11/19/2007, 6:10pm, EST
Monday, November 19th
Vista woes lead IT pros to Macs, Linux
Many IT professionals are turning to Mac and Linux systems to avoid installing Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system as an upgrade, according to a survey conducted by King Research. Of 961 IT professionals polled, a whopping 90 percent expressed concerns about migrating to Vista. What's more, over half of those surveyed said they had no plans to use Microsoft's latest operating system at this time. Macs are currently the most favored alternative to Windows with 28 percent of respondents saying they would most likely to turn to Macs, rather than upgrade to Vista.
Some 25 percent of those surveyed chose Red Hat Linux as a viable alternative to Vista, while SUSE Linux and Ubuntu each attracted 18 percent of respondents.
"Clearly many companies are serious about this alternative, with 9 percent of those saying they have considered non-Windows operating systems already in the process of switching and a further 25 percent expecting to switch within the next year."
Most concerns about upgrading to Vista revolve around stability, according to NetworkWorld, although compatibility with business software required to run on Vista was also often cited. Some IT pros pointed to cost as a source for concern about upgrading to Vista.
Many of the professionals polled said virtualization -- a technology allowing one computer with compatible hardware to run foreign software at near-native speeds -- is a key to veering away from Microsoft's technology.
Other challenges still face IT departments looking to steer clear of Vista, however. The survey found that 49 percent of respondents need to manage multiple operating systems, while 50 percent said they would need to learn a different set of management tools. No less than 60 percent of IT professionals polled said they manage their Windows installations with tools that don't support non-Windows systems.
Some 45 percent of survey participants mentioned challenges with system management in non-Windows operating systems as a barrier to adopting alternatives to Vista.
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Huh? We have upgraded about half of our company to Leopard with no problems yet. What 'massive array' are you referring to? The lowest common denominator being an 800MHz eMac. SO I would say older hardware compatibility is pretty good. We have no plans to migrate to Vista however, as it is definitely anemic, at best, on old (1.5 years old) hardware. We have have Apple's OS overhead to be considerably less the MS's.
I have tested about 150 applications and the only app that gave me trouble was my Daily Dilbert app I have compiled under Tiger. This being key to my businesses productivity, I recompiled it with XCode 3 and it is running fine.
I have set up a test server with one of my G5's to server as a temporary file server, and Intranet server with no problems. I am looking forward to getting my hands on Leopard Server.
In fact it is faster in almost every aspect over Tiger or Panther, and supports the new features efficiently as well.
Now it's the other way around, he wishes the entire infra-structure at our institution was mac.
How sweet it is!
MS has had this coming for a long time. While windows users fear Mac because they're unfamiliar with it. Mac users loath Windows due to the absolute pain in the nether regions it has been to work with a windows world. MS has been a bully and has-literally-made made non-windows users lives harder. Oh, they could have been inclusive-easily-but they wanted to dominate the world. Computo-fascists.
What was that click? Oh yeah, another percentage of market share going to Apple!
But if you've got an existing Mac hardware base, you're basically screwed. Existing Mac users don't love leopard as much as the reviewers do (hey, Apple did a great job making the Dock even less usable then before!). And then there's the compatibility issues with some existing software. And before you say "Hey, you don't have to upgrade!", you do, because new Macs will only come with Leopard and have no ability to run Tiger.
And that's the difference between Macs and PCs/Windows. Because Apple makes the hardware AND software, they have no incentive to keep them separate entities. Where you could buy a new PC and probably put Windows 2000 on it (and definitely XP), Macs have no such ability (hell, you could install MS's OLD OS on a new Mac, but not Apple's OLD OS!).
Since when do IT departments upgrade to a new OS within a year anyway? Hell, several years after XP was released and many were still running WIndows 2000. And nothing is forcing them to upgrade.
BTW, I like how they manage to make it sound like Macs were the top choice, when, in fact, at least 61% said "Linux!".
Our IT has eschewed Vista for the reasons mentioned in the story. We won't be going Mac in a big way, but it has put a futher taint on the MS brand. Until Vista is as trouble-free as XP (which is no bag of candy), you won't get wide spread adoption-in mission critical industry- for some time.