What’s with Vista?

Alot of my clients have been asking me about Microsoft’s Vista operating system…”What’s the deal with Vista?” “Why don’t we install it for our business clients yet?” “How could Microsoft have screwed up so badly with the first major upgrade to their OS in years?!”

Vista does not work well on business networks at this time. My personal experience has been that business software applications, especially legacy applications that people still need to run in their business, are not playing well with Vista. This also goes for legacy hardware. Much of the installed hardware either does not have Vista drivers or requires a driver upgrade to work on Vista. That’s why most IT departments are not excited about converting to Vista and just staying with XP for now.

There are some reasons that new hardware and applications are not completely certified and running on Vista. Microsoft implemented a new policy for software writers and hardware manufacturers where they would submit their stuff for a formal certification/testing process to Microsoft before releasing anything new. This is very well-intended and would solve a lot of the ongoing issues that we have made money solving for our clients over the years. The process started taking too long as Microsoft did not have the resources to keep up with the process in a timely manner. So the other companies did not wait for formal certification to release their new products. I think that the certification process is still in place, just not implemented as originally intended.

If you are a consumer, it is easy to buy a new Vista machine, load the latest and greatest Quicken, i-Tunes, video games, etc. You buy yourself a new multi-function printer/scanner/fax, hook it up to the Vista machine and you’re off and running. Most businesses neither cannot, nor want to do a wholesale replacement of every piece of hardware and software on their networks. So Vista will get adopted gradually and that is why Microsoft has been forced to extend the lifespan of XP.

BTW, there is a new service pack, SP3 for XP, that came out last month. Microsoft had no intention of ever releasing another service pack for XP. Microsoft was forced by the market to incorporate some of Vista’s features into XP, included in SP3.

Bottom line – Vista was not adopted immediately, as Microsoft had hoped would happen. But it will take over gradually, as equipment and software gets upgraded over time.

I hope this helps shed some light on the issue for you.

Richard Vaughn

Vice President

i-Tech Support, Inc.

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