machines. Companies continue to fix and update current software, plus test and update for future platforms. This is what good IT departments do. By going with your argument that "why fix it if the current stuff isn't broken," is simply BAD IT PRACTICES!

You're justifying your own paycheck at the expense of future upgrades and platform change. Instead of keeping an active eye on the future and making the necessary changes, your stuck with "the business cap" working to make the most money that you can.

Nickel and dime IT.

Thats what we call it. However, many of the companies I've worked for and many both friends and family have done, delegate responsibility to each person as a side project to beta test. They set up machines at home and in the office, actively working on future platforms. They figure out what works and what doesn't, figure out how to get the incompatible apps working, and then work with vendors to fix the rest just as Mike Galos wrote.

Thats the difference between Good IT and Bad IT. Good IT has the "work ethic" hat on as well as the "business cap." However, you and tayme are so concerned with the business part, you forgot what your real responsibilities are as IT professionals. Besides tinkering, testing, fixing, updating, and maintaining, you're also educators to inform your customers. If you don't bother to prepare yourself, then you really aren't doing your job to the absolute best of your ability.

The sad part is that your business suffers because you have to dedicate more business hours doing the stuff you should have been doing during the beta testing phase. Then when your clients come up and say, "Wow, this Windows 7 is fantastic. We want to transition. How about it?" Then you guys are caught with your pants down, have to waste time doing the same testing that you didn't do before, and you create your own minefield of platform changing problems.

This kind of thing happens all the time in business. Whose at fault here? The same IT guys who weren't responsible enough to keep looking toward's the future.

With virtualization, you can prove to your clients that the transitions can be made. Also, the surcharge on XP doesn't apply to business machines?

The small business notebooks and desktops on the Dell Vostro line are charging Windows XP downgrade surcharges to small businesses. This was published several times and I did publish it before. This is a standard practice when discontinuing a product line from Microsoft.

So maybe you guys need to put on your IT hats back on, because you've kept your business hat on for way too long.

@subzero - How many times have I said exactly what you are saying in your most recent post? You are right...but you also have to realize that in many cases, there is a development cycle that is beyond the lifecycle of the update every 3 years that we seem to be falling into. Remember, XP was MS' premier OS for what, 7 years? Longhorn hit a wall and had to be restarted. So, are you saying that MS practices bad lifecycle management because of this? Nearly every Fortune 500 company will wait at least a year after an OS is released to roll it out to the general population. Does taht mean that we are sitting around doing nothing in that time? Of course not. The hardware engineers are testing on various platforms, the application developers are coding and testing against the new OS. Then they release it to a test environment to bug check...then on to UAT. Bugs are identified, and the cycle starts again. Eventually, and hopefully after the first service pack is released, an OS is released for general use. In some cases there are legacy applications that perform a specific function that take longer, so those groups remain on the legacy OS or move into a virtual environment, either way, thier app continues to run on the legacy OS. Now, with a 3 year OS cycle from MS, a lot of us will always be 1 release back. You know that...mikegalos knows that, Waethorn knows that. Do not fall into the same category as the 2 of them, as you are still respected by most here...they on the other hand, are laughed at.

--tayme

@sub:  Lindy and tayme both hope that their current platform will be around for 20 more years, because they'll be the only people that will still be versed in maintaining them at that time, justifying their legacy position within the company.

BEGINTRANSMIT

Just as I understand you shall continue to dwell in your parents' basement in twenty earth-years, Waethorn, justifying your aversion to getting out and meeting girls?

ENDTRANSMIT

tayme

"XP was MS' premier OS for what, 7 years? "

Actually, 5 years (as opposed to the usual 3 year Microsoft desktop OS release cycle)

Windows XP released in August 2001

Windows Vista released in November 2006

(Using the business license dates since that's what we're talking about)

@waethorn - Wrong again...obviously you are struggling at reading today. Keep it up, you are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole and destroying any credibility that you had left.

--tayme

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