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Windows Operating Systems Software Businesses IT

Dell Warns of Vista Upgrade Challenges 287

Posted by kdawson from the if-not-putting-on-the-brakes-at-least-getting-off-the-accelerator dept.
Mattaburn writes with a story up on ZDNet UK reporting that Dell is warning businesses of the migration challenges that lie ahead as they move to Vista. The article notes what an unusual step it is for a company of Dell's size to be "toning down its sales pitch for Microsoft's Vista operating system" — particularly because "one of the issues the hardware vendor is warning business about is the extra hardware they will need to buy." Quoting: "'They need to be looking at the number of images they will be installing and the size of these images,' said Dell's European client services business manager, Niall Fitzgerald. 'A 2GB image for each user will have a big impact.'"
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Dell Warns of Vista Upgrade Challenges More

Dell Warns of Vista Upgrade Challenges

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  • so what will this mean... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:32AM (#19753865)
    ...for companies when Microsoft stops supporting XP?

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Half a dent ( 952274 )
      Probably just increased hardware costs for Vista capable PCs rather than Linux on the desktop but we can still hope.

      • Re:so what will this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quanticle ( 843097 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:59AM (#19754209) Homepage

        By the time Microsoft stops supporting XP, the costs for hardware will probably have dropped to the point where Vista capable hardware is affordable.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by maxwells_deamon ( 221474 )
          MS says support will continue but that leaves two potential problmes relates to what you do when the machines in your company die and need replacement.

          1) After December XP not available for sale (volumne license folks may be exempt)
          2) Drivers for the new hardware you buy may not work on anything prior to vista.

          (some companies have migrated some machine from 2000 to xp because of these reasons.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by quanticle ( 843097 )

            1) After December XP not available for sale (volumne license folks may be exempt)

            Why would you be purchasing new XP licenses. If one of your machines dies, you can use its license on the next machine. At worst, you'd have to call Microsoft and explain. If you have a volume license, you don't even need to call MS, you just install XP on the new box.

            2) Drivers for the new hardware you buy may not work on anything prior to vista.

            That's not going to happen for a long time. Heck, most of the hardware I

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by asills ( 230118 )
          Vista capable hardware isn't expensive and I'm baffled why people keep saying this.

          Machines I have that have Vista on them:

          4+ year old gaming rig: Athlon 2Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, sound blaster, ATI Radeon 9600, small hard drive. Today's cost is about $400 for a whole unit from online retailers.
          3 year old work laptop (Dell Latitude): Pentium M 1.7Ghz, 2GB RAM, bad video, bad sound, small and slow hard drive. Cost $1800 new (or thereabouts).
          0 year old wife's PC: Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz, 2GB RAM, on-board sound, old Nvidia

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 )
            2GB of RAM is $80-100 - multiply that by every machine in the company - and that's assuming the motherboards are set for a maximum of 4GB of RAM and can take 1-2GB sticks...

            Do you have any idea how many small businesses - not big corporations that routinely swap out machines every three years because they've amortized them out - are running on four, five, six, seven year old machines that are perfectly fine for office workers with XP? Or that almost all office machines not used for video editing are probabl

    • Re:so what will this mean... (Score:5, Informative)

      by j.sanchez1 ( 1030764 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:42AM (#19753995)
      According to this [microsoft.com], MS will continue to support XP until April 8, 2014. I'm sure most companies will be into Vista long before that date comes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      If ReactOS isn't a drop-in replacement for XP by 2014, the developers will have a lot of explaining to do.

    • Re:so what will this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ngarrang ( 1023425 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:18AM (#19754401) Journal

      ...for companies when Microsoft stops supporting XP?
      Nothing. Just because M$ stops its support, does NOT mean the OS will stop in its tracks. Companies are still successfully using DOS, Win 3.1, Win 95 and Win 98. These OSes have long been out of support, but in each of their own cases, the task they are accomplishing is probably still be accomplished just as effectively.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Klaidas ( 981300 )
      Oh, oh, I know!! It means that 2014 will be the year of linux desktops!!!1! [/sarcasm]
      No, seriously, pretty much nothing. They will probably upgrade to vista waaaay before 2014. It's not like XP is problem-free, and Vista is the opposite.

