Vista Service Pack 1 Set for 2H'07 Release

[alakhiyar]

Microsoft prepares for Vista Service Pack 1

Many consumers and businesses make the decision to stay away from new Windows releases until the first service pack becomes available. According to internal Microsoft emails, the first service pack for Windows Vista could come as early as this year.

[nihil]

Interesting,

That is about when I and many others were expecting it. It is also pretty consistent with previous OSes.

I don't think that most private consumers consider service packs, they buy new kit and go with what OS they are given.

I can understand the corporate mentality, as you can usually reckon that the OS will have had any major problems resolved by SP1, and you save an additional roll-out.

Another thing with Vista and the corporate/institutional market is the fact that Vista is quite demanding hardware wise. Those sorts of consumers tend to take a minimalistic "low end" approach to hardware procurement, so will be affected by budget constraints. They don't want to be hit by new hardware and upgrading costs at the same time as the new OS costs.

In the case of government, military, education and healthcare the budget is the main constraint rather than the technology. You have to wait for the existing kit to be phased out before you can get new, and IT is always at the bottom of the food chain

Financial practices and taxation regulations also play a part in some spheres. I distinctly remember the Year 2000 project I worked on. We replaced a lot of kit so as to kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately our site was hit with a $250,000 "hidden cost" as not all of it had been fully amortized (depreciated).

Apart from the naturally cautious approach of some sectors (finance for example) and consumers, I think that there are other forces that push in the same direction.

My main concern would be that MS might be tempted to push out a service pack more for marketing reasons than technical considerations.

Just my £0.02

[alakhiyar]

i dont know. the way i see it, vista rtm is already more secure then the latest updated xp. also, im am SICK of xp. it still has that clunky win95 feeling to it. after my 2month workout with vista, i cant wait to upgrade...

[nihil]

Perhaps,

But not across 1,500+ desktops with a net book value of $500,000 or so??



EDIT: Perhaps I should elaborