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.
Go MAINE!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Maine has been pretty interesting in the tech field lately. Recently we told RIAA to go pound sand in their ass. Now the State is making a choice to make the best choices (as they see) concerning their upgrade cycle.
This won't actually harm Microsoft in any way but it will save Maine some money in that they won't need to work on re-training people for Vista while they wait for the upgrade to Windows 7.
As the State is currently using Windows XP (and some old Win2k servers still) they should be able to continue some level of support for the remainder of this period assuming that there aren't any major delays with Windows 7. It will be interesting to see what happens.
As a side note, I just was up and across the mountain tops in the Height of the Land checking out the foliage. Once the Sun came out it was pretty vibrant. We cheated and cut across through Byron to Weld and then took 142 back down into Phillips getting out of the tourist areas. It was a nice trip, if you're in Maine and want to see the foliage than today might have been your best shot for this area.
Re:Tipping Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong State. Maine isn't pro-anything really. We do have some Linux servers but the office workers use Windows, Office, etc... Maine isn't pro-FOSS so don't bother trying to come here with that sort of message, thanks. We're doing this to save money on training and looking ahead to Windows 7. Vista has its bugs. We're saving money by not re-training and skipping an upgrade. We're not saving the money because of skipping the OS, we're saving it by not having to re-train people for a interim OS and not having to invest in more help desk at a time when we're so strapped for cash that we have to actually avoid paving roads because of the increase in the price of asphalt.
You might want to pick another area of the country for that. Many of the politicians and IT staffers are actually decent friends of mine. While you may have some moral reason to want a State to use a FOSS solution the reality is that we're comfortable with what we have and haven't any reason to change at this time. The point is that they do not want to re-train at this time, they don't want to invest in the newer hardware (though DOJ recently got some new hardware along with DOC) that was downgraded to Windows XP Professional instead of the Vista Business that came on it originally.
Re:Vista- It can't be given away (Score:3, Interesting)
Not in the sense from the State's contract with them. Maine is going to pay regardless. We're just not upgrading to Vista. Microsoft is going to get the same amount of money from us regardless of when we upgrade.
microsoft has lost its tracks (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of their new operating systems have been home-customer-directed teletubby-like interfaces for home-users.
Yet, 90% of Microsoft customers are corporate. Corporate customers don't care about aero or some fancy gui transparency.
Corporate customers want OS that looks and performs like windows 2000, is as secure as XP and doesn't cause excess load on their IT departments.
Vista and Office 2007 both failed miserabely with these requirements.
Office 2007 is being adopted since openoffice isn't ready just yet, but vista can be skipped since XP is good enough for 90% purposes.
Next 5 years, we'll see microsoft plummetting and losing its track even more, while linux and apple keeps gaining it's lost market share.
Once they realize they've truly lost it and try to regain monopoly, they come up with some system which is advanced enough to fulfill needs of customers for next 5 years.
Sadly, vista nor windows 7 will be that system and we corporate windows sysadmins are screw'd.
F* you microsoft for destroying my liver, since alcohol seems to be the only proper way to deal with your shit on daily basis.
My organisation has been doing this for years.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Servers have also done the same jump, from NT to 2003 and from 2003 to Win 7 Server edition.
We do make money out of it, though, unlike Maine.
Re:microsoft has lost its tracks (Score:5, Interesting)
Maine upgraded to Office 2k7 as soon as it was available and, even with the ribbon, the help desk managed pretty easily as I understand. (I know a lot of the IT workers, a bunch of the politicians, and even regularly consume alcohol with a few of them. I will be at my DA's house tomorrow night actually as I want to talk about a buddy of mine who's in a spot of trouble.)
This is more about saying that we have "good enough." It is more about saving the money that would be involved in upgrading systems at this time when we're one broke ass state and no one wants to raise taxes. It is more about saving that money from the hardware and additional training as well as the actual labor involved.
Because the State's IT department is so small they often will hire outside contractors (I have done this) to go into a facility and upgrade/swap out and we can't afford that right now.
From my own perspective, the scary thing is that I don't know if we will be in any better a position to afford this two years from now or not. Pardon my language but, as a State, we're fucked. Our tax burden is already quite high, the lack of people driving due to the gas prices killed a lot of businesses this year, and the lack of revenue has meant that a few important things have had to have been skipped to tighten our proverbial belt.
