If you’ve followed my blog for a while, then you might remember my Windows XP vs. Vista series. It was a reply to one of the most popular Vista bashers, Randall C. Kennedy, who published an in-depth “comparison” between XP and Vista on InfoWorld. It was no surprise that such an article would appear on InfoWorld because they are well known for their somewhat “critical” views about Microsoft (remember the populist save XP campaign?). To IDG’s (the publisher of InfoWorld) defense, it ought to be said that their German magazine Computerwoche published my pro Vista article which was also a reply to Kennedy’s InfoWorld article.

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My “Vista goodbye” article evoked emotions among some 4sysops readers. Publicly defending Vista is still a dangerous thing to do. I can understand that very well, considering how many headaches must have been caused by malfunctioning device drivers, high hardware demands and broken applications.

I have been a Vista advocate since its first beta version. In my view, it was a milestone release only comparable to Windows 3.0, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. Windows 3.0 was the first Windows that really worked. Windows 95 introduced a new interface concept, Windows NT brought stability, and Windows Vista security. All other Windows releases were just feature packs. It is typical for all milestone releases that they caused a lot of trouble in the beginning and required significantly more hardware resources than their predecessors. Nevertheless, from a technical point of view they were much more important than the other releases. The server version Windows 2000 was a milestone release too, but we are talking about desktop operating systems here.

Anyway, I think, the final word on these matters belongs to the 4sysops readers. What could be more revealing than the operating system shares among 4sysops readers? I must say that I was quite surprised when I generated the statistics with Google Analytics.

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In a few weeks, Vista will be history. Even though, it will still be running for quite some time on many machines out there, most IT pros will focus now on Windows 7. Of course, no IT pro will start using Vista now. But I am sure many are still running XP on their own computers, at work or at home, and quite a few of them believe that skipping Vista was the smartest thing to do. If you are one of them, then this article is dedicated to you. Quite by chance, I’ve found seven reasons why you should now regret your decision.

1. Windows 7 is great

You probably think that since Vista was such a mess and Windows 7 is so great, your decision to skip Vista was a wise one. The contrary is true. The major reason why Windows 7 is so great is because it builds on Vista. You could have had many of the great Windows 7 features long ago.

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Long-term readers might remember my rants against all these Vista bashers out there. It is time for yet another outburst in this series. It is this sentence that I have read so many times in the last weeks: “Windows 7 is what Vista should have been” that leaves me no other choice.

A recent Computerworld article gave me a good start. According to research institutions, in particular Gartner, Vista is doing better in businesses than XP had by this time. I have blogged this already a year ago. At that time I contacted Gartner and asked for data about Vista’s adoption rate. It turned out that Vista installations (not just sales) were outperforming those of XP after its release. If I could access these data so easily, then any journalist obviously would have had the same possibilities. But bashing Vista was en vogue, and nobody was really interested in such hard facts. Everyone wanted to be a part of the big anti-Vista community. As a journalist, blogger, or the local town crier, you couldn’t be wrong if you slapped Vista. The harder you slapped, the more applause you would gain from the bloodthirsty crowds.

Now we are seeing just the opposite reaction. Windows 7 is everyone’s darling. Even severe security issues are downplayed by the media. I think this behavior is a phenomenon that should interest every mass psychology researcher.

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You probably know Microsoft’s “I am a PC” marketing campaign. While I was playing with Windows 7′s new ISO burning feature, I realized that I am not just a PC. Let me explain why.

This feature is yet another tiny Windows enhancement that is particularly interesting for IT pros. To use it, all you have to do is right-click on an ISO image and select “burn disc image.” Of course, there are also free ISO burning tools for Windows XP and Vista. My favorite is ISO Recorder. It basically performs the same function as the ISO burning feature of Windows 7, so you might say you don’t really need this Windows 7 feature.

I often hear similar arguments from Vista’s detractors. Windows XP already does the job, so why upgrade my hardware to run Vista or Windows 7? Just for a screenshot utility or an ISO burning tool that I can get for free, anyway?

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There is no doubt that Windows 7 has gotten much better feedback than Windows Vista. As such, many organizations are likely to be tempted to skip Vista, and move directly from XP to Windows 7. However, skipping a version of Windows comes with quite a few risks. I’ve just read a white paper from Gartner that includes some interesting arguments on why skipping Vista might not be such a good idea. The document was published in July but continues to be just as, if not more, relevant today. Because it is now clearer what improvements Windows 7 will bring, it is a good time for those who plan to skip Vista to re-evaluate that plan.

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Windows 7 might come out much earlier than many expected (including me). If what several new sites have published during the last few days is true, then Windows 7 might even show up during the 2009 holiday season. It is obvious why Microsoft is pushing Windows 7. Vista still has a bad reputation (which is unjustified in my view), and Microsoft hopes that all of the Vista bashing will be history soon. However, I doubt somehow that those organizations who want to skip Vista will be much happier with Windows 7. Nevertheless, the reaction of the media to Windows 7 is quite positive thus far. Could that change?