  • Welcome this!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by b1ufox ( 987621 )
    Its a good thing actually to prevent vendor lock in.

    Lets hope this makes people think about Ubuntu atleast :-).

    Competition is good, for a technological ecosystem and this is an example of it. Ultimately finally customers benefit and are more free to choose.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jaaay ( 1124197 )
      Ubuntu is a very nice OS. The problem is with stuff that doesn't work. Most stuff you buy right out of the box will work on XP and might work on Vista if you're lucky :) Of course in one year everything will probably work on Vista that you can buy off the shelf. The problem stays the same with Ubuntu that reverse-engineered drivers may or may not work. When I installed Ubuntu I had hardware that had some user-created drivers which I selected and they didn't work. Until big companies care enough to make sure
      • The irony is Vista comes with almost all new hardware. Well, at least in the consumer market. Speaking of which.
        Last month, Microsoft passed 40 million sales of Vista, but most of those appear to be to consumers rather than businesses, which have been slow to upgrade.
        It would explain the number of people "purchasing" vista. As usual they slop all of the mandatory OS that comes with new machines in just as if someone asked for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mgiuca ( 1040724 )
      Competition is good in any marketplace. This is why it's been awful to go through two decades of MS lockin. Finally we are seeing serious inroads into the monopoly.

  • Not stupid at all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:35AM (#19753903) Homepage
    By giving an advice which is not intended to generate more sales in the short term, Dell just boosted their credibility with the CEO's, CIO's, CTO's and other non-technical people who'll decide which brand to buy the next time they need to upgrade their 10,000+ PC's.
    The nice thing about big businesses like Dell, is that they have a lot to lose; keeps them at a certain level of honesty. ...Unless they get IBM or MS size, in which case dishonesty isn't punished because people will buy from them no matter what.

  • Wait for SP1 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j.sanchez1 ( 1030764 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:35AM (#19753907)
    While Fitzgerald accepted that some business are holding back from migrating to Vista, he denied that there is a widespread feeling that it is better to wait for Service Pack 1. "I have heard that, and I don't buy it," Fitzgerald said. "It used to be a thing people did, and it might have been the case with, say, Windows 2000, but not now."

    I would disagree. My company's IT department waited until they felt that IE7 was stable and patched enough for a rollout to start offering it. Most of the "techies" that I know think the same thing about Vista. That the really big reasons for not upgrading will be fixed after SP1.

    • Why not ignore it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iknownuttin ( 1099999 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:39AM (#19753959)
      Most of the "techies" that I know think the same thing about Vista.

      Why do they even want to upgrade?

      I'm on XP Pro and I have absolutely no desire or see any reason to upgrade to Vista. And from what I've seen so far about Vista, my next hardware purchase will not have Vista on it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by stevey ( 64018 )

        I'm on XP Pro and I have absolutely no desire or see any reason to upgrade to Vista. And from what I've seen so far about Vista, my next hardware purchase will not have Vista on it.

        That is how I felt about Windows 2000, when I was working with it.

        It is amazing how much it feels like history repeating itself. Windows 2000 was one of the better releases of Windows, and certainly the only one I'd use now if I had to use windows at all. (Assuming hardware support.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
          XP Pro (not Home; that was never good) didn't become a halfway decent OS until SP2, and even then, you still need to download dozens of patches (where's SP3 dammit?). Vista still has nothing going for it, and I doubt SP1 will do anything helpful because they'll just rush it in order to entice all the "I'm waiting for SP1" people who actually meant "I'm waiting until Microsoft fixes Vista to an acceptable level."

    • Re:Wait for SP1 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:23AM (#19754477)
      It's just prudent. Why be on the bleeding edge, unless it gives you some kind of competitive advantage? Vista is a nice upgrade, but hardly the sort that would give you much of a competitive advantage.
    • Most of the "techies" that I know think the same thing about Vista. That the really big reasons for not upgrading will be fixed after SP1

      Which is why we should be weary for Microsoft's rush to put out SP1 [computerworld.com] ("Microsoft attempted to undercut Google's reason for extending the consent decree by promising to release a beta Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) before the decree's Nov. 12 expiration.") -- It's not really the fix everyone's hoping for. Maybe in the future SP1 will be put out as soon as possible just to pla

  • I'm not familiar with Windows deployment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by simong ( 32944 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:36AM (#19753917) Homepage
    But by '2GB image' does it mean deploying a new Ghost image for machine upgrades or builds? And would desktops be deployed in place across an office network or on a dedicated replication network? I would say that that is a logistics problem - the greater problem is the migration training.

