Hasta la VISTA, Baby!
If you remember that catch phrase made famous by Schwarzenegger’s Terminator 2 movie, you’ll remember it translates to something close to “Sayonara, Baby”. I hate to say it, but Windows Vista might be the end of the line for Microsoft.
Microsoft just released its newest operating system Windows Vista after a long five year drought and with two years worth of delays. That doesn’t bode well for a product that represents the largest chunk of Microsoft’s revenue.
“Much is at stake for Microsoft. Most of its revenue and almost all of its profit comes from Windows and Office, funding the company’s sexier ventures in video games and music players.” – CNN
Most businesses will find it a daunting task to upgrade from their stable WindowsXP work-stations to Microsoft’s latest OS. For the most part, it’s going to take time. A lot of time. Early adopters are going to have to upgrade all their work stations, test all existing software and drivers for compatibility, train employees on how to operate some of the new interfaces, fix all the incompatibilities encountered and even deal with the costly possibility of reverting back to their previous stable operating system.
Furthermore, if the time = money equation doesn’t hold true, there’s a lot more money to loose when you find Windows Vista running a little slow and you are in need of a hardware upgrade.
“While Microsoft specifies 1 GB of main memory (RAM), Nigel Page of Microsoft has indicated that 2 GB is the ideal configuration for 64-bit Vista which processes data chunks that are double the size of those for 32-bit Vista, hence requiring double the memory.” – Wikipedia
I’m not sure about you, but I’m not ready to jump on the band wagon on Microsoft’s newest operating system; at least not just yet.
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8:38 am
Ouch! Poor Microsoft!!
After reading your post… so glad that I and my team are Mac users!
BTW since the Mac Core 2 Duo machines can run Mac and Microsoft operating systems, we do intend to purchase Vista just to play with it on our machines (using Parallels). The primary reason… Some Internet based productivity and communications tools (e.g., WebEx) tend to make things a challenge for people using the Mac OS.
3:33 pm
That’s a pretty unfair review for something you haven’t used, don’t you think? Not sure if you’re old enough, but they said the same thing going from DOS to windows, then windows 3.0 to windows 95, then again from 98 to XP. Trust me, you sound like someone a few years out of college who shouldn’t be making predictions like the one in your post.
11:09 am
I’ve used vista, and have been following the development of it since the first beta of Longhorn leaked from MSDN all those years ago. Microsoft has gotten too big and too set in their ways to truly be innovative, and this is why I agree with this post. If they were smart, they’d reinvent Windows on top of a *nix back-end, but they’ll more than likely use their new deal with Novell to try to choke innovation in the open source space, instead of finding a way to create an operating system that just works, which is why I only trust my work to a Mac, and my servers to Linux. The only thing I trust to Windows is my MP3 collection, and even that will be moving to an external hard drive in the coming weeks…. I guess I’ll have to find a new use for those boxes.
11:17 am
Hi San,
While it’s true I haven’t tried it yet, all my comments on time consumption for transitioning to a new operating system still remains true regardless of the Vista experience. In addition, the physical hardware requirements are pretty much written in stone and those of us with slower machines will need a costly upgrade.
For your reference, the “Vista Capable” requirements are a processor of 800MHz, 512MB of RAM, and 20GB total hard drive space. Compare this with WindowsXP: a processor of 300MHz, 128MB of RAM, and 1.5GB of hard drive space.
Yes, I’m quite familiar with DOS and the old windows 3.0. I was working on DOS and windows for fun at home when I was still in public school. Back then, I was booting Windows 3.0 and 3.11 from DOS via autoexec.bat along with config.sys. I still remember how Microsoft removed ‘Reversi’ (Othello) as a default game when they went to Windows 95. I even remember working with computers without hard drives that ran off DOS on a floppy back in the day.
If I set aside the time and money argument, one big difference between Windows Vista and older Windows releases is that WinXPSP2 is relatively stable when used in conjunction with window’s update (I still recommend Windows 2000 for businesses if you aren’t already using Linux/Mac). Prior versions of windows (95, 98, ME) were extremely buggy in comparison to recent stable releases. Another big difference is that Microsoft is extremely late this release which might be the kicker. I suppose you have point, in which the value-added in Vista will play an important role. However, the question is, does vista have enough value to warrant the costly upgrade.
1:53 pm
First off, I have to question what you mean by ‘a costly upgrade’. Adding memory isn’t really that costly and even if you’re using XP, it also runs much faster and stabler with more memory – so that recommended anyway.
If you’re running with JUST enough memory to get by – then you’re the kind of company that’s prepared to sacrifice productivity over pennies – and yes, for that kind of company, a Vista upgrade isn’t a good idea. But odds are – you’re not running XP either – you’re running Win2K.
Similarly, if you’ve bought a computer in the past two years, it’ll run Vista reasonably well. The real issue will be the video card – and that’s ONLY if you feel getting Aero Glass is a vital aspect of Vista. In fact, it isn’t – and you can turn it off even if your system CAN run it.
So – the argument is ‘you will need to spend a lot of money upgrading if you buy Vista’, but in reality, the only upgrade most people will NEED (as opposed to want) is another 512M of memory – which is around $50. Compared to the price of the OS, that’s small change.
Similarly, the 20GB hard drive requirement is if you install everything in the Ultimate kit. The requirements are actually that you have at least a 20GB hard drive with 15GB free. A new 80GB hard drive is around $45.
Again, if you’re putzing around with a 20GB or less, you’re not really the kind of person who needs Vista.
To me, the real issue isn’t upgrade price – I think that’s a red herring for the vast majority of PC users – it’s compatibility. A lot of stuff works perfectly in Vista. A lot doesn’t. In my case, three or four of my critical apps (including Visual Studio 2005 for one!) do not work or are known to have incompatibilities without solutions in Vista. Thus, no sale.
That being said, there’s actually a LOT of stuff in Vista I want to have, so I’ll be waiting for the summer while everyone catches up with it.
3:23 pm
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the great feedback. By ‘Costly upgrade’ I mean a combination of enhancements to get you past the VISTA capable requirements.
CPU the biggest cost since you’ll likely need to change the motherboard as well. I agree that RAM and hard drive’s are relatively cheap these days, but they are also dependent on your motherboard. If you don’t have enough IDE/SATA/SATAII connectors or even SDRAM/DDR/DDR2 slots you’ll need to upgrade the motherboard. (In some cases just an expansion card).
Now think about the installation time by you are your technician. Installing RAM is probably the simplest but installing another hard drive will take you at least 20 minutes to open the case (3-6 screws) and install another hard drive (4 screws), connect the IDE/SATA, power cable, check SLAVE/MASTER, close case (3-6 screws). Installing a new motherboard will probably take you over an hour. Don’t forget, just installing a new hard drive, will mean your previous programs in your \program files\ are in limbo since the old hard drive didn’t have enough space. That will also eat up some additional time with file transfers.
End the result, is maybe $100 – $300 in hardware. Next, add about 1 hour of your technician’s time and pay to upgrade that computer. Now, multiple that number with every slow machine you want to have Vista on.
In my original post, I said if the time equals money equation holds true …, the time that is invested to “test all existing software and drivers for compatibility, train employees…”. This is likely going to hurt even more with the salaries your technicians eat up than the actual hardware costs.
Cheers,