Companies shouldn't rush to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista, according to analysts at Gartner, who believe most firms could safely hold back until 2008.
The majority of improvements in Vista will be security-related and most of this functionality "is available via third-party products today", Gartner claimed in a research note published on Friday.
While Vista will feature "offer incremental, evolutionary improvements" over its predecessors, XP users should "pursue a strategy of managed diversity" only bringing in Vista on new machines and not until 2008, the analysts recommend.
In its research note, Ten reasons you should and shouldn't care about Microsoft's Windows Vista client, Gartner highlights some of the weaknesses in Microsoft's platform strategy.
Internet Explorer (IE) 7 will have many security improvements "to stem defections from IE to Firefox" and "has been accelerated" to be delivered in early 2006. But the "important ability to restrict some browser activities to a lower privileged process" will not be available because it requires Vista functionality," cautioned Gartner.
The analysts acknowledged that companies who use IE7 and Vista will have fewer points of weakness.
Also on the security issue, the Windows Vista personal firewall is better than the one included in XP Service Pack 2, Gartner acknowledged, and will, crucially, improve security on inbound and outbound traffic — a particular issue with laptops. But, the analysts say, users should already have "a more than capable" firewall on their laptops anyway.
[? /*CMS poll(20004007) */ ?]Another Vista feature that Microsoft is emphasising is its search capabilities. "Search is slow in Windows XP and files, email and calendar objects cannot be found with a single search." While Microsoft has tried to remedy this in Vista, "competent third-party desktop tools are already available" from companies like Google, Gartner pointed out.
Talkback
Ignore Vista completly. Thats my advice. Vista requires 1-2gig memory to run well. And do you want to upgrade all your computers in your office for several millions or just get the best free....Download SUSE now..and get everything you want and more.....
Why wait to 2008 for next buggy M$ software eh...
Couldn't agree more. Vista is yet another NT version, XP with more patches on its patches. What a nightmare XP turned out to be when it was touted by MS as everything that they are now touting in Vista.
Don't upgrade hardware, don't replace perfectly working systems. Replace the software that doesn't work. Dump Windows!
From those who have watched Windows users twist in the wind for years and daily use reliable, safe, functional Apple computers, this ever repeating cycle looks ludicrous.
For the Windows user the best one can hope for is that this time Microsoft isn't lying, maybe Vista is really better. Every time you took this leap of faith in the past you were duped and at the next upgrade cycle Microsoft admits the last version was crap, when the new kludge is ready to be foisted on you and your money sucked up.
If all goes well you will get a few features that may work some times with Microsoft only stuff and at a horrendous cost. Mac users watch in amazement as Windows users drool over features they have had for years and often a decade or more, that they have always taken for granted because the features have always worked unlike the newly duped who go through contortions and hours of fruitless toil and cost to in the end accept it's just another Microsoft lie. Vapourware is the single product Microsoft excels at.
No Mac user has spyware, viruses, worms or back doors to worry them. Crap software and these malware plagues are simply not tolerated by Mac users. Windows users not only tolerate these huge costs and crap software implementations but seem to have pride in the level of torture they are willing to subject themselves to. Some perverted form of Stockholm syndrome or mass psychosis? Who knows but to those who have loved ones caught in this skewed reality it's truly disheartening and sad.
Although Microsoft's lies about how good their stuff is, is now met with suspicion and derision by current users, the anti-Mac lies Microsoft minions spread are swallowed whole with nary an inkling of how stupid that is. Mac users constantly try to inform the Windows users of the truth about computing, once free from the grip of Microsoft. Some of the brightest are saved but 99% are unable to rise out of their stupor.
This level of ignorance costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year. This is money companies and individuals could be using for good, but instead shovel it into the coffers of Microsoft the benevolent torturer.
Everything you will be promised in the next iteration of Windows, five years after Vista, is available and actually works now in Apple's Mac OS-X. Windows as always is so far behind it's users are convinced they truly are first. And so the cycle repeats.
Sites like this are never going to give you the straight truth. They also depend on Microsoft's obsolete operating system's kludge upon kludges bringing you back constantly, to find hope and solutions that never materialize. Perhaps today your mind is clear enough to start thinking for yourself? Buy a Mac and free yourself from the tyranny of Microsoft.
Yeah, because in all offices, the software they run, runs perfectly in SUSE, or any other *nix out there....