Even though Infoworld tries to keep the Windows-slapping business alive, I somehow doubt that the media will bash Windows 7 because their readers are already tired of this topic. Perhaps more important is that the user experience of Windows 7 will be better. The most significant improvement in Vista is the new security model. It was also one of the main reasons why the Vista-bashing wave started rolling in. It caused numerous compatibility issues, which resulted in user frustration – the perfect breeding ground for the anti-Vista meme virus. Since Microsoft did most of the dirty work in Vista, they can focus again on new end-user-related features, which makes the media happy because they have something to write about.

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The Vista bashing campaign continues, so I can’t help myself and blog about it again. Computerworld presents new data from Forrester with an article entitled “Forrester survey: Enterprises reject Vista like ‘new Coke‘”. I will write about the same data in this post, but as you might have noticed, I used a slightly different heading. After you have read my version of the story, you will have to acknowledge that sometimes reality is a matter of perspective.

The hard facts of the Forrester survey are that 8.8% of 50,000 enterprise users are running Windows Vista on their PCs and 87.1% Windows XP. Now, I am asking where is the connection to sugar water? Did those 87.1% decide to stay with XP because Vista didn’t taste sweet enough? Or do these enterprise users just use the Windows version that their IT departments installed on their PCs?

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During research for my series on Vista vs. Windows XP, I stumbled across an article at ChanelWeb that claimed that according to Gartner, the adoption of Vista by businesses is in line with that of XP at a comparable juncture after its release. As I will also publish an article at Computerwoche on this topic, I wanted to be sure if this surprising data really is correct. So I contacted Gartner and they were kind enough to mail me their latest numbers. This data does not exactly match with that of the ChannelWeb article, but it allows us to draw the same conclusion: the adoption rate of Windows Vista is indeed comparable to that of Windows XP after its release.

Here are the numbers I received from Gartner: PC Installed Base by Operating System, Worldwide

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In his last post, Kennedy discusses an interesting point that no other Vista bashing article has addressed so far. He voices a fear that is probably shared by most IT Pros who have decided against Vista. They might not be aware of it, but it is nagging unconsciously under the surface: Will I be left behind if I skip Vista? Is there something essential I missed about Vista?

Kennedy tries to ease the mind of the worried IT pro:

If ever there were an opportunity to skip a Windows upgrade cycle, the XP-to-Vista transition is it. XP may be showing its age, but its age is mainly skin deep: The new challenger is flashy, but also slower and heavier, and it lacks a killer combination of compelling features needed to unseat XP.

At the end of the decade, when Microsoft’s executives look back at the debacle that was Windows Vista, they’ll see that simply slapping a fresh coat of paint on an otherwise aging Windows architecture wasn’t enough to fool anybody.

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When I started reading my RSS feeds this morning, one of the first headings that caught my attention was this one: “Microsoft lies about Vista being the most secure Windows ever”. Since it is from a Vista blog that usually has good stuff, I clicked into it. After reading about the meaningless data that is supposed to support the claim of the heading, I just thought, okay, good job, you lured me to click on this. Very funny, really! Then I moved ahead and was quite surprised how many news sites took the same bait. So my second thought was that I am missing something here.

So what is behind all this? The source of this new Vista bashing campaign is Simon Clausen, CEO of PC Tools, a security vendor. This is how InformationWeek cites him:

Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date. However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37% more secure than Windows XP.

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This is the second article in my series about the Vista v. Windows XP issue. In my last post I replied to an InfoWorld article by Randall C. Kennedy, who claimed that Vista did not really improve security. Today I will discuss Vista’s new capabilities regarding manageability. The text in italics summarizes Kennedy’s view.

Vista has a couple of features that improve its manageability, such as the ability to restrict access to external media devices, easy deployment of printer drivers and, most noteworthy, the image-based installation. However, myriad third-party tools also offer those features for Windows XP. That’s why moving to Vista provides little or no ROI from a systems management perspective.

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Paul Thurrott published a new review about Vista SP1. I covered many of the things he said in several posts here on 4sysops. But his article gives a good overview about the changes in Vista SP1. Actually, it is more of an assessment where Vista stands today. It might be of help for those who are hesitant to deploy Vista or not.

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Todd Bishop hosts the birthday party. He invited a couple of interesting people, not all of them came to wish a happy birthday. This post just contains my favorite snatches of conversation I picked up at the party.

The consumer version of Windows Vista was released exactly one year ago, that is on January 30, 2007. Volume license customers were able to get it two months earlier. At that time, I wondered why Microsoft missed the Christmas sales. Considering how long it took until the first Vista computers showed up in the shops, this move was not too bad with hindsight. It seems as if Microsoft already knew that it would be a long way to go for Vista. Nobody believed that adoption would still be a topic on Vista’s first birthday.

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Considering the bad and often unfair press that Vista got during the last months, it must surprise many that Microsoft reports the fastest revenue growth in any first quarter since 1999. 88 million Vista copies have been sold by now. That’s more or less the population of Germany. Since many have been waiting to upgrade, mostly because of the bad press, I would expect that it won’t be the last record that Microsoft will set in the near future.

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