With the official consumer release of Vista this month , enthusiasts and geeks alike will be downloading and buying Microsoft’s flagship OS in droves. Now don’t get me wrong, I love technology. I am the guy whose wife came running with shock after my electric woot at the release of Vista. Remember? So as much as I love playing with the new features (Aero does in deed rock!!), I must put on my black hat and play Devil’s advocate for a bit. Vista isn’t for everyone. If you look past the pretty exterior, there are an awful lot of guts to the OS.
In this article, I am going to sit back and let you know of some of the gotchas with installing deploying Vista. So grab a pop (that is how we say soda in Canada), pull up the bean bag and relax with “Five reasons you might want to wait before installing Vista”
Price
She ain’t cheap. When XP broke on the scene in late 2001, you could pick it up for about $150. The basic version of Vista starts at $300. If you peruse the Dell site right now, you can buy an entry level computer with Windows XP Home for about $500. With such cheap hardware, I predict many will settle for Basic and be thoroughly disappointed when the true essence of Vista doesn’t snap out at them.
Resources
As I type this I am working on a P4 2.8 GHz processor with 2.5 GB RAM and half a terabyte of storage. I run an ATI 9800 Pro with 128 MB of Video RAM and my system still only rates a 4 on Microsoft’s new Windows Experience Index. Now that is not bad and if you google the results you will notice that Microsoft states that all of Vista’s features will work very well with a rating of 4. But unless you have a brand new system, it is going to be difficult to reach those upper maximums. However, for a business computer do you care? If the system runs well, is secure and functions as you expect, that should be more than enough to keep even the most stringent of IT managers happy.
Changes for End Usders
Just because it is new and works better does not mean that your staff will be all goo goo gaga over having to relearn new ways to accomplish familiar tasks. One immediate feature is that many files are locked out by default. Microsoft does this in an attempt to thwart unauthorised access to systems without the user’s control. Good idea. However, that is not going to help Billy Bloggins at three in the morning when he tries to save a PowerPoint to his folder and not have access. A little user education goes a long way. Profiles are locked down also. If you were one of those poor users who enjoyed unfettered access to all of the system files on your system, you are going to find yourself out of luck with Vista. Again, all unnecessary files have been locked down to users. With that said, if you are switching to Vista, it would be a fabulous idea to get a day of training for your staff. Even a day of in house training with your IT staff will be worthwhile.
Drivers and Software
It’s early days yet, but there is a lot of software out there that is not compatible with Vista yet. Many vendors are scrambling to update their software and in all fairness, Vista hasn’t even been released to the public yet. So give it some time. However, you may find some basic software that you rely on no longer works. The Anti Virus client I use is not compatible, neither is my favourite Anti Spam engine, Cloudmark. I also had issues with my finger print scanner (Luckily, I see that MS has released some updated drivers for Vista). There were work arounds for Cloudmark (Although not supported by Microsoft) which enabled it to work for me.
Perhaps one of the biggest disappointments was on the video card side. I run an ATI All in Wonder 128MB and an Nvidia 5500 256MB, just for completeness sake. The reason being is I love dual monitors and my All in Wonder only has a single DVI output. Worked great under XP. With the release of Vista, unless the video cards use the same Windows Distributed Driver Model (WDDM) driver, multiple monitors will not work. There is a
great article that explains it very well. I’ll just save you the search and the three hours of frustration I experienced. I eventually ended up purchasing a new ATI card with dual video outputs. Which works great for dual monitors, but I now lose my TV tuner support for my computer. Oh well, I’ll hit the boxing day sales and get a new PVR instead.
As time goes on more and more vendors will release up to date drivers, but be careful before you jump onboard and realise your hardware is yet to be supported.
User Account Protection (UAP)
From a security standpoint I find the approach fascinating and embrace that MS is now taking security seriously. As an end user I am annoyed to no end that every time I try to do something remotely administrative I have to click yes to the UAP prompt that asks me if I want to continue. If you are logged on with administrative privileges, you are not prompted for a password. If not you will need to ask for administrative credentials each time you attempt to open an MMC or edit system policies. This may restrict some users from being able to accomplish their tasks. This will have to be weighed in your organization to see if this is a feature you will want to keep on using.
Conclusion
Vista does a lot right. I DO recommend switching to Vista when the time is right for your organization if for nothing other than the security features. Remember though that some of these features will take little getting used to, especially some of your less technical staff. So evaluate, test and determine whether or not it is the operating system for you.
| 