    • Re:I'm not familiar with Windows deployment (Score:5, Informative)

      by BKX ( 5066 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:53AM (#19754147) Journal
      Sort of. You see, Dell makes one installation, updates it, and installs they're crapware. Then they sysprep it (with the appropriate answer file) and reboot into some other OS (Linux, maybe, since it has the tools to deal with this. It could be Windows based as well, like BartPE or even some bootable form of partition magic. It could be something highly modified but I doubt it. They rarely have to do this, so I'm quite sure that they only have a couple of people who can, and those people probably don't care so much about optimizing the procedure. It really doesn't matter, anyway.) In this alternative environment, they shrink down their clean, sysprepped image to as small as it can get. This is the image they put out on every hard disk they ship. The only thing that's differs between shipped disks is the partition table between hard disk sizes.

      Anyway, during the mini-install on first boot, Windows will automatically resize the filesystem to fill the partition it's on. Because of that feature, Dell only needs one image for all HD sizes, and it can be ridiculously small. The smaller the better, in fact, so that it takes less to write that image to all 8 billion of the HDs they ship. Although I'm quite sure they have specialized hardware and software for this, it still takes time to write out the OS image, and 2GB for Vista is four times longer that 500MB for XP.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pe1chl ( 90186 )
        We don't deploy that we (we use unattended install via answerfiles, which IMHO is more versatile and maintainable) but I don't understand why you would need to keep a separate image per user.
        Do they want you to prepare each user's system from the preinstall done by Dell, adding software as each user likes, and then write back and keep the image in case a reinstall for that user is required?
        How many businesses work that way?

        We just press F12 on the first powerup, boot from the network, and overwrite all of D
    • Training might be the main problem for secretaries or C**, who only use Office, outlook and IE and would need a few weeks to learn that the next iteration works almost exactly as the previous one.
      For people like us, the big problem would be the dozens of small or specialized apps (homemade, third parties or FOSS) we use on reagular basis in our work that refuse to work on Vista and for which there is not yet a working alternative.
    • They must mean RAM as just XP + office is over 1gb

  • Migration... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jaaay ( 1124197 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:38AM (#19753945)
    The hidden migration problem is with multi-billion dollar companies who you'd assume would update their drivers. When I upgraded to vista I had to use xp drivers for my current model HP laserjet with a workaround I found searching on google. This is the kind of unprofessional stuff that companies wont be doing so waiting probably makes sense because a lot of equipment you can buy now brand new still has no drivers.

    • Re:Migration... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:12AM (#19754353) Journal
      HP? You mean that same company that releases printer drivers which can't run as restricted user in Windows 2000?

      Yeah, I had REALLY expected them to release Vista drivers on time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by weicco ( 645927 )

      Yes, HP is unprofessional. I don't buy their products anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )
      Or a damn 64-bit version of Adobe's Flash player... They still don't even have it for XP x64, let alone Vista x64.

      Just release a non-optimized version - a straight compile of the 32 bit code with a 64 bit compiler. Then later they can tweak the code for 64 bit goodness, but for now, just get the damn thing out.

      Or Microsoft's just going to take over the Flash market with Silverlight. Doesn't really matter to me, just quit prompting me to install software that doesn't exist. They've had four years for XP x64,

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:40AM (#19753975)
    I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista.

    What does it offer to businesses? The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.

    Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP. At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course, but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away? That's not a very long time. I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore.

    Microsoft reached a plateau with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It's going to be harder and harder for them to convince people they need a new operating system.
    • I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista. What does it offer to businesses?

      A support contract from Microsoft. When they pay for Windows support companies are basically tied to Microsoft's product lifecycle. These companies don't want to be on XP once Microsoft drops the level of support (e.g. patches, unlimited support calls, etc.).

