30/11/2007 by swordfish.

One year after Microsoft officially launched its Vista operating system to businesses, it’s fair to say that it hasn’t been a smooth ride for the software giant.

Announced with the usual marketing razzmatazz that accompanies a new addition to the Windows family, there were high hopes that Microsoft could prove its detractors wrong with a product release which showed that innovation and risk taking were back on the agenda for a company that appeared to be stuck in a rut.

That didn’t happen. While Vista can be seen as an evolution from Windows XP, not even Microsoft can claim it’s a giant step forward. Some critics argue that Vista was hamstrung before it even hit the streets, after Microsoft decided to pull some of its most innovative features, such as the beefed-up filing system known as “WinFS”, to get the product out the door.

The improvements over XP that were included appeared to some users to be mostly cosmetic - like the Aero user interface, with its 3D approach to sorting through windows. It’s flashy but not really a killer reason to upgrade and something that Mac fans have argued was standard in OS X for years.

Performance has also been a factor, with Vista branded by some industry researchers as the most processor-hungry operating system to ever come out of Redmond - something that jars with the current industry drive towards energy efficiency and green IT.

Source: ZDNet

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30/11/2007 by swordfish.

Hard to believe it, but Windows Vista is now a year old!

Microsoft’s latest operating system was released to business users on 30 November 2006, and its first year of availability has seen what could politely be described as a mixed reaction.

Eighty-eight million copies of the operating system have been sold to to businesses and consumers so far: the consumer versions of Vista have been available since the end of January this year. Yet analysts at Gartner say “the uptake of Windows Vista in the PC installed base is taking longer than previously expected, with Vista becoming the dominant operating system only in 2009″.

A survey released last week suggests only 13 percent of businesses are planning to move all their desktops to Vista. For businesses, the problem seems to be twofold.

Firstly, Vista does not seem to offer many immediate benefits over its predecessor, XP. In fact, testing of upcoming service packs for both operating systems has given XP a marked edge in performance over Vista.

Secondly, there are currently few applications that run on Vista only. Until that happens, analysts suggest, most businesses may find it hard to see why they should invest in new PCs to support the hardware demands of Vista.

Source: ZDNet

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