Look...if you want to download porn in mom's basement, then any *nix is fine. You want to run a decent server, then any *nix is pretty good (I prefer BSD myself). But face it, for how your average user works, Windows is it for them. Don't give me any arguments about how free any *nix solution is, because retraining your entire workforce is very expensive.
Besides, in 2008, 2 gigs of RAM isn't going to be enough to do anything at this rate. And MS will have something new by then anyway.
Vista isn't just going to be a bunch of eye candy overlayed over an old OS...there are improvements coming. MS isn't going to sit back and let itself get overrun without one hell of a fight, and the users are going to benefit from the results.
One thing is for sure. Vista will look a lot prettier than mac os x. And that is more than enough reason to upgrade. Other reasons would be for example the fact that it supports pretty much any hardware ever made. Now that is something neither mac or *nix do not deliver. What else. Oh yeah that's right you can run pretty much all software known to man on it. Again something mac and *nix lack..
Here's what's funny. Win NT was originally designed by Dave Cutler with well separated security privileges, but Microsoft executives insisted they were too inconvenient and had overrides put in. Now, Microsoft is being put back by years because they have to figure out how to restore privilege separation and still have legacy software work. That's what happens when you ignore the engineers...
Make that 2010. Given Vista 1,2 and 3. Excluding the additional cost of other Microsoft products (not excluding Service Packs) that will lock-in to that if one is not carefull. Strange that Gartner missed that somehow.
Fact is that Microsoft is usually running two to three years behind on less costing competitor offerings for those that cared to do their research.
Ignorance is bliss Windows Fan Boy!
I'm sitting here running four operating systems simultaneously on my three year old Mac.
Classic
XP
Linux
OS-X
Come the new year the only one running in emulation will run native.
Your stuck sucking on viruses, worms, spyware and the most obsolete operating system on earth.
Yes of course Microsoft will once again try to emulate the look of Mac OS-X so you can pretend you have a real operating system too. It works on Windows drones devoid of discernment every time.
Gotta love the completely ignorant information that passes as fact in Windows land.
Any half trained office monkey can be trained to use open office and a good Linux distribution just as quickly as a typical windows upgrade.
Go with Suse, or Mac. Anything but that putrid pile of rotting code from that criminal monopolist in Redmond
"One thing is for sure. Vista will look a lot prettier than mac os x. And that is more than enough reason to upgrade. Other reasons would be for example the fact that it supports pretty much any hardware ever made. Now that is something neither mac or *nix do not deliver. What else. Oh yeah that's right you can run pretty much all software known to man on it. Again something mac and *nix lack.."
Rofl.. Vista doesn't look "prettier" than OSX- which is subjective anyway. An operating system should do what you need it to do and do it in a stable and reliable fashion. The way it looks being "reason enough" might be the most foolish thing I've ever heard. If that was the criteria Apple Lisa and the first Mac's would've stomped Windows- not to mention OS/2.
There is plenty of hardware, by the way, that I have right here beside me that doesn't work in Windows XP so quit lying about "pretty much any hardware". In fact, I have far far better support for hardware in Linux for everything that I own.
Each platform has it's own strengths and weaknesses. *nix's weakness is that common commercial apps aren't ported to it. Windows' weaknesses are too numerous to mention here. It's strenght is marketing, ubiquity, and familiarity.
Windows does not support most of the hardware ... Most of the hardware supports windows. There is a diffrence there. The only real advantage that windows has over any other operating system is the market share.
As for Macs, they are junk. Anyone who brags about how great macs are, while completely ignoring the fact that Mac is an overpriced system runing a hand picked set of software on a hand picked set of hardware is in deep denial brought from the fact that they paid $3000 for a computer ("I paid $3000 for Mac therefore it must be amazing")
Vista isn't simply a super-patched version of XP, It's been practically written from scratch. While initial versions of Vista were based on XP, the developers realized that this constant system of patching just wouldn't work with what they wanted to do, and decided to base it instead off of Windows Server 2003, which had been written from the ground up for stability and security. This is one of the major reasons I'm looking forward to Vista.
Has Gartner used the beta for VIsta? the search "tool" is quite a bit better than google desktop search, or even spotlight(which was based off of an alpha of vista BTW) - you hit documents, all the documents on the computer come up. you choose filters, say stack by author, and folders are created - one houses all docs written by you, another all docs written by Microsoft, etc. when you are in explorer and you can sort by type, you can also stack by type, which does the same thing, only by file extension. neat as hell. The gadgets that will be on the vista sidebar and windows live are nice too.
Get SUSE instead of "upgrading" to Vista.