      Also, many companies signed that licensing deal that Microsoft introduced years ago to spread the cost of upgrades over time. So these compa

    • I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista.

      Two words: Software Assurance. Some companies have already paid extra in their last license to get a discount on Vista. Whether that move saves them money in the long is really determined by the circumstances of each company. I would think that the TCO would have been lower had they waited for Vista's successor.

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Half a dent ( 952274 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:01AM (#19754241)
      "Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP. At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course, but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away? That's not a very long time. I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore."

      We originally said the same thing about XP - that we would stick with 2000 and skip a version then Microsoft released Vista and we're upgrading to XP while we can.

      • We originally said the same thing about XP - that we would stick with 2000

        I'm still running Windows 2000, with the latest service pack. We had an XP machine for a while, but got rid of it. The current versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, MySQL, Python, Dreamweaver, etc. are all installed, so everything important is current. Even obscure stuff like the development environment for Atmel embedded microcontrollers, the eMachineShop part design system, and the latest Nero CD/DVD burner work fine on

      • I held on to 2000 for a long time, not seeing any XP advantage. I eventually changed because the corp started rolling out XP specific corporate software, and I needed a laptop upgrade which had XP-only drivers.

        In other words, I was pushed. There were no "go-to" features in XP that prompted me to switch.

        Same for Vista. What are the compelling "go-to" features for Vista?

    • What does it offer to businesses? The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.

      Uh, no they don't. Although lot of them do, and it's very costly, often done incorrectly and incompletely, and a constant headache. Of course, Vista's security model isn't really the right answer to that particular problem... but hey, if you like sending your money to Redmond and you just can't stop, it'll keep you wedded to Windows for an

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lxy ( 80823 )
      I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista.

      Support. Hardware manufacturers, 3rd party software developers, and Microsoft themselves will stop supporting XP at some point. I have personally been in this trap before with MS OS's in a corporate environment, you eventually have to move.

      What does it offer to businesses?

      Support. Sorry, it's a big deal.

      The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly alr

    • but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away?

      That's hilarious. Did they really say that? Isn't Vista's successor supposed to be an entirely new operating system built from the ground up to finally incorporate all those features they've been promising in each new OS since Windows 2000? Vista was supposed to be released in 2004, too, once upon a time.

      No, there isn't a clear reason to upgrade to Vista until you're forced to. AFAICT, the new security won't really help most people ver

  • 2GB? Pah! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:45AM (#19754049) Homepage
    I'll just stick it in my gmail account, and mail a copy to everyone in my org. The Exchange Server shouldn't have a problem with that...

  • A sysadmins POV (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shadowruni ( 929010 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @10:47AM (#19754069) Journal
    I played with Vista in a production capacity and I'll only move at gunpoint. Here's why:

    I must use a server for administrative work. (yes, I know I can use registry tricks to make ADUC work but I shouldn't have to)

    I can't run multiple monitors on my existing hardware that's certified for Vista, using the recommended drivers, configed the way MS said to.

    I can't easily change the NIC binding order.

    The sidebar thingy moves on it's own.

    Eats my notebook's battery like Pez.

    Decides my network is a new one that it's never seen before at random... hence network number 12!

    This is just what I could think of in 10 seconds.

    It's not a bad try but I see this as the ME of XP. I'll move when I have no choice... but at this point we're simply buying machines without OS and imaging or wiping them. We don't HAVE to upgrade and I'm not planning to for a REALLY REALLY REAAAAAALLLLY long time.

  • Vista!=Business System

    That, I think, is the root of the problem, but Windows has never been a proper business system anyway...

  • Sanity and Respect will Sell (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:11AM (#19754337) Homepage
    Now that Michael Dell is back at the helm, I [hopefully] believe we're seeing a trend of recovery of the respect Dell once commanded. By laying out the facts as they see it, they are helping their customers make better decisions. The respect and loyalty of their customers was once a very strong asset to the company, but at some point in the past, they started squandering that asset by outsourcing support and all sorts of shenanigans that were once the repertoire of their competition. But once Dell started playing the competition's game instead of their own, they started to lose.

