Not to mention the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage
fear :O. I said no to the installation, lo and behold I run CCleaner and it finds Windows Genuine Advantage.

Thanks Big Brother! :D.

holy shit, i just came to a horrible reailization, lots of my tax payer dollars end up in M$'s wallet. I think I'm going to be sick

Don't spin this as a negative.

Some companies take longer to adopt. For example where I work we just upgraded to XP last year - we had been running 2000.

Everyone will be using Vista eventually!

Hell most people I know in the power to order a change arnt even looking to order one even after SP1.

Cost to benifit is the answer. Its going to cost a lot of money to upgrade to a system with very little benefit in return since the OS it's self is a very glossy version of XP, and not the next leap in OS it was supposed to be when it was originally beta tested.

The one advantage Apple has over Microsoft, their OS and hardware are so tied together they can order a change like what they did with the switch to Intel and not have it effect vast swaths of their systems or buckle over to pressure from board manufacturers (EFI being dumped) or strange 1980's connections that come people have to have not because there isnt newer stuff, but because they dont want to upgrade (switch from serial to USB which took less than a year, vs. switch from PS/2 to USB which is STILL going on)

And not to be both snarky and double post, but fuck it, why not. I'm on a vista machine for the first time ever right now, and to everyone who said it was not noticably sluggish on older machines, I say "LIARS!!!".
This is a dell optiplex gx280 with a 2.8gz p4 and 512mb of ram, and it's horribly sluggish. I realize the ram's not impressive, and it does score a 1.0 in the 3d business and gaming video performace category... but c'mon this is like stepping back in time. And this machine is on par with most of what's installed across the rather large company I work for....

gx280's make up half our Dell machines in our school district.

We arn't looking to upgrade either. But we where not looking to upgrade OS 9 to OS X as well, our next move is Linux with a Citrix client to a bank of virtual apps servers. Basically terminal computing again.

Just to expensive in long run to have full power clients when they are not needed.

And now I'm back on my XP box because I seem to have crashed Vista... don't go to Apple's site... that new iPhone quicktime video killed it. First it asked if I wanted to allow or deny, which made me chuckle, but then quicktime asked if I wanted to make it my primary MIME player, I said sure why not quicktime, then it said I needed to update quicktime to play the video, then everything went crazy, and I had to bring up my old friend task manager... and it's still spinning it's wheels over there.

doesn't sound like much of a loss to microsoft -- I've never really seen much point in taking an old computer that works just fine and paying to upgrade the OS -- especially when the OS wasn't designed for old hardware.

So, "upgrades" aside, when people come out to say they aren't for Vista, doesn't that likely mean all their new computers will run XP instead -- which is still nearly as much $ in Microsoft's pocket?

kibets:
Don't spin this as a negative.

Everyone will be using Vista eventually!

Yep...Vista's sales numbers are down because of pirates. It couldn't be because big businesses don't want to upgrade could it?

It's more like a delay, not a ban. They don't have the time to test everything right now.

Donna Seymour, CIO of the DOT's Maritime Administration (MARAD), said a July move of the agency's Washington headquarters is to blame for the reluctance to deploy Microsoft's new software. "It has less to do with technical concerns about Microsoft and more to do with the fact that with our July move, our plates are totally full and we can't take another thing on right now," she said in an interview today after a speech at the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=vie...

I've posted before that my bank is still using Windows 95, so I don't see Vista moving in there anytime soon.

I like reading about Vista, but I'm not curious beyond that.

MS? is that the same as Enron?

This isn't just a big business/government thing, no small or medium sized business are switching, or even planning on it either. Vista was available exclusively to business way before retail, and no one touched it.

For business they always do this, and have been waiting for the bugs to shake out for years. Nobody wants their big business to be the guinea pig for MS to find out what's wrong with it on a scale of 10,000 workstations. Since Win95 there has never been a compelling reason to upgrade.

MS should have learned this and put something in it that is a must have item that's not going to be added to XP. Enhanced performance for something like World of Warcraf, it plays normal in XP but a lot quicker in Vista, just so people think they are missing out in "standard mode".

Look back though, all big companies wait for the shake out SP1 to be released, since they don't want to run into a bug where thousands of employees suddenly can't do something and I don't blame them.

Did anyone see Microsoft's last earnings release because if you did, you wouldn't be making these false claims about Vista sales.

Did you see the deferred revenue? Deferred revenue is important because it's the money a company collects before it actually delivers a product (Vista, Office, etc)

"In addition, Microsoft said it took in, but deferred, $1.64 billion of revenue to account for an upgrade program that allowed those who bought Office or a new Windows PC during the holidays to get a free upgrade to the new products--Office 2007 and Windows Vista. The company had projected about $1.5 billion in deferred revenue."

Now we can all sit here and say NO one is upgrading to Vista but don't be fooled. This is starting to look like the 2000 presidential elections where Al Gore won the election?

