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This has been a very popular topic for some months now. There were many studies and reports claiming that Vista adoption is much slower than Microsoft had hoped for. I am curious to know how the situation in your respective organization is.
It seems the slow Vista adoption didn’t really affect Microsoft revenues which might be an indication that many companies are just waiting for the time that they have to buy new hardware. That is, they continue paying their license fees to Microsoft even though they are still running XP. The only question seems to be, when is the big run to Vista supposed to get started? Or will it never happen? Is Vista really a failure?
I think in the consumer market things are already clear. It took a bit longer than expected, but now most new PCs and laptops are sold with Vista. You might want to check out Ed Bot’s interesting investigation regarding this topic. He also has something to say about the segment of small businesses. However, these numbers are only about the current situation and not about future developments.
So in this poll I don’t want to know if you are running Vista yourself. Instead, I would like know about the future plans of your organization. Depending on the size of your organization, it might take some time until all your desktops will be running Vista. And I know that it is very hard to predict when this will actually be the case. Thus, I think, it is more interesting to know when you will start with the deployment process on user PCs.
The last question in this poll is only for those working in organizations that are mostly using Windows on desktops now, but are planning to move to another operating system. Please don’t vote for this question if your organization doesn’t use Windows. I don’t want to discriminate you, but I am curious to know how many are planning to give up Windows on their desktops in the future.
Well, i’m working for a Small Business (2 Servers, 35 Clients), but we have already moved around 20 Clients to Vista, with the rest to follow this year.
We also have a few clients that wanted to buy new PCs, and most of them bought Vista machines (we do, of course, recommend Vista if it makes sense). There were also Clients that insisted on XP.
On the Office side, if you do not have a Volume Licensing Agreement, you can’t buy Office 2003 anymore, so all new Machines we sell are preloaded with Office 2007.
[...] Poll: When will your organization start deploying Vista? You IT managers should throw in your vote on when/if you will deploy Vista. (tags: Deployment ) [...]
I work for a small business as well. We have been making the move away from XP for a couple of years, and are now almost entirely terminal server based. Only our engineers that need CAD software get actual PC’s, and most of their existing software is not yet supported on Vista.
At this time, I don’t see a Vista computer ever making it onto my network. When I buy new PC’s though, I usually buy them with Vista (for the license) and then take the OEM downgrade to XP.
It amazes me that after almost a full year at retail, there are still many programs that are not supported under Vista.
Lukas, I think it is much easier for small businesses to upgrade to Vista. If all your applications work and your hardware is powerful enough, why would someone stick with XP? If you don’t like UAC or Windows Search, you can just disable it. However, the bigger your organization is, the more things you have to consider before you can upgrade.
Dave, what about Windows Server 2008? It is the server version of Vista. Will you use it? It has a lot of interesting new features for terminal servers.
I am looking at Server 2008 for it’s TS improvements, but my evaluation of it has barely begun.
Server 2008 I see as inevitable. I can’t keep running a 5 year old server OS for ever. I went through that in the NT4 days. However, I don’t see a wide deployment of Vista in my future…at least not at this job. Sure, once I make the server 2008 jump, I’ll probably need Vista to manage it, but that’s me, that’s not my users. Otherwise, unless those few computer users that I have require a software update that only supports Vista, I don’t see it. But I buy my PC’s with an OEM Vista license just in case.
I’m running 2 companies with a total of ~100computers and 6 servers, and expanding everyday.
The first company can’t upgrade to vista, as one of the basic software they need requires Internet Explorer 6 (don’t ask…).
The other one… We are just happy with Windows XP and Office 2003. Why buy Vista, when XP is enough?
Our new PCs are all bought with Windows XP & Office 2003. Why we must install Vista if they will run slower on it?
Victor, if your hardware is not powerful enough for Vista then you certainly have no other choice. There are many arguments against Vista, however, the “we are just happy with what we have argument” is not really convincing. I know of a secretary who told me the same thing about her typewriter. Why would she need Office if she is happy with it?