Ah, Vista Vista

There's a billion bloggers with opinions on Vista, but for better or for worse, I'm the person who will decide when (not if) Vista will be rolled out at my firm. In early 2006, when we knew Microsoft would be simultaneously releasing Vista and Office 2007, we started planning for a combo rollout. However, things change.

Since we own Vista already (due to our licensing agreement with Microsoft - but that can wait for another post) - I can factor the hard cost of the upgrade out of the decision. I don't have to go asking for a hundreds of thousands to upgrade our PCs. But even with what I would normally consider to be the biggest hurdle to Vista adoption out of the way, I'm not at all motivated to get the ball rolling. Here's 5 reasons why:

1. Where's the beef? When MS speaks to IT decision makers, what is their sales pitch? Here's what they say on their web page. Find and use information? Google Desktop is free and quicker AND easier. Enable Mobile Workforce? A rearranging of control panel items isn't worth a lot to me. Security and Compliance? What good is UAC to me if I have to disable it so our help desk isn't deluged with calls? Optimize Desktop Infrastructure? Mayyyyybe. But MS needs to go past the blather and say "here's what you can actually do". Bottom line - there's no "killer reason" for an IT Director to say "make the switch".
2. XP w/SP 2 is a good OS. Really good. Tack on decent third-party apps to round out the rough spots, and I'm content with it. Microsoft is in effect a victim of its own success. I don't have users wishing that XP did x or y - and I don't see them screaming for anything in Vista, either.
3. Drivers and apps. It may be a Herculean task, but MS failed at getting driver and application support pitch-perfect at release. Its not even close. And it's bad in key areas like video, anti-virus and VPN. In six months, probably a year, we'll be OK. But not until then.
4. Don't even mention Vista 64. In my firm, we have the need for some higher-end workstations. We were tossing around the idea of going straight to Vista 64 as an officially supported OS instead of upgrading users to WinXP-64. After testing, there's not a chance in hell. For application compatibility and driver support, I doubt Vista 64 will be a viable platform for corporate use until well into 2008. We've started the switch to XP 64.
5. Resource hog. All reports you've heard about Vista being a complete hog are true. For our high-end boxes, thats fine, but for our administrative / management staff, not so much. So, you say, turn off all the visual effects, it'll be OK. No, it'll still be a hog, just less of a hog, and I'll have eliminated 4 of the 10 reasons MS says to upgrade. :)

Bottom line? XP-64 will be our next OS, not Vista. Which means we'll probably wait even longer than most until Vista-64 is business-ready.

The funny thing is, (I can hear the comments already) - we've bought the damn thing. Microsoft has our money. If pressed, would they care *at all* if we ever upgraded? One would like to think so, but I'm feeling cynical on this point.

Where this comes into play is when our licensing agreement comes up for renewal. If I have to wait for 5 years between product releases, and all I get is dreck when I do, I'm OK with going 10 years between license agreements. Thinking about it, I have zero issue imagining our company using Windows XP until 2010 or beyond. It works.