[LINK] Vista: Why you shouldn't upgrade yet

[Stilgherrian]

Malcolm, thanks for your comments.

However I think that many of your responses are more relevant to the
enterprise environment. My target audience for the article (and the client
base I'm dealing with) is small business -- the "very small businesses" with
ten or fewer employees, who make up the vast bulk of businesses in
Australia. Indeed, the bulk of the clients I'm working with have five or
fewer employees.

None of what you wrote changes my advice that they shouldn't rush to upgrade
to Vista. After all, I said, "Not yet" rather than "Never".


On 29/1/07 11:33 PM, "Malcolm Miles" <mgm-ns at tardis.net> wrote:
> Vista has been available to businesses since the end of November last
> year. Tomorrow is the retail release.

Yes, and the vast majority of these businesses buy their software retail.


> "If you run into a problem, it¹ll take longer to fix (and be more
> expensive!) because your computer support people won¹t have as much
> experience to draw upon"
> 
> Many computer support people would have been working with Vista for
> over a year as part of the beta program.

In a corporate environment maybe. In my experience, small businesses rely on
rather over-worked support people who are too busy servicing their clients
to have time to play with software their clients don't use yet.

Also, the "knowledge base" of support information simple isn't online yet.
The real-world problems will only start emerging today, and the forums will
only start filling with the useful tips over the coming weeks.


> Most corporates roll over their PCs every 3 years or so. Most PCs
> purchased in the last 3 years will run Vista.

"Most" means that some will not. So it's a valid and important question to
ask.


> Most business applications would be compatible with Vista. Even my old
> DOS apps from the late 80s run.

"Most" means that some will not. So it's a valid and important question to
ask.


> "Does Vista actually add any must-have tools for your business? Then
> why are you wasting your time and money? "
> 
> The biggest benefit is that at last you can easily run a Windows
> operating system without giving your users administrator rights. In
> itself, this will significantly reduce support costs.

True. But in this small business environment, even the concept of having
different user accounts for different people, or making sure people don't
hand out their passwords to other employees willy-nilly, is still a new
concept.

Most small businesses of this size do not have regular maintenance or even
have someone working on their systems routinely. It's more likely that
they'll deal with things themselves, and then call in the "expert" when
something goes wrong. The aim of the article was to prevent someone rushing
out today, installing Vista, and the being unable to run his or her business
this week.

I don't know your background at all, Malcolm, but the differences between
"corporate" and "small business" are vast, and I'm continually amazed at how
corporate IT types are complete unaware of this difference. Those
differences are certainly the subject for an article at some point.

But small business or corporate, I still think anyone who's upgrading their
business computers to Vista this week is taking a very big risk.

Stil


-- 
Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/
Internet, IT and Media Consulting, Sydney, Australia
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