Vista Angst

“I have Vista on a notebook with 2 gigabytes of memory and a decent-size processor, and with Vista on there, it just doesn't work. It takes over 10 minutes just to open a Word document.” That’s a quote from a computer analyst in a current USA Today story about the continuing backlash of both corporate and home users (“Vista struggles to bust out as business customers snub it,” 4/29/08).

Another IT administrator, with over 14,000 computers under his supervision says “I wouldn't put on Vista if it was free.…In the past, there's always been an important reason to upgrade, but XP (the previous version of Windows) is perfectly acceptable.” Analysts have ranged from calling the release of Vista “a disaster” or “the biggest blunder ever” and “equivalent to the New Coke fiasco.” Apple has made Vista the butt of some very effective advertising.

The story reports that users across the country are reveling against adopting Vista, due to its slowness, balkiness, training and help-desk burden, and minimal payoff. In fact sales at Microsoft of Windows operating systems are down by 24% in the last quarter. Even the release of a service pack bug fix has been a big disappointment.

With Vista getting hammered from all sides, many customers are just sitting on their hands, waiting for the next version of Windows. Microsoft has announced that Windows XP will no longer be available after June 30. But there is major blowback from some of Microsoft’s biggest clients, and it’s hard to imagine that deadline will be tolerated by the IT community, which is already organizing petition drives.

For hardware and software vendors in the printer and copier business, the problem is that they now have to support both versions of the operating system in full. That involves not only upgrading and testing software to work with a wide variety of programs and new drivers, but also training dealers and having help-desk support available for hard-to-diagnose problems, in addition to offering solutions for Microsoft’s (as yet little used) XPS image workflow. Needless to say, none of this puts money in the pockets of these companies, and introduces as whole new set of headaches, headaches that may continue for years until Microsoft’s next version of Windows is due for release (and perhaps a whole new set of problems will arrive then.

Vista: Gradually gaining traction

Microsoft’s Window Vista application and its 2007 Office Productivity suite are slowly migrating into the office, according to a survey by CDW. Last February, only 12% of companies had plans in place to switch over to the new version of Windows, as users opted instead for the older, but faster and more reliable XP version. This February, according to the survey, around 35% of the companies surveyed had Vista migration efforts ongoing. Out of that 35% segment, only 13% had completed the move.

Similar numbers were making the move to the application software in Windows Productivity Suite 2007. Last February, only 7% of offices had upgraded. The survey indicates that 24% have now upgraded.

While there is still lots of controversy on the Internet and questions about Vista speed, feature bloat, and the change in user interface, many IT decision makers are starting to feel that the Microsoft products are stable enough and usable enough to give them the green light. Microsoft is, according to rumors, also working on a streamlined “Windows 7” version that will fix some of the objections to Vista – Microsoft is keeping mum, however.

“No Vista, please!”

Microsoft’s Vista version of its Windows operating systems is having a hard time getting traction, as many corporate users are waiting to find out a reason why they should replace their PCs running Windows XP. According to one survey, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista.

Microsoft has released its first service pack update for the Vista version of its Windows operating system, but according to neutral lab testing, Vista is still twice as slow as the most up-to-date version of Windows XP. Vista retail sales are over 50 percent lower than sales of XP.

Microsoft is also having a hard time convincing IT departments that the hassle of training users on a whole new interface and supported a new set of problems (including file incompatibility) is worth the effort. As a result, many companies are still buying replacement computers that still feature XP, and Microsoft has been forced to set back the eventual phase-out of XP until next summer.

In the printer world, that slowdown affects the urgency to support Microsoft’s new XPS printing protocol. So far, only Xerox and Konica Minolta, as far as we can tell, have announced XPS-capable printers. Sharp has announced that it is working with a third party to support it.

Even more pressing is the problem of drivers on existing printers. Most printers and copiers need installation of a new driver to work with Vista. But for older models, most vendors aren’t bothering with an upgrade. So a perfectly good printer from two years ago that worked fine with all your XP machines might not be able to function in a Vista environment.

One article quotes a Microsoft vice president as saying “Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista.” Instead it’s clear that Vista is still not 100 percent ready for the world, even after a long-awaited service pack update.