As if the commotion over Windows "Workstation" 2008 weren't enough, a recent survey of IT shops shows that over 70% of respondents will still be using their "current OS" in 2009. Since the overwhelming majority (92%) of these sites are still running Windows XP, that means that Vista will likely never achieve critical mass in the enterprise.
To those of us working "in the trenches," this really comes as no surprise. Resistance to Vista has been stiffening in recent months, with many shops crying a Roberto Duran-esque "no mas" as they leap off the Wintel treadmill in droves.
So, if Vista is doomed, and if IT shops are indeed rejecting the OS en masse, the question has to be: Was Microsoft's new OS dead on arrival?
I asked myself this very question as I was assembling my 10 reasons why it's really OK to stick with XP (It is, honest! See "Death Match: Vista vs. XP" for details). As I thought back through Vista's first year - the struggles with buggy drivers, WGA's invasiveness, the disappointing SP1 - I realized that the writing was indeed on the wall. In fact, many of us who were beta testing Vista back in 2006 quietly expressed our concerns to one another in web forums, chat rooms and the occasional email thread. After all, we were privy to some of the earliest Vista bits, and what we saw disturbed us.
Here was an OS that, from an enterprise IT standpoint, had almost nothing going for it: No major new technologies; no paradigm-shifting architectural changes; nothing to whet a system administrator's appetite. What it did have was layers and layers of consumer-focused baggage: Pervasive DRM plumbing; dubious multimedia prioritization tweaks; OS X-envy driven eye candy. Basically, it was an OS designed to secure Microsoft's seat at the RIAA/MPAA roundtable, and little else.
I'll never forget the day early in 2007 when one of my contacts at a Wall Street trading firm asked me how I liked Windows Vista. I responded with a half-hearted "great," to which he replied: "Really? So tell me why you think we should upgrade."
I was stumped. I couldn't think of a single reason why one of the largest financial institutions in the world - with tens of thousands of desktops and a multi-billion dollar IT budget - should move to Vista from their well-tested, proven Windows XP configuration.
It was a seminal moment for me - the point at which I realized that the vague sense of unease I'd felt early on was in fact my subconscious telling me what I knew to be true all along: Vista was a lame duck; a false hope; a cadaver before it ever hit the operating table.
So, as we start to formulate an epitaph for Windows Vista ("Here lies, in bloated agony, all that's wrong with the Wintel duopoloy"), we must look to the future and hope that Microsoft finally learns from its mistakes.
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