"Stephan Rose" <kermos@nospam.somrek.net> wrote in message
news:8YKdnY_EvrhrspzbnZ2dnUVZ8qSnnZ2d@giganews.com...
> mhonzell wrote:
>
>> No business with more than a few machines would risk upgrading to a new
>> OS
>> without that product having been thoroughly tested. It is simply too
>> expensive to upgrade the hardware, train the IT department AND determine
>> impact with existing propietary software used for payroll, work control,
>> plant monitoring, etc.
>>
>> It has nothing to do with Vista's faults. It's simply not mature software
>> and as such a poor business decision at this point to upgrade.
>>
>> Most companies I deal with haven't even upgraded to XP. Win 2000 is
>> simply
>> too well ingrained and until Microsoft stops supporting Win 2000, it is
>> not likely that companies (or government) will make the switch. Why would
>> they?
>>
>> They don't need a new OS. All their software and equipment currently
>> works. They don't make money by switching OS's everytime they change.
>
> I think you really hit the key word here in how you put that.
>
> Switching from one version of windows to another is no longer upgrading
> the
> OS such as it generally used to be the case. Now it is changing the OS.
> Just a different choice in words? I don't think so.
>
> When you upgrade something to a new version, an upgrade generally means
> that
> it will still work with its existing data.
>
> But when you change to something different...now at that point in time,
> all
> bets are off.
>
> That's basically a major problem I am seeing. Vista is not being treated
> as
> an upgrade, it is a "new operating system" just with a similar name.
>
> So basically isn't that much terribly different from switching to any
> other
> OS. The user essentially faces many of the same problems just in a
> different way.
>
> And the thing is, the people affected the worst buy stuff like this is
> actually not the home user using run of the mill standard apps that are
> available like sand on the beach. Those developers will always have their
> apps available in whatever flavor OS is most popular.
>
> What's, in my opinion, affected the worst is the commercial and industrial
> market that is by far more likely to run their own custom proprietary
> software to meet their needs. One could argue that they can just keep
> using
> Win2000 or whatever as has been said above.
>
> But can they really? For a while, sure. Eventually though, PCs break. It
> happens sooner or later requiring replacement of that PC. Well wait a
> second, now they have an OS that is potentially no longer compatible with
> new hardware due to its age. On the the other hand they also have their
> own
> software they need to make their living that doesn't work with the new
> operating system.
>
> I think that right there MS is annihilating their commercial and
> industrial
> markets with their compatibility problems. Their attempts to force people
> to switch to Vista is just going to lead to those whom Vista isn't
> suitable
> for to switch to other alternatives. Once that happens it's unlikely they
> will ever switch back.
>
> I personally am in that very situation planning on putting up a server
> cluster later on this year.
>
> Can I run Win2003 Server? As far as I am concerned, no. With the upcoming
> release of longhorn to replace it, 2003 Server is essentially on its way
> to
> its deathbed. I can't warrant putting up new servers with an OS I know
> will
> only be obsoleted in the near future.
>
> Is longhorn a suitable replacement? If they have even a remote hint of
> WGA,
> Activation and all the anti-piracy crap of Vista in the server version
> then
> it already ruled itself out. I can't warrant putting up servers that are
> liable to built-in DoS whenever they randomly feel like it with flaky WGA.
> I don't know how it will be...but nor do I intend to find out the hard
> way.
>
> --
> Stephan
> 2003 Yamaha R6
Of all the comments in this thread I think you hit the major nails right on
their heads.
Most "Industry" either has fairly "Standard" needs (Database, Spreadsheet,
Accounting, Payroll) because of the generally accepted business practices
and the relevant legislation. Others may need bespoke software, but even
there a lot can be done using higher level languages that improves
application portability. The more the languages grow together the more
portable bespoke applications should become.
To give you an example of what you expressed concerns about I had written
some software that I wanted to use at work, but being a pretty poor
programmer I needed to test that my creation (Written at home on XP) would
also work on 2003. I set up an old machine at work roughly the same as the
company server with W2003 and installed VS2005 to do the testing. It worked
and so I figured I might do more in the future. Recently there was a service
pack for VS2005 so I tried installing that but the install went belly up so
I decided I may have broken something and tried to uninstall VS2005 and
start over... That too went belly up so I figured I'd reboot an try again. I
removed the CD, rebooted and up pops "Since Windows was first installed the
hardware has changed significantly". Of course from that point on you have 3
days to re-activate so I had nothing to lose by messing about with the
thing, it's not like it was an important machine, but the important thing
here is that the hardware had not changed one iota except for maybe
inserting and later removing a DVD in the player. Once that message appears
by the way it doesn't matter if you put the original hardware back, the
system is considered "Stolen" until you prove otherwise. Of course in this
case I couldn't put anything back, it had never changed.
As it happens I have a nearly identical machine at home so just for the hell
of it I installed a copy of W2003 on that, did the updates etc and then
cloned the drive, I then took the copied drive to work and swapped it for
the other one in the test machine. No complaints at all
Seems obvious to me that some sort of software error caused the problem, it
certainly was not triggered by hardware changes, in fact all the darned
machine had done for 3 months was sit on the desk accepting updates, but is
that weird or what? I should add that I have an MSDN license for these
systems so I had no fear of losing out, they were being tested in the manner
the MSDN license seems to indicate that it's intended for, but were I
responsible for IT management it would sure make me think twice about
Linux - I hope that MS can make some rapid progress in reducing this kind of
problem dramatically.
Charlie