    I see this as indication that they are reversing course on this and going back to what worked for them in the past... earning customer respect and loyalty.

  • Dell CYA. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rizzo320 ( 911761 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:55AM (#19754891)
    This looks to be more of a "CYA" statement than anything else, probably a direct result of some of the negative articles that have been written about Vista and Microsoft.

    What I really don't understand is why he made the statement in the first place. Dell really isn't over-promoting Vista to its Enterprise/Corporate customers. I recently had to quote out several Dell OptiPlex workstations, and Windows XP Professional is still the default OS licensing option for OptiPlex workstations, which are what most enterprise/corporate customers purchase.

    The whole "2 GB" image thing is a bunch of nonsense as well. With every version of Windows that comes out, the default footprint size of Windows on the hard disk has increased as well. I remember installing Windows 95 on 200MB hard disks, with plenty of space left for Office 95 and other applications. Any IT manager in charge of making Windows images knows that a new version of Vista is going to be larger than its XP counterpart. Not only is this true of Windows, but of most software application packages as well.

    Overall, Vista does have a lot of new changes. However, there is not too much there holding a customer back from upgrading. Many of the new features in Vista can be turned off and disabled if they can't be tested or get in the way, leaving you with a very XP-like user experience. Vista supports almost all of the group policies that XP does when it comes to being managed through AD. There are several new ways of deploying Vista images as well, with free Microsoft tools, but, there is nothing stopping you from using your existing tools either (Ghost, etc).

    This statement looks like Dell spreading is FUD to cover their tracks for another upcoming quarter where they will have poor financial results. They can then blame "slow adaptation of Vista" as a reason for slow hardware sales.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by aggressor-on ( 922876 )

      Overall, Vista does have a lot of new changes. However, there is not too much there holding a customer back from upgrading. Many of the new features in Vista can be turned off and disabled if they can't be tested or get in the way, leaving you with a very XP-like user experience.


      You are coming to a sad realization that Vista has no value. Cancel or Allow?

      • You are coming to a sad realization that Vista has no value. Cancel or Allow?

        Ha ha, true. I'll admit my preferred OS is Mac OS X. But I have Vista installed, and still do lots of Windows work for clients. It's not bad. I like to downgrade most of the features and effects to the Windows 2000 interface, because that's what I prefer. I did the same thing with XP, and a lot of clients prefer it as well, as it keeps the UI cohesive from one version to the next. Most small businesses don't have time for

        • I think I was just obvious with the fact the article is stating the obvious.


          Hmm, my fix didn't take effect despite doing a preview. That line should read "I was just pointing out the article is stating the obvious." Sorry for the typo.

    • This statement looks like Dell spreading is FUD to cover their tracks for another upcoming quarter where they will have poor financial results. They can then blame "slow adaptation of Vista" as a reason for slow hardware sales.

      But Vista sales are slow [slashdot.org]. That would be the reason Dell switched back to selling XP and started selling GNU/Linux. Catering to AMD and GNU/Linux on servers [hp.com] is how HP stole the PC crown, and that's why Michael Dell is back in charge. The WinTel thing is over.

  • Waiting for SP1? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fdisk-o ( 754721 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @11:57AM (#19754913)
    From TFA: "he denied that there is a widespread feeling that it is better to wait for Service Pack 1"

        I'm not sure who might be saying that they are not waiting for a service pack before Vista deployment for their business. It's certainly none of the people I've been speaking with. Due to the number of problems with application compatibility, the problems with Vista itself, and the nearly non-existant benefit to my business that Vista would provide, I will be waiting for SP1. At the time that SP1 is released, more time will have passed so that our application vendors will have re-written or updated their code to match Vista's changes. We'll also have less of an expenditure for new equipment to meet Vista's hungry requirements since we're constantly retiring older computers and purchasing nearly top-level systems to replace them. We will _not_ be transitioning to gain access to any new "features" that Vista provides, rather, we will transition because we can no longer buy computers with XP installed. Even though Vista provides some positive enhancements to application/OS separation, we have found that user education is vastly superior to feel-good allow/deny prompts that an uneducated user will botch every time. It's more work, sure, and would be a significant effort with a company larger than our 90+users, but the savings come in time. The "trusted computing" and DRM features within Vista allow _much_ greater control of the computer to be given to the software vendor than any reasonable sysadmin would be comfortable with. Due to these concerns and others, my company has been exploring a move for all users to Linux and MacOS. I know of several other 100+ employee local companies that are doing the same.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TheLink ( 130905 )
      Heh, I'm waiting for an OSS XP+DirectX9 compatible, or maybe Vista SP2/SP3 whichever gets decent first.