Where is Dan Rather when you need him.

@kibets:
I agree with U 100%
The last company I worked for (Ingersoll Rand / Hussmann Corp) up until 2002 had some PC runing still on 95 and 98.
Slow adopters might same themselves some troubles, but they are the last ones to reap the benefits.
Loosers... with a big "L"

Don't worry...the Enterprise, Government and the Military have no where to go but to Vista in the years to come. They sure as hell will not go to Apple OSX. The reason? Apple hardware is single source with no bid competition or possibility for multiple bids and Apple lacks applications for vertical markets (and there are thousands of vertical markets).

WHo needs Vista its just pain in the ass. Just check the minimum requirements. Intel is correct, Vista has too little to offer for the price and requirements its demanding. Windows Xp is still in the mainstream. Dudes move over to Mac(some Hacked version of MAC OS X TIGER)Mac is a charm to work it. Its too sexy. Vista= Borrowed from MAC.

Check this funny video showing the major innovations (copys)from MS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2C2gb6ws8

"Yep...Vista's sales numbers are down because of pirates."

Could be. I know Pirates that do have it for free and still don't use it. Therefore by word of mouth aren't recommending other people upgrade either..lol

In regards to MicroSoft's earnings, citing their deferred income as proof of high Vista sales isn't exactly fair. Those were sales of Vista prior to any actual user experiences or word-of-mouth. The fact is that after the initial flood of sales, word got out the the OS was not all it was supposed to be (yet) and sales cooled down quickly. Not just Vista sales, either. Almost across the board, PC sales have dropped, as people are reluctant to buy a Vista-Loaded machine until they start hearing good things. (On the other hand, the larger Memory requirements of vista have caused a 9% spike in Semi-Conductor sales)

Also, I think it's very telling that MS decided to raise their Windows support fees from $39 to $59 right after releasing Vista. To me, this is indicative of two things:
1) MS knows that the OS will have a lot of problems and has decided to profit from those problems and
2) MS was looking to the future, knowing that if Vista's sales should flag (as they have) increasing the per-call Windows support by 50% during a spike in software support need will help make up for the difference so that they can still post record profits and keep the stockholders happy.

I know a few people that have been taking some vista compatibility test to see if their PCs can run Vista based on their specs. Some ended up being the bare minimum while most were unable to pass without getting upgrades. They said screw it.

I'd hate to sound like an Apple shill, but I just got Panther to run on my 400MHz iMac with its meager 256MB. I'll bet I can get Tiger to run just fine despite this computer being over 7 years old now. Vista shouldn't be such a resource hog to get all of the experiences.

I know people at my school who have a free and legit copy of Vista and they still don't use it either. (Special programs here allows certain students in a certain major get free Microsoft programs.)

So how long until the DOT upgrades to Apple?

Oh, right.

Oh, and just a quickie on the title:

By "Intel and Department of Transportation Avoid Vista Like the Plague" do you actually mean:

"Intel and Department of Transportation Avoid Vista for Four to Six Months"?

They're all waiting for SP1. They're not avoiding it altogether. Damned fear-mongering, deceptive "journalists".

There's nothing wrong with being fear-mongering and deceptive, but I think many would take offense to being called a "journalist."

Or is that the other way round?

Just for clarification (cover my ass): Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with journalists, but many would take offense to being called fear-mongering and deceptive.

ps: Do journalists even use Wista? ;o)

It's funny that it looks so much like OSX...just like M$ to make "me too" products or make their money sueing in court.

Apart from their new security features, what business features does Vista offer compared to XP or 2000?

I've not read much on it as I use my work laptop and haven't bought a personal PC in many years.

To my untrained eye, it just seems like a graphics heavy upgrade, which may also mean a hardware upgrade.

It the big boss sees both a software and hardware cost, then it is likely they will say no.

@Compact: Oh and find a couple of features for me too while you're at it.

Translate those into benefits and you might just have a sale.

I order a new computer with Vista Business and then installed Office 2007 with Accounting and Contact Business Manager and I have been able to perform 5 people's job by myself.

Vista is heavy in graphics as it comes out of the box, but you see, there is no fear mongering glamour in also saying that every single graphic effect can be disabled. Each program can be run with specific graphic settings also.

It's the same story all over again, the anti-windows crowd attack windows for how it comes out of the box. This is the Apple mentality in which you are not supposed to touch anything, just punch keys and move the mouse in smug delight.

You do need to spend time with Vista to make it work how you want it and then it's all fine. I have been running 7+ programs in parallel + watching movies + listening to music + running a FTP server in this machine for 15 days now without one reset.

It works.

One issue I haven't read about, and can't have to be fair, is stability. Clearly businesses aren't worried about speed and a lot has been said about software compatibility issues, but most importantly their SP1 wait time will have covered the gray data that is Vista stability and hopefully an fix included in the SP1.