Joe S. -- you DO realize that NONE of the Windows versions are "rewritten from scratch"? Each new version starts off as the previous version, then they make changes to it.
2003 was NOT "written from the ground up", it was simply a new branch of the NT codebase. Yes, they did many stability and security related changes in it. But they didn't start over by any means.
In software engineering, you don't write each new version from scratch. That would introduce so many more bugs and incompatibilities. You start with something that's been worked on and tuned for years (development of NT started around 1989) and that has had countless bugs already worked out.
I do agree with your main point, though; Vista isn't a super-patched version of XP. XP is NT 5.1, 2003 is NT 5.2, and Vista is NT 6.0. So you'd exepct it to have a lot of new and improved stuff, which it does. People who think it's just XP SP3 or XP with a new face are quite wrong.
Dump Windows ?? kidding right ?
I heard about Vista requiring a monitor with HDMI (with DRM encryption) to fully utilize the graphics, if you don't have the approved newer DRM HDMI connection then the graphics get dumbed down (is this still true, or internet hype ?) I started looking into Linux. I already have a Sony 24" CRT widescreen with 2 outputs and don't plan on getting an LCD for years. All the ones I've seen look like crap, unless you can spend 10k+ (no need to debate, at least with my eyes).
I download the Live DVD Suse Linux 9, Live CD's from Ubuntu and Mepis and tried on my desktops and laptop and was very impressed with their compatability and ease of use.
I'm happy with WinXP Pro on all my computers so far. If you know how to lock the security down you will not have problems. I think it's good advice for companies to wait until 2008 before they make the switch, unless they're buying new PC's. Many home computer users will probably be excited when they get Vista, and will continue to be. But, I think home users should only buy it if they buy a brand new computer and they should probably wait about 6 months after it's released to be safe. 95% chance I'll get a new laptop with Vista on it 6 months after it comes out.
But, really looking forward to getting my feet wet with *nix soon.
What inspired the new GUI for Vista? Take a look around. MAC OSX, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, and Karamba Plugins. The first thing i thought to myself when I saw a screenshot was "Oh wow, Mac icons, *nix style toolbars, gnome looking file manager, with a karamba plugin. Give me about an hour and I'll have my desktop looking like that. And I can do it without a 1.2ghz processor.
I think that Vista will be to XP what ME was to 98SE: more eyecandy while functionality is not much increased (DRM anyone?).
Currently I'm trying (and liking) the Debian-based (K)Ubuntu (free of charge, tons of software. See http://www.ubuntu.com/).
Yes, I installed both KDE and Gnome. Can't/won't choose right now.
For games I still use XP but for the rest I use Linux. So for the next few decades I won't be needing Vista.
The HDMI requirement, AFAIK, is for digital screens/output only and then only for video. It is basically Macrovision for digital monitors...
The problem here is, I have several thousand Euros worth of perfectly acceptable LCD monitors here that are working flawlessly, so why would I upgrade them to HDMI compliant models just to watch video? If Microsoft or the manufacturers will retrofit the monitors with HDMI for free, then I'll think about upgrading, otherwise the upgrades will have to wait until I need new monitors...
That being said, I use SuSE for my main desktop now anyway, it is faster and, for me, easier to use than Windows. Installing was also a dream, insert the DVD and press a couple of buttons and 1.5 hours later it was fully patched and configured, the nVidia drivers were loaded, it recognised my sound card and lan card, set-up network printing to my JetDirect printers in a few seconds and had also included 2 productivity suites, several development IDE's, half a dozen IM clients, 5+ web browsers, and lots more.
What did Windows make of the same hardware? It complained that there was no hard disk (S-ATA), had to go out and buy a floppy drive for my "legacy free" system, download the driver on my Linux system and copy the files to floppy, then it installed Windows, but it didn't recognise my video card (nVidia FX5900XT, so not something esoteric), it also didn't recognise my network adapter (Marvell Gigabit), so I couldn't even download the drivers, no sound either, evidently Creative Labs sound cards aren't supported by Windows either. So, back to Linux and download and burn a CD with nvidia, Marvell (and for good luck all the Asus drivers for the motherboard), creative labs drivers, HP drivers for the network printer etc. back to Windows and install, then I can start the patching process.
The difference between SuSE install and Windows? SuSE 1.5 hours and 1 reboot, Windows 6 hours+ and over a dozen reboots, and that excludes any software other than Anti-virus and firewall...
