What's wrong with Vista?

[cjolley]

If you have a lot of boxen with 512MB and Intel graphics, they're approaching end-of-life, right? Let's face it - you get a snazzy 1 year warranty with those things.

We buy our boxes with 4 year warranties. And use them for about 5
The deals we get on boxes (and warranties) are very good because we buy on a contract that includes the entire state government. Parts not so much.
My office is stacked 4 feet deep in w2k boxes we just retired while I try to find them a home.


PS I'd have to go from desk to desk, but it wouldn't surprise me to find we had some with 256.

[Claymonkey]

It depends on your Citrix server version. Claymonkey could comment more, he's currently "Mr. Citrix".

But virtually all Citrix can be made to work under Vista, by hook or by crook.

A lot of companies are moving AWAY from the ICA client. 10.0 was terribly, but 10.1 and 10.2 work pretty well under Vista. However, why use ICA when the web interface 'just works' and can run under either Java or ActiveX?

[Claymonkey]

We buy our boxes with 4 year warranties. And use them for about 5
The deals we get on boxes (and warranties) are very good because we buy on a contract that includes the entire state government. Parts not so much.
My office is stacked 4 feet deep in w2k boxes we just retired while I try to find them a home.


PS I'd have to go from desk to desk, but it wouldn't surprise me to find we had some with 256.

You know.. I still tell people to expect 3 years from there servers/desktops. It's not that the hardware technically can't handle today's OS if it has enough ram... these things just age. You are going to get that workhorse that has lasted 10 years but more often than not you see more and more of that purchase order die each year. The cost of replacing your hardware every 3-4 years far outweighs the maintenance cost of keeping those old systems up and running.

I DO realize finances doesn't always allow this and its easier to sell that tech's salary (and possibly overtime) than an upfront cost. However, something like leasing your computers through CDW is EXACTLY what this kind of mind set is for. It doesn't cost much different and you always have a reasonably good system that hasn't been beaten for years.

[Claymonkey]

... of course I say while still thinking that Vista isn't quite worth my time yet and internally thinking "YAY XP"

[Jammrock]

Win 7 ~= Vista R2. That was the answer I got when I asked an MS rep.

[cjolley]

Y...The cost of replacing your hardware every 3-4 years far outweighs the maintenance cost of keeping those old systems up and running.

You know it doesn't really work that way for us.
Maybe our users are especial easy on their computers, but we hardly ever have a computer break.
The techs spend the vast majority of their time on software fixes and new setups, even though we hardly ever replace a box that is less than five years old, frequently older.

Servers are another matter. We NEVER use a server in production that is out of warranty.

[cjolley]

Win 7 ~= Vista R2. That was the answer I got when I asked an MS rep.

That's why I said it was interesting.
He acted like this was something new.

Though, it's possible that MS has just decided they need to dump the Vista name as quickly as they can.

And if you think of the difference between the original XP and SP2 it doesn't sound like such a bad thing.

[ND66]

...
My office is stacked 4 feet deep in w2k boxes we just retired ......

What?!

Why would you retire perfectly good machines????

In our manufacturing environment we have some boxes running Win 98 on the shop floor….




.

[VJ]

Why would you have to replace anything? You don't HAVE to run Aero Glass! Vista looks just fine without it, still a substantial facelist over WinXP. Nothing runs SLOWLY without the new graphics. This is a business workstation we're talking about, right?

True...

But I personally find it feels not as responsive as it could be (running on a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz, 1 GB ram, scsi 10k harddisk and Matrox Parhelia). Esp. copying the files (before the fix) was terrible: it took ages for it to compute how long the copy operation will take.

Why upgrade at all? Keep the 386! In all seriousness, MS Virtual PC is now FREE. If you REALLY REALLY REALLY need legacy support for an app so old that it just WILL NOT INSTALL under Vista, run a VM.

You first have to install an OS on a virtual machine. This OS also needs updating (esp if it also resided in the network). Ideally would be something like Wine for Windows, which runs applications virtual without requiring an u underlying OS.


Jörg

[Gurm]

True...

But I personally find it feels not as responsive as it could be (running on a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz, 1 GB ram, scsi 10k harddisk and Matrox Parhelia). Esp. copying the files (before the fix) was terrible: it took ages for it to compute how long the copy operation will take.

Yeah, that's one of the well-publicized bugs. It's been hotfixed a dozen times, and service packed, and is much improved.

You first have to install an OS on a virtual machine. This OS also needs updating (esp if it also resided in the network). Ideally would be something like Wine for Windows, which runs applications virtual without requiring an u underlying OS.

Versus spending a ton of time making a horrible old piece of software work on a new OS and new hardware? Seriously - if your business finds 10-year-old software to be "critical", something needs to be rethought.

[Claymonkey]

Versus spending a ton of time making a horrible old piece of software work on a new OS and new hardware? Seriously - if your business finds 10-year-old software to be "critical", something needs to be rethought.

My main thought on this is the Medical Industry. they were the first to do HUGE databases. They were ALL proprietary. There is a huge industry now in how to update them and integrate them. This is actually one of the major hurdles in standardizing the industry. They aren't the only ones that have this kind of issue. Then take any shop that uses a piece of equipment that cost $20-200k and uses an old serial/scsi port and yeah it's 10-20 years old but damn it still does what we want better than what we can buy now.

[VJ]

Versus spending a ton of time making a horrible old piece of software work on a new OS and new hardware? Seriously - if your business finds 10-year-old software to be "critical", something needs to be rethought.

True, but you'd be suprised how primitive many of the essential software is...

Back in 1993, I did a student job for a company that process frozen foods. There stock-management still used a PDP-11 dating back to 1976, and just in 1993 they were upgrading to a new system . Those things aren't uncommon.
(it is suprising how businesses get any work done at all )

A second example is ISA-boards. Many custom built systems where built on ISA boards (even after PCI became available). The main reason was that an ISA board is much simpler to manufacture, which is a big plus if hardware is purely custom built. Such ISA boards where used to monitor medical equipment or to monitor other hardware, and need their own software. It is also for this purpose that some manufacturers have actually put ISA slots back on Pentium4 mainbaords, but you'd still have to be able to interface with it (a virtual machine might not suffice here).


Jörg

[rylan]

Some of our hardware/fpga development tools and simulation software either doesn't run on or isn't officially supported on Vista.

Running it on an XP virtual machine from Vista isn't a realistic option either. That and even outside engineering our company has no plans to migrate to Vista due to some of the other obscure software they use in other departments.

[Tjalfe]

Some of our hardware/fpga development tools and simulation software either doesn't run on or isn't officially supported on Vista.

my guess.. Xilinx ISE. I have the same issue, and dual boot XP/Vista at home for that same reason.
The stupid thing is that their paid for software officially supports it, but the free version, which as far as I can tell is more or less identical, does not

[rylan]

Exactly!