I can only imagine that any significant improvement over XP will be welcomed... but to weed it out altogether? Don't count on it.

here's the thing, it'll be just like XP... It took a long time for people to move to XP. Now I'd say 80% of the pc's have XP. It'll be the same with Vista. And I've seen no compatability issues other than some of the media info built into a digital image. The compatability issues I HAVE seen is with Office, because the file save is no longer a .doc but a .xml. THAT will be a long time coming.

I do not think it'll hurt MS at all with a slow/slower tranistion. I mean my company is still using windows 3.1 on some machines.... Course we also have 10 year + machines also. A company that wants to make money is not going to spend money every time some new operating system or such comes out.

IMO has nothing to do with stability or compatability. It's all about the $ and upgrades. As a business, you spend money you loose money.

I run a fortune 200 IT shop...

Vista is fine. 3rd party apps on Vista are not.

Vista & Tiger = plumbing

Apps = the house

Until we get all of our stuff to mellow out on Vista we wont be going to it.

@darkgoth:
Here's the thing. You are SO wrong!.
Vista is nothing like XP.
The directory structure and data contained in them is unlike anything XP has.
Take for example MS Mail (The new Outlook express) after upgrading it converted my databases (*.dbx extentions) to "single" e-mail files. (I have over 10 years of e-mails)
Searching for e-mails before was as painfull as waiting for water to boil... it took forever on gigabyte size databases.
Now my "Outgoing mail" folder has over 3600 individual files. (10 years worth). I did a search with the new "search" funtion (the new & better Windows Desktop Search) and it located e-mails as fast as I WAS TYPING THE LETTERS for the search query. This is on a PC that is nearly 5 years old and could be considered a dynosaur.

The new file structure paves the way for the WFS (Windows Fle System) that unfortunately was not included in this Vista release.
As I have read about it, WFS is akin of an Oracle type database, where you can instantly search millions of files in seconds. I have over 531K files in my drives alone. THIS is a blessing !!!!

The XP to Vista upgrade sequence was SO smart as to relocate my MS Outlook database file also to another directory and change the program to reflect that. This is most likely why some programs do not work. Directories have changed locations for the better. Software manufacturers need to modify their programs to match the new file structure locations.

Add to the search capability, all the 100's of new features and technology and you can clearly see that Vista is by no means an XP with eye candy.
My 5 year old PC runs faster and better with Vista. I may keep this configuration for the next 2 to 3 years... So I will be running Vista in a soon to be 7 to 8 year old hardware without slowing down a bit.

Do you think Vista is the same as XP ? ... think again.

Just a quick note: @darkgoth, the default for the new office is docx, xmlx, pptx, and so on. You can easily save the changes on your end as a 2003 .doc file (Save As -> Pull down menu), or people can just download this Compatibility Pack add-on:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100444731033.aspx...
Very handy. My office started using it when a few of us were beta testing Office 2007. Makes the transition seamless.

Why pay 200 to 400$ when U can get a makeover for 000.00$ (no Arero like most M$ version), but it's free and it's a damn good looking skin with widget on right, most of all, it doesn't slow your system : http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Vista-...
For the M$ tax, the cost/benefit is not there with this Service Pack 3(XP), most enterprise will have to spend millions to upgrade material to see EyeCandy that's a nonsense!

Intel and Department of Transportation Avoid Vista Like the Plague

arent we all?

Bought a new PC in bits so got the OEM version of Vista at a decent price. Decided I'll need it one day, so might as well get it cheap. Other than the bundled Media Center (which is great) I am very unimpressed with Vista's stability at the moment. Somehow it killed its own ability to sync with my PDA - it crashes every time I connect the damned thing. And that's an MS operating system connecting to another MS operating system. As for 3rd party app compatability, it sucks for the stuff I use. Strongly considering going back to XP.

We still have users running Windows 98SE. This is the same story as with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Those running large organizations have to make sure that it's fully compatible with their environment before deploying any of it. They also don't want to upgrade older hardware for no real advantage. However, once agencies certify Vista for use in the organization you'll start to see a lot of machines ordered with it.

Of course MS will try and force this at some point by pulling XP as an install option from it's OEMs.

I find it interesting that no one seems to realize that just about every large (Fortune 200 and most 500) corporation has an Enterprise Agreement that allows them to run any version of Windows Desktop Os they want. These companies do not have to pay Microsoft to upgrade to Vista from XP if they choose to do so.

What will happen is the corporations will test Vista and most likely roll it out during the next PC refresh (often every 3-5 years). It is the Small/Medium Business that do not have the leverage to have EA with Ms that haven't adopted it because of costs. I do know of several that plan to do so over then next 6 months when they refresh their PCs.

We all love to bash M$, but Bill isn't the world's richest man because he makes poor business decisions.

Everyone bashed Exchange 2007 but I know of several very large Companies who are rolling it out now to take advantage of the communication features. Personally, I think Domino is much more stable but MS knows how to sell.