What really bugs me with Windows is the updating process, it downloads a library change, I need to reboot, the AV software updates itself, I need to reboot, a service is patched, I need to reboot. Under Linux, the library updates and is re-loaded, the AV service stops itself and restarts, the other services as well, might need to reboot if I update the kernel...
Microsoft have a lot of catching up to do in terms of user friendliness and ease of use compared to most other operating systems on the market at the moment. Let's hope they have had an eye on the competition and can get their act together.
Nothing I've seen in Vista previews so far has grabbaed me as a "must have" feature that will make me go out and upgrade. The spanky 3D desktop features look nice, but the desktop is slow enough at the moment without adding 3D to it, and, sorry, but isn't the OS and desktop supposed to be there hidden in the background to make it easier for me to use the applications that I need to do my job?
If the desktop is so intrusive that I can marvell at its appearance and workings, then it is doing something seriously wrong! If it is just sitting passively in the background, passing me the information I need and allowing me to do my job quickly and easily, then it succeeded.
If I switch instantly from app to app, that is good design, if the desktop goes through animations and rotating 3D interpretations of windows, then that is bad, might look pretty, but it is slow and reduces my productivity...
On the other hand Dave Cutler wanted a command line driver OS. Bill Gates persuaded him to go GUI. Sometimes you shouldn't listen to the engineers :)
Patriot: You DO realize that Vista is built from scrach?? Windows Vistas is rebuild from ground up. So if you don't know facts, then don't tell anyone lies.
Harijs G. - show us ONE piece of evidence that Vista was built from scratch. Go to blogs.msdn.com and try to find ONE post to support your position. You'll find many posts to the contrary.
NT 3.1 -> 3.5 -> 3.51 -> 4.0 -> 2000 -> XP -> 2003 -> Vista. Do you honestly think they threw out all that code and started over from scratch with Vista?!
You're the one telling lies.
The only OS built from scratch from MS is that "Black Hole" thing called Singularity. And THAT won't become a main stream OS.
Vista is indeed based on WindowsNT Server 5.2. The only version of WindowsNT that was ever written from scratch was 3.1, all the others add nothing more than a few security patches and new "features". WindowsNT 4.0 - 5.2 all share the same kernel - the differences are in its user interface (explorer), applications (MMC, WMP), drives (filesystem, network, etc), and networking protocols (Active Directory).
Why should Microsoft spend huge ammounts of money and time re-writing Windows when they can just make a few minor modifications and pass it off as a new product? Think of all the money they make selling the same product over and over to the same people when half of the new "features" should have been present in security patches years before.
Think about it, what are the differences between NT4 and NT5? MMC, WMP, PnP drivers, better version of Explorer. what about NT5 and 5.1? slower interface, a few new games, and a bad attempt at a firewall. None of these things are worth spending a few hundred $$ upgrading. As for the windows series, what differences are there between 95 and 98? aside from Active Desktop (usless but available with IE4 for win95).
In conclusion, Why should Windows Vista realy be any different from XP? As long as they change the logo, add some new useless "features" that no one uses, and decrease its performance (so it looks like the new "features" actualy do somthing), people will buy it thinking they are "upgrading". At any rate, most of the new "features" one might actualy use in Vista are already available for XP at no cost.
OR, dump windows all to gether and be rid of its security, stability, and performance problems.
I've read all your posts with great interest. It reminds me of the playground from yesteryear. My toy is better than yours beause....
Does it really matter what a new OS is from? In the real world of brass tacks away from the title tattle, companies will ty to reduce their spend. If the TCO is actaully lower for running SUSE (for example) when all is accounted for (Training, implementation, business risk assessment blah blah), then thats what they will run.
Linux is right for some companies, not for others. But watching the Linux arena shape up does make the obvious viewing that as Linux in whatever flavour takes your fancy is starting to give Redmond a run for their money. Gartners view of 2008 for me is excellent advise as if you have budget put asside for the upgrade, you may well find many companies at that time will migrate instead of upgrade.
Oh, and on the subject of what built from what. I'm sure Redmond are not angels and rebuild from scratch, but look at the MAC progrssion path or the orogins or Linux.
No programmer should ever be let near the design of an operating system. The design should be done by marketing, psychologists and sales. This is why linux will never be a serious desktop operating system the above people dont work for free instead you get geek ware, written by geeks for geeks (who think a command line is cool)
abandon one tyrannical company for another, very sheepish of you, jeez, maybe I'll spend tons of money on outdated hardware that doesn't perform as stated to a company that holds not only a hardware monopoly(initial purchase) but their own software monopoly.....how bout this, convince your beloved Steve Jobs to not be such a cockweasel and offer the OS up for use on x86 hardware. Maybe then your comments will actually be accurate. shit, like apple gives two craps more than M$ does about it's clients.
