Softchoice: Corporate America is not ready for Windows Vista
Corporate America is not ready for Microsoft’s new Windows Vista, according to a new study by Softchoice, a provider of technology products and services.
The study, which will be released in the coming week, shows that the majority of PCs in use today in North American organizations are not equipped to handle Vista’s enhanced requirements.
The study was conducted using inventory data representing 112,000 PCs from more than 472 organizations.
The findings from the study are not good news for Microsoft if it is expecting early corporate uptake of Windows Vista:
- 50% of the PCs inventoried are below Windows Vista’s basic system requirements and roughly half of these PCs will need to be replaced outright to run Vista
- 94% are not ready for Vista Premium edition.
“The technology powering Microsoft’s Vista Operating System) represents a major leap forward,” according to Softchoice. “It also encourages businesses to take a close look at their hardware readiness and take the opportunity to get their ouse in order ahead of deployment.”
What this means is that if organizations are planning to deploy Windows Vista, they will also have to make a substantial investment in their IT hardware infrastructure. This could be boon for hardware manufacturers, but it could also mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hard ware refresh.
Whether Corporate America embraced Windows Vista will really depend on whether organizations perceive that the benefits of Vista are justified by the software and hardware investment required. These days business looks at each IT investment from the point of view of return on investment, so it will be interesting to see how Windows Vista fares when assessed by the light of cold hard numbers, rather than what’s cool.
More to follow when the Softchoice report is released in the coming week.
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December 2nd, 2006
Give me a friggin break guys….
your tellingme that all those pc’s dont have a “modern pc” and “512mb of ram”
every company i have worked with have it… and i’d say they also have decent vid cards, people keep thinking that vista is some super heavy OS, i ran it on a p4 2.6ghz with 512mb ram and a VERY old onboard video and it worked fine… even when i forced it to use glass
December 2nd, 2006
A p4 2.6ghz with 512 mb ram is still more than A LOT of companies have. The company I work for, still uses compaq 900mhz machines with onboard vid. Since most of the work they do is mainly windows with as/400 terminals, and lotus notes, Vista will not be even considered. And the company I work for has locations in 35 states, and over 50k employees.
December 2nd, 2006
I run three stores with close to 200 computers. I see absolutely zero benefit to moving my pc’s to windows vista. In fact I have banned it from our networks for at least six months following release. We are actively ensuring that we have all pc’s brought up to windows 2000 or windows XP before the release of Vista to avoid it altogether. Being an early adopter also means you get to experience the early problems.
December 2nd, 2006
Up till now all X86 computers have been built to a relatively common set of specifications, however Vista’s requirements are enough higher than what a computer running either a BSD/Linux operating system, that we may see some computer vendors producing two lines of computers, one of which could be $200 (this is a guess) less expensive – which could force some IT departments to look at Linux more closely.
The next couple of years should be interesting in the tech industry.
December 2nd, 2006
Well it would be easier just to replaced the outdated PC’s with Mac’s. You can run Mac OS X alongside with Vista and Linux… Though Apple is rumored to be adding capabilities to run current Windows programs with out Windows in their next version of Mac OS X Leopard.
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
December 2nd, 2006
It’s true. I work in support for a software company that makes Property Tax Software and we run 700mhz machines with 256 mb of RAM on Win2K. Even our developers run older machines, it’s just a cost issue. I have to agree with Divos in regard to this 100%. The only people rushing to upgrade to Vista will be people that recently bought pc’s that include the update in the price of the “Vista ready”.
December 2nd, 2006
Leave it to the MAC crowd to make the illogical leap…
Ron, the idea is that these companies aren’t going to buy new hardware for the vista software so won’t be moving to vista. Given that they won’t buy new hardware for vista, what makes you think they will buy new MACs?
December 2nd, 2006
C’mon now Microsoft hasn’t gotten Windows 2000 or Xp right yet and now they want us to buy into Vista. The MCSE can’t keep up with certification requirements. Microsoft ought to focus on their XP os until the get all the bugs out, keep it up to date for at least two years before even thinking about a new release. Update Tuesdays throw fears into most admins since their updates tend to crash servers. We’ll let you “got2b the 1st” to have it guys get it and work through the buggy software before considering it. Let’s face it a MS Essential support contract at $36K that gets you the same support as Joe Blow home user is money lost and with Microsofts inherited bugs they will make additional billions in technical support contracts and singles sales at 200.00 a pop. They can keep it.
December 2nd, 2006
Vista not on my production list until late 2008.
Office and IE6 work just fine. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
December 2nd, 2006
The point is not that Windows 2000 or Windows XP are not “right”, but that Windows 2000 and Windows XP are good enough for companies that use it. If previous operating systems are perfect to do tasks they were rolled out for, there is no incentive to upgrade. Sometime around 2003 when I went to a physician I noticed that they still were running Windows NT 4 on their medical terminals. If NT 4 allowed them to run their business applications and the support cost is acceptable, then the upgrade is unnecessary. There is nothing they would gain from it. However as the OS grows older the support cost increases. There are several factors to that. It’s hard to get updates for old systems. New servers and clients don’t play well with old servers and clients (there are newer and more secure protocols that old OS’es don’t support). And there are productivity benefits that the new OS promises (this can also be viewed as the increased cost of running old OS’es). Eventually the cost of running old OS’es gets prohibitive, and then it’s the right time to upgrade. Notice I never mentioned the hardware. The total cost of upgrade includes software, hardware, training and many other things. It’s only the total cost that needs to be weighed against running business on old stuff. The article misses the point by singling out the hardware as the primary factor determining the need of upgrade.
December 3rd, 2006
The company I work for (60,000 employees worldwide) usually takes about 3 years befoer switching to a new OS. And I’m glad since it’s a nightmare to migrate hundreds of specialized engineering and development apps to a new OS.
December 3rd, 2006
Win2K is only a few short months from being “not supported” by M$. We have 2k3, but its not too far away from being extint in M$ eyes. Sure, they are toting Vista as a desktop platform, but what about my servers? I won’t be going anywhere near Vista in production until they’ve at least released a new server OS. Even then, I won’t be bringing my 2k3 servers to whatever they come up with. It may make me believe if they release a Vista server architecture that I will let the morons have Vista desktop. It would phase into the hardware reload by that point.
December 3rd, 2006
We have arrived to a interesting line where comanies do not need Vista because XP provides enough and is so far “working”. If Microsoft enhanced XP without breaking everything else and forcing new hardware (by adding proper networking for example and better security measures) everybody would jump on but tell a company with 25000 pc’s to upgrade because of the new interface. The laughs are going to be heard on Mars.
February 8th, 2007
All Vista is good for is lining the other software companies pockets. Everyone who bought software last year will have to purchase new stuff.