Maine To Skip Vista, Go Directly To Windows 7 242
Preedit writes "The State of Maine is the latest organization to skip Windows Vista, which has been a near-disaster for Microsoft. An internal state document (dated September 15) uncovered by Infoweek reveals that Maine will not be upgrading its more than 11,000 personal computing devices from XP to Vista — ever. Instead, it's going to wait until Windows 7 ships in 2010 and hope for the best. The news is in line with a survey that shows only 4% of businesses in the UK have upgraded to Vista, the story notes. So much for that $300 million Seinfeld campaign." A commenter on the article makes the point that Maine's signing an enterprise software license with Microsoft means that Redmond doesn't really lose out on this deal; it simply allows the state to upgrade its equipment and software on its own time.
Re:Go MAINE!!! (Score:5, Informative)
More accurately it took a judge down in the Colby College area. There was some info on /. about it as I recall. I think NYCL posted it.
*goes to look for it*
Here you go:
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/29/2259238 [slashdot.org]
(In case you can't tell, I'm a happy Maine citizen.)
Re:My organisation has been doing this for years.. (Score:3, Informative)
In Maine the cycle has been a lot like you describe.
94 386/486 mix with 3.1 and 95 in the middle (this was an odd one)
-- Same era -- DEC stuff still and our start of a love affair with Cisco as I recall
98 (year) to 98 (and then to 98se.)
2002 Win2k and XP
-- Same era -- Cisco prices for support kicked our ass
-- Same era -- Wyse and Citrix moved *back* in
2006 XP/Server 2k3
-- Same era -- Juniper shows up with a beautiful price (I think we run Juniper gear almost entirely in some areas now)
Here's where Microsoft screwed up... XP/2k3 is Good Enough® and for us that is a Good Thing©.
If we can still support XP we're fine until 2012 for the most part. Windows XP lasted too long. This isn't costing Microsoft any money, we're paying the same regardless. Licenses, support, and even custom hot patches are covered. We can upgrade when we want.
Our history says, 2010 and we're some staunch bastards here. We'll change when we're good and effin' ready, ayuh! We're too broke to actually afford new hardware. In the middle of these 4 year periods we've ALWAYS upgraded hardware for some departments. So, in 2008, we upgraded some. DOJ and DOC got some new hardware but it runs XP. DHHS (used to be DHS) also gets some very couple of years as they're a forward facing department.
It is my opinion that we're doing fine and that we made the right choice for this. I do believe that FOSS has a place (which is to answer the people saying that this is time to look at Vista) but that's more expensive in the short term for us. Right now we aren't able to afford a damned thing. We are one broke-ass state and the taxation is already a bit too high for some people.
There are old people in this state who are actually going to FREEZE to death this year. It will likely be under a handful of people. But we don't have the money, we aren't going to raise taxes if we can help it because that probably won't help a whole lot unless we tax the rich and we don't have a lot of those, so we can't afford a lot. The lack of income from the depreciated tourism industry is going to hurt us this winter. Oddly our gasoline is just $3.35/gallon at my local store but has still been to high to allow people to chance to come here and spend their hard earned money on our tourism and there aren't many other things left in Maine that people pay for other than lobster.
Such a huge disaster... OH WAIT (Score:4, Informative)
Window Vista is such a huge disaster for Microsoft, considering that since it's release, it has consistently sold more than Windows XP in the same timeframe since it's release (ie. amount of sales after 1 year of being on the market for both XP and Vista, after 2 years, etc etc). Truly a horrible mistake one would never want to repeat. Oh wait, nevermind.
Re:Go MAINE!!! (Score:3, Informative)
I am quite content with that as their license includes out-of-band support, hot fixes, etc... Their license is not like a normal end-user license. it is a contract that includes support that your average person doesn't have available.
We have looked at alternatives and this has been considered the most cost effective at this time. For the part about not upgrading, it isn't about how crappy Vista is - it is a matter of timing. (Please see the article in question.) It is unrealistic for us to bother with it. Later in this same thread I've posted a schedule concerning Maine's activities, it is a four year cycle for the most part. There is no reason for us to upgrade at this point and we'll save money by not having to re-train on an interim operating system which is (in my humble opinion) much like Windows ME compared to Windows XP.
I'm a fan of any OS or software that does the job right for you. For instance, I had no major problems with ME on some hardware. I see Vista as a beta that was RTM/public for Vista SP3 (Windows 7). This is just a matter of timing, it isn't right for us to bother with it. There's nothing more to this story other than what the spin on it is or the assumptions are. We skipped, for the most part, ME as well.
If one wants to project than, well, I'd feel more comfortable (being a realist) suggesting that Windows 7 will be a buggy, lousy, useless lump of code that won't work for the State of Maine. I suspect that that won't be true (Microsoft really *is* good at turning out decent code when they have to) but that's more realistic than many of the other complaints.