You guys are barking at the wrong tree.
Gartner is stating the obvious, gets loads of $$$$, mass media coverage, etc. perfect advertisement.
Helloooooooooo all IT technicians know you don't just go and upgrade to the latest OS! Heck even Service Packs warrant vigorous and sometimes even months of testing before deploying it to the whole department/company.
People that want to wait for Vista because of something in there they really fancy are better of finding alternative means to get that now (if you're willing to wait for Vista for just that then it must be important for you, right?) then to wait for Vista to mature (2006, 2007, 2008?).
Isn't the next version of Mac OS going to be running on x86? Regardless, I probably wouldn't use it.
I used to be a die hard Windows fan. Eventually I saw the light. I've been running Suse for about a year now and dabbled in Red Hat and Fedora, and I would never go back to Windows. All I'm using now is Suse. My work runs 100% on SUSE based thin clients, with over 100 users Statewide. At home I have a 850 Mhz PIII with 384 MB of RAM. Still Works great. I can burn DVDs, record TV shows, download and browse the Internet. I think the only thing Linux and my hardware can't do is support all the latest and greatest games. That game support gap as far as the OS is concerned is slowly closing though thru 3rd party developers.
I'm not sure if I would have made a change if I hadn't been forced to though cause of my job. If people think making the switch is difficult then that means M$ propagandist are just doing their jobs. I hadn't touched 'Nix in years, and never X windows. Within a day or two at my new job I was caught up and confident in my new role as a sys-admin for a linux based company. If could do that, than any run-of-the-mill office worker can learn what they need to do to get their job done in a linux environment easily enough. It doesn't take that long to teach someone the minor differences Evolution, StarOffice, and Mozilla have from their M$ counterparts.
There is only one reason to use Linux: FREEDOM.
Windows is pretty good operating system. It does not crash as much as people say. I remember seing Windows XP crash only once in all of the years that I have been using XP.
I honestly have many more problems with My ubuntu computer than with any windows system. Just the other day I spent couple of hours trying to get nautilus to read my floppy drive.
The only reason to use linux is freedom:
1. Freedom to use your computer any way you want to use it.
2. Freedom to distribute coppies to your fellow humans without feeling like a filthy pirate.
3. Freedom to have your hardware do exactly what you want it to do and not what Sony, apple or Microsoft thinks you should be doing.
4. Freedom to modify, improve and change your software.
Freedom comes with some nice conveniences. I can update install and uninstall software any time there is a new version with just a few clicks without thinking twice about it. My windows compatriots have to go to store and buy a $100 glossy box, as if they are buying actual product and not just a set of instructions for computer to perform.
I could even (if I had time and inclination) create my own linux distribution with ofiice software, development software, etc. and compete with Microsoft. Imagine that -- one guy competing with multibilion dollar international software company in every field trough-out software stack.
Freedom is important and companies are trying to take it away from us. They are introducing legislation, creating restrictive and invasive prducts, propagating misleading advocacy, and in general treating consumers more and more as surfs and less and less as respected customers.
That is why it is important to use free software (open source) whenever possible.
"Your stuck sucking on viruses, worms, spyware and the most obsolete operating system on earth."
And your running 4 operating systems on one system. Thats alot of attack vectors.
How much time do you spend patching them?
Freedom to pick up and SDK and try and write something yourself.
Freedom to find out that its not that easy to write code.
Freedom to spend hours trying to find a solution that does what you want on the net.
Freedom to give up because your not free anymore. Your a slave to your system.
Freedom costs. Just ask anyone in Iraq
"Don't give me any arguments about how free any *nix solution is, because retraining your entire workforce is very expensive."
This is a very common FUD statement. Any with general knowledge of Windows will very quickly adapt to f.inst. SUSE, or StarOffice or it's free sister OpenOffice. End-users click on icons, and most office staff fill out forms. Maybe a hard fact to swallow, but look at your fellow business workers.
Why is it always very difficult to switch away from Windows products, and not to a new Windows product?.Where's the similarity of working in XP , NT, 98 or the fiasco ME? How easy will it be to change to the new MS Office, where the user interface is completely different.
Was it easy the move from NT server to 2000server, or from 2000Server to 2003 Server, where ALL administrative menus and methods were changed.
