After 5 years, today Microsoft released to the general public the long awaited successor to Windows XP ... Windows Vista. Was it worth the wait?
I've been using Vista full time on my Thinkpad T60p for several months ... and played with it on and off the months prior (a nice plus for being a TechNet subscriber). It IS a worthy replacement for XP ... not just the eye candy, but there's a lot of great behind the scenes stuff to help us IT folks manage Vista machines easier/better/faster than XP. Worth the wait? IMO, yes ... but good grief 5 years is a long time to wait.
If it weren't for needing to do some end user training ... I'd seriously consider moving GCC to Vista sooner than later ... IT stuff aside, there are a number of features that I feel would make our staff's PC use more efficient. I'll post on some of my favorite Vista features down the road.
We'll see how the year unfolds as to whether or not a 2007 Vista upgrade will occur at GCC ... most likely not. I know I'm already getting requests to upgrade to Vista ... anyone else?
I need to finalize plans with Michael first, but since we bought software assurance on all of our computer packages last year we have free upgrades. Nice! We'll start rolling out Vista in a couple of weeks I think.
Posted by: Matt Singley | January 30, 2007 at 01:45 PM
I've been using Vista for a few months now...it's cool. It's a little irritating how blatant some of the Mac OS X rip-offs are ("gadgets" instead of "widgets", etc), but it's a definite improvement over XP.
Like you said, user training is the big hurdle to a roll-out. Any time something looks different, lots of the users tend to freak out. Needing higher performance hardware is also an issue for us.
Posted by: Donnie Schexnayder | January 30, 2007 at 05:32 PM
We definitely will not be moving to Vista in 2007. However all systems we buy in 2007 will be ordered with Vista so we know they're fully Vista-capable with known good drivers and so we don't have to pay again when we upgrade. Vista is going to be all-or-nothing for us. Except for a few test machines in IT, we will have the whole church on XP until we're ready to move entirely to Vista. We don't want to run a mixed environment. We will seriously consider late this year if this is a capital expenditure priority for us in 2008.
Posted by: Clif Guy | January 31, 2007 at 01:38 PM
Yea, Sunset Pres. purchased Windows XP licenses last year and we ordered software assurance with it so we have access to Windows Vista Business Edition and Enterprise Edition. Did you also know that if you by SA with Office you get the Home Use SA benefit? Think about handing out Office 2007 to your staff that is perfectly legit for them to install and use at home!
Posted by: Michael Sainz | January 31, 2007 at 07:05 PM
Regarding the "Home Use SA benefit" and "handing out Office 2007 to your staff...": the Home Use program for Office products has some special things that keep you from just "handing it out". For example, there is a special web site that employees need to go to order their own copy of Office (at a fee of about $20). Second, their license goes away if their employment ends, or if your SA ends (yes, that's different than the corporate licenses themselves). Read section 13 here: https://oms.one.microsoft.com/tc/cr_information/huptc.htm
Posted by: Tom Templin | February 01, 2007 at 12:42 AM
I can't convince myself that a total enterprise wide upgrade to Vista is the answer especially if you get into machines that have to have memory and video card upgrades to make it happen. But, all future workstation purchases will be Vista.
Posted by: allen madding | February 06, 2007 at 09:28 AM