Technology In Check

The hype and hyperbole of Windows Vista is reaching near epic proportions. Microsoft is trying so hard to get people to buy Vista that it’s almost funny. In the face of non-existent adoption rates, Redmond is turning up the volume on their marketing machine. But is anyone listening?

The latest salvo in this war with business consumers is an article on the Microsoft website, which essentially instructs IT managers in how to convince the business managers that upgrading to Vista is worthwhile or desirable.

In this first of a series of items on Vista vs. XP, we’ll look at some of the pros and cons of Vista, and maybe we can help you decide if it’s time for your organization to make the change.

First let’s look at some of the cons to moving to Vista. Among those is stability, which a British survey reported as being a major concern along with compatibility of applications. These are such a hindrance that for many enterprises, the decision to migrate to Vista has been put on hold. Adoption of Windows XP is so high currently that the status quo is carrying significant weight.

And another major migration problem for companies is hardware cost. Vista has a significantly beefier minimum hardware requirement than Windows XP does. For example XP can happily chug along with 128 MB of RAM memory, and does just fine with 256 MB, even with sharing memory for video. Vista has a hard-coded minimum of 512 MB RAM though, and a suggested minimum of 1 GB for Vista Business, along with a separate video card. Over an installed base of a dozen or so computers, simply doing a hardware upgrade can easily run to a couple thousand dollars.

The next big hurdle of course is the upgrade/ migration process itself. The cost to plan, deploy and execute a migration can by itself cost many thousands of dollars. Not to mention the cost of downtime, or any business-flow interruption. And the learning curve for staff after the fact plays into things as well - if staff have a new system to work with, will they know how to use it? The costs can really add up quite quickly, and many businesses aren’t ready to invest. At least not yet.

Which leads to the other side: arguments in favour of upgrading. And some of these may not always be visible to the average end-user or business manager, but they do exist nonetheless.

The first of these is increased management capabilities. The options for remote management are greater in Vista, meaning that there’s more that can be done by automatic processes. This in turn translates into lower management cost over the lifetime of the computer. In turn, those companies that decide to acquire new hardware to run Vista will experience greater reliability. Combined, these items will lead to reduced downtime, and an increase in resulting productivity through improved uptime. Having a new computer still under warranty can, by itself, lead to surprising savings.

Another major factor is the XP lifecycle. Currently, XP support from Microsoft is scheduled to end around April of 2009. Which means that if something major goes wrong, IT administrators will be left to their own devices to resolve any issues. The potential for interruption of business flow becomes much higher.

And to mitigate the cost of upgrades, Microsoft has different tools available which help IT get things done. Migrations can be done in a fairly well organized fashion, and if done after hours can further reduce potential downtime.

Of course, every situation is different. For something like a desktop migration there is considerable planning and discussion that must take place, and the cooperation of different user groups is vital. As always, make sure to consult your technical services provider for more information. And have a map of the path you’re going to take.