There are a few signs that things aren't too bad but for each of those there are signs that show a much worse case. We had to cancel our paving jobs (not town or city but State jobs from the DOT) because of the costs associated with them. At the same time our banks (actually a lot of credit unions here) are still loaning money and construction hasn't taken that much of a downswing from what I have seen over the past few years. I did spend a bunch of time driving randomly across the nations and seeing things like halted motel construction across the I-10 corridor in Florida doesn't seem to equate what I'm seeing here.
Re:Little do they know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you name a single reputable source that stated that Windows 7 will be based on a "completely new codebase"?
Every single source I've read, internal and external to Microsoft, has explicitly stated it is based on the Vista codebase and is a minor revision of the OS. In fact, there will be no fundamental changes to the low-level OS internals, kernel inclusive, to the point that they are aiming for Vista drivers to work just fine on Windows 7, which should alleviate the driver migration woes that plauged Vista.
I think you should get better news sources.
Re:Tipping Point (Score:5, Interesting)
We're already spending it for support. This isn't your average single user license, it is a giant license. It is more cost effective (I forget the name of the program that we're using) to have this than it is to get just out of band support for a variety of licenses. It includes the ability to upgrade at any time. Contrary to popular opinion we've looked at (non-Microsoft funded) the evidence and it would appear to cost more to migrate to a different OS at this time with the support contracts, the effort involved, and the additional toll on the help desk. I'm not seeing any public documentation showing the reasoning but (and I *am* a fan of Linux in many areas) hopefully you can find something if you look hard enough.
We, as a State, do use some CentOS but at the time we were looking at RHEL and Fedora desktops. Driver issues was one of the things that abounded as the existing hardware wasn't supported entirely. As some of the departments are using older Citrix based thin clients from Wyse there were additional concerns though I don't actually recall what those concerns were.
It isn't that it couldn't be done, it is that it was cost-prohibitive to do so. It isn't that it wasn't looked at, it was, it was that it was considered more economical and a wiser choice to remain with their current choice of operating systems. Though some of the servers did migrate to CentOS and, I believe, RHEL in the case of some of the mail servers.
Vista is a disaster. (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a Very Large Telecom. Nobody is running Vista. It would be too expensive in hardware, training and support. We can do our jobs just fine with XP on cheaper hardware.
Like most, we are 100% Microsoft on the desktop and there are no alternative we can switch to quickly. Exchange and AD are too entrenched. I have a feeling CTO's at some companies see this risk and are evaluating "other options." The problem is the propriety enterprise packages are tried and true on Windows, and it's too expensive to replace all that infrastructure.
Microsoft might force consumers to buy Vista, but I doubt it'll happen for large companies. It would make a lot of people very angry and force large companies to pressure the Enterprise software vendors to write Mac or Linux clients.
It wouldn't surprise me to see Microsoft force their hand, but it could be their undoing if they did.
Where is the midsize Mac desktop (Score:1, Interesting)
Now that MS is stalled Apple could probably pick up substantial numbers of enterprise customers if they put out a mid sized desktop spedced similar to a mini but upgradable and with heavier duty components and priced aggressively for big orders. They also ought to buy parallels outright and bundle it with 10.6, a BSD based stable desktop that will run commercial apps like Photoshop and XP at near native speeds to run MS office and IE should it be needed, what's not to like?
Round the bowl and down the hole, go M$ go. (Score:0, Interesting)
People are not going to be installing Windows 7 either. XP is getting all the same backdoors and the usual upgrade sabotage, so it too will be dumped. Is there anyone in the world still happy with the M$ PC Experience?
M$ has pissed away $60 billion dollars in the last few years. If that's a "near disaster" the real thing is going to be them going bankrupt as a result.
Why has Maine chosen Windows 7 already? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me get this straight...
1) Maine doesn't like Vista.
2) Maine can't know much about Windows 7 because it doesn't exist yet.
3) ?????
4) Maine decides it will switch to Windows 7.
5) Profit! (for Microsoft)
So, step 3 may entail:
a) Someone getting a bribe.
b) Someone realizing how happy Microsoft products have made them in the past, and assuming the Vista problems must have been a one-time fluke.
c) Someone thinking that "operating system" means "Windows".
Re:Little do they know... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maine needs to spend some time in Largo, FL (Score:5, Interesting)
State governments need to return to those days, and the technology is available, and it works. *That* would be a true benefit to taxpayers.
Re:Maine needs to spend some time in Largo, FL (Score:3, Interesting)
We use Wyse through Citrix in a number of areas actually. There are still some VERY ancient Dell thin clients out there. Most are Wyse though.