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Published Date: 17 March 2009

JUST under half a million pounds has been spent on changing the government's IT system from Windows XP to Vista.

David Callister MLC queried in Tynwald today (Tuesday) why the decision had been taken to transfer from to Vista, which he said had proven to be the most 'universally reviled' product that Microsoft had ever produced.

He pointed out thousands had contributed to website forums entitled 'I hate Vista', 'Vista is c***' and 'Don't Buy Vista'.

'That's the extent to which Vista is reviled,' he said.

Chief Minister Tony Brown said the cost of transfer had been £492,000.

He said Treasury had approved the plan to upgrade to Windows Vista in October 2007 because the old system was no longer IT-supported.

'I am advised that the reason for the change was that the version of Windows used by government, known as Windows XP service pack 1, was no longer in support, and therefore Treasury through their Information Systems Division commenced planning to upgrade to Windows Vista as a supported system,' he said.

Mr Brown said the new system was currently being rolled out and the general view was that it was working well.

Juan Watterson (Rushen) said the government only went over to Windows XP in 2004 and questioned how long it would be before the replacement system was no longer supported. Mr Brown replied that was an impossible question to answer.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Send your comments to newsviews@newsiom.co.im

YOUR COMMENTS

To say Vista is rubbish is stupid. Some people like it, some people hate it. It's just their opinion. However, to say Windows XP is no longer supported to justify spending half-a-million quid IS deception. Note: Adding the letters 'SP1' means the claim isn't technically a lie because XP is now at SP3 (the technicalities of SP1 vs SP2 vs SP3 are irrelevant to this discussion). But Windows XP IS supported by Microsoft. I doubt the Politician is at fault - his advisors have simply "misled" him. Oops.
STEVE

The old operating system of Windows XP service pack 1 may no longer be supported but service pack 3 which is still supported would have cost a lot less to install. In fact, if the government PCs had been set up to accept automatic Windows updates, they would have been kept up to date with a supported system automatically. Microsoft are due to release another new operating system next year so is the Government thinking of upgrading then?
MIKE

Government waste again. What are they going to do when Windows 7 is rolled out in the near future? Will that be another £500k on top of this. This administration has to be the worst executive the island has seen. Regards,

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/

Mac OSX Native Giga File Player

Soundlib's new G-Player is a Mac OSX native Giga file player designed to play the large banks that require disk streaming. The company say that G-Player allows you to quickly modify some program parameters (ADSR, VCA, VCF...) without having to edit and save the giga file. G-Player works on Mac OSX as an AudioUnit plugin, VST plugin and standalone application.
Here's all the details from Soundlib...


Play your Giga files with this first native Giga player for Mac OSX. G-Player was designed to play the large orchestral sound libraries and supports disk streaming, dimensions, keyswitches and layered instruments.

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Disk Streaming
Only the initial portion of each sample is loaded into the computer's memory, while the rest of the sample is streamed from the hard disk. This allows you to play instruments that are larger than the available memory.

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The most commonly used sample parameters are directly accessible on the main window. For example, you can decrease or increase the release time of all the samples with just one knob.

Intel
G-Player is available for Mac OS X as an Audio Unit and a VST plugin. It is also available as a multi-instrument standalone application.

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G-Player can play and stream 24-bit sample libraries and uses a 32-bit floating point audio engine.

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This feature is used by the most prestigious Giga sound libraries and is natively supported by G-Player.


Pricing and Availability:
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More information:

• soundlib.com