Was the AD a simple thing to do ?
There might be improvements in Vista, comparing to other systems there is a lot of room for improvements. And again we will listen to the tale that this time it is correct, like W/2000 "The OS that will never need a fixpack" as stated by Balmer.
And again disciples will believe it, and pay once more for MS trying to write a decent piece of SW. Time to get off the spiral of death.
have you ever try to install Windows xp from scratch? I did. Everytime, it was hell. The last time, it did not recognize sound+modem+video card+wireless card. <I am not mentioning the update hell of SP2 etc.> I had to pop in the driver cd from the manufacturer to make the thing workable. So, (to repeat many of the messages posted earlier) it is not that windows supports hardware, but hardware (manufacturers) support windows, bc. it has far more consumers, who usually are illiterate when it comes to computers. If manufacturers did not support the hardware, then the retailers (dell, hp and whatnot) would not use them, which means no significant sales at all for those manufacturers.
In the same machine, pop in the ubuntu cd, and almost everything works. Trow in the ndiswraper + linmodem support, then everything really works (minus 3D, because of the manufacturer who is not releasing specifications to anyone else). No driver Cd, no support AT ALL from the manufacturers, thus linux supports the hardware, not the other way around as it is with windows.
"Install XP from sratch...Everytime, it was hell"
Your experience is sad but likely not the norm. I've never ever had a problem from Dells to No-Names. And I've done literally tens of them, perhaps up to a hundred since XPr1.
Windows flavors are operating systems. Every OS has its goods and bads.
I work in software, designing and developing creating services and businessware for a major eTailer. It's my gig and I've been doing it since Apple2's and DOS3x's. I own Macs and I own Windows boxes. If your opinion is supposed to be valid then mine should be too, as a professional user of the releases from both of the major vendors. And here's mine that logically will even out yours:
"Ever tried upgrading from Panther to Tiger OR starting from scrtach with TIger just a month after it came out? I have and I counted the mass of download patches required just to get Tiger to work (one month aftret it was released: 117MB then reboot then another set then reboot then find out that if you want your printers to work you have to petition GIMP because Apple says 'we support open source and don't support the drivers that you paid for with TIger.'
XP setups, in this person's humble experience, have been a cool breeze in comparison
Vista is a good work.
I see that in Beta1 and I have a low-end computer...
ATX500W
MB: MSI Neo-V
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 NorthWood 2.0@2.6GHz
RAM: 2 Banks of 256MB DDR400 (256*2=512MB)
Video Card: NVidia GeForce 6200@6600 8Pipelines activated, AGP8x 256MB DDR2
Audio Card: Integrated RealTek, 5.1 Speakers
TV Card: TV and Radio, Philips SAA7130 Chip
Modem: 56k Lucent WinModem
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.1RPM 160GB, ATA
CD/DVD: 1. NEC DVD-RW ND3520A (or 3530, boh...)
2. ARTEC WRR-4848, CD-RW Unit
With this PC Vista Beta 1 works fine... I have the Aero Glass effect... but is too slow after 20days of use.
This will be corrected on final version securely...
But I don't love Windows...
My Favourite O.S. is only Slackware :)
In front of DOS-Based and NT-Based M$ operating systems, Vista is a g00d g00d g00d g00d work :D
Final version of Vista will need a graphics card with 100% support on DirectX 9.0c.
DRM Monitor is not necessary.. if exist. :)
If Video card is not DirectX 9.0c fully compatible, you will not see the Aero Glass effect...
I have the Vista Beta1 and with my GeForce 6200 works fine :)
it maybe worth ingoreing vista fro a while but i have com to find it work well on 512mb of ram
couldn't agree more... Heck I tell clients this ALL THE TIME... If you got something that is working well right now and your happy with it. Why mess with it just for the latest thing? In the end its a logistical nightmare to do so.
80% of my clients use server 2003 with Windows 2000 pro and office 2000 pro and have ZERO problems... On the occasion we get a new machine I get them to get Windows XP PRO and just change the settings to a more traditional windows 2000 interface in looks. so all the workstations work and perform basically the same way.
I just do not see a reason to go to the trouble to get windows Vista at all. Unless MS suddenly decides to make it impossible to buy legal Windows XPs sometime soon? In such a case Most of my clients would be so upset I know we would be looking at OS alternatives away from MS. I have already successfully pitched Sun Java Desktop (Solaris 10) and Open Office to Several companies in such a case.