[Nottingham] Virus warnings as Microsoft launches Vista

[Graeme Fowler]

On 01/02/2007 16:02, Michael Erskine wrote:
> Hmm, people keep asking my opinion on Vista: I don't have one so I tend to ask 
> them what they know about Vista and what it offers. For the most part it 
> seems that nobody knows! The advantages over XP don't seem to come easy or 
> they come at a price that is too high to be warranted.
> 
> In the meantime, the blogosphere is slagging it off...

FUD aside, every reasonably slanted review (ie. those without any real 
agenda biasing them in any direction) I've seen so far seem to say that 
there is no real, compelling reason to go to Vista if you're happy 
running XP.

The killer paper for UK Education is here:

http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=28267&page=1661

Excerpts:

"On Vista

The report found that whilst the new features of Vista add value, there 
are no “must have” features in the product that would justify early 
deployment in schools and colleges. The technical, financial and 
organisational challenges associated with early deployment currently 
make this a high risk strategy. Early deployment is therefore strongly 
recommended against."

"On Office 2007

As the costs of deployment of Office 2007 would be significant, Becta 
has not identified any convincing justification for the early adoption 
of Office 2007. Recognising that many schools and colleges already have 
perfectly adequate office productivity solutions there would need to be 
a strong case to justify the necessary investment."


In effect (IMO), the paper is a very strong warning against deploying 
either Vista or Office 2007. It is a well-researched, non-FUD driven 
guidance paper which isn't scared to voice what it found.

Long term, of course, things will change, but I like the "it isn't ready 
for prime time" viewpoint.

Graeme