      I use a Linux desktop at work (suse 10.0), and the Linux sound system stuff on suse sucks. I'm not switching to suse 10.2 because the software management on 10.2 is EXTREMELY SLOW, suse screwed that up. Maybe 10.3 will be better, but I'm not betting anything on it.

      And I got my one and only windows BSOD for this _YEAR_ so far from Vista. And that's after just a few minutes of testing Vista on some box anoth
  • It's pretty obvious that the NEXT turn of the crank from Redmond's meatgrinder will not produce a usable desktop OS. It's as if we've hit some fundamental law for desktop OS's in terms of size, complexity and hardware. Whatever is post-Vista may very well be a server OS and desktops will be left behind as Redmond tries to figure out how to extract the typical $109-179 per seat retail price out of its installed base. This is probably going to be a great opportunity for any non Redmond OS out there. If the no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      "It's as if we've hit some fundamental law for desktop OS's in terms of size, complexity and hardware. "

      interesting. I wonder if different architectures are need for larger OS? OR if, maybe, and OS should just be an operating system and not have ever damn widget and control mechanism embedded in it.?

      That is an interesting hypythosis, I wonder what the formula would be if it were true?

      Woupd it be based on the maximum numbr of lince in a class/function? so any function longer then 1600 lines is nearly impossi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SEMW ( 967629 )
      You're certainly right about the next version after Vista being a server OS, because it will be: Windows Server 2008. But on your main point, I'm afraid I have partly to disagree with you. What will happen is an acceleration of a change that's already started: modulerization. In Windows 9x, everything was one big lump of crap sitting on top of a very shaky base, and that certainly hit a physical limit, as Windows ME demonstrated. With Vista, though, MS has actually started to move towards modulerization

  • If Dell were across the table saying hardware needed to be upgraded to support Vista, who could not be suspicious it was an attempt to pad the project because they're a hardware vendor? That's the tough position Dell consulting is in when a hardware refresh is needed.

    Disclosure: I've dealt with Dell consulting on two different projects and always found their recommendations were pretty balanced, even where hardware was involved. Don't confuse consulting with the reps.

    If anything this is another badge

  • 2GB (Score:2)

    by kaoshin ( 110328 )
    Can anyone explain how the image being 2GB image has become an issue? A DVD still holds it (and a lot more), ghost automatically spans to additional files when it reaches that size (and can be set to span smaller for CDS). I have never encountered any issues with deploying images greater than 2GB from media OR over the network. Heck, even powerquest drive image (now assimilated by the symantec collective) and some of the crappier image utilities can handle it. Perhaps this is an issue for people using I

  • What About the "NSA Tax"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @06:42PM (#19760091) Homepage
    Microsoft has now ADMITTED that the National Security Agency had two sets of teams - "red" to determine how to break in, and "blue" to "assist" in designing Vista security - working on Vista.

    This means, of course, to anyone with a brain, that the NSA figured out X ways to break into Vista - and told Microsoft about X - n of them (pick your numbers, the idea is the same.)

    This means that any government or foreign corporation who uses Vista has just handed the farm to the NSA.

    Anybody outside of the US - and any moron inside the US - who uses Vista has to have their head examined.

    Oh, sure, the NSA doesn't care about me, or you, so they aren't probing our boxes - right?

    Right.

    This is way worse than the old story about the hidden "NSA keys" - at least that time Microsoft didn't admit that the NSA had actively been invited to break Windows security (although I wouldn't be surprised if they had been and did.)

    People who compare this to SELinux simply don't know what they're talking about. There's no comparison whatsoever, as SELinux is open source.

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