Vista Migration, Should you Switch or Wait?

By  Rick Goode, Dawson County Schools

While at the conference, I attended one of Brent Williams’ sessions called “The Real Cost of Windows Vista (7)”.   Let’s face it, Windows Vista has not been received as well as the folks at Microsoft would have liked.  Brent stated in his session that Apple’s “PC and Mac” ad campaign did a very good job of trashing Vista and the trashing went unanswered by the folks at Microsoft.  I’m sure that campaign caused many home users to choose a new Apple computer over a PC, but that’s not what IT managers consider when making a choice.   Early on in the rollout and continuing to present, Vista has been plagued with problems, of which, lack of proper drivers and application incompatibility have been the chief reasons that corporate IT managers backed off on migration plans.  A report from Evans Data has shown that only one in ten developers are writing applications for Windows Vista and that 49 percent of developers are still writing applications for Windows XP.

The following is a good example of how this impacts users and I experienced it first hand.  A good friend of mine, an MD, asked me to move his applications and data from his old office PC to his newly bought Vista machine.  There were two main applications, one was a software package used for displaying MRI images and the other was an older Windows Office Suite.  Neither would move to the new Visa platform.  Office 2007 would have to be bought and there simply was not a version of the MRI software written for Visa.  So, I ended up installing XP professional on the new machine in order to move his job critical applications.

Brent said in his session that if you use Vista for 30 days you wouldn’t go back to XP.  I have used Visa and can say this.  If you have all new Vista compatible software and drivers, the OS is stable and works great.  The Aero interface has a very OS X look to it.  As I write this, Service Pack 2 for Vista is still in beta release and early reports say that SP2 will be similar to the new Windows 7 rumored for release mid 2009.  In our school system, we are asked to accomplish more with less especially in these tight budgetary times.  Money is simply not there to buy new Vista compatible applications. Also, additional memory requirements needed to run Vista on older machines increases the price tag.  Vista should move to Windows 7 seamlessly, but who can tell the future.

Like many other IT managers, I believe waiting for Windows 7 is the correct decision for schools.   Brent says to make the business decision based on the circumstances in your system.   I see no compelling reason to spend on Vista when Microsoft is already moving on to Windows 7.  I believe Vista will be looked at as another Windows Millennium edition and Microsoft is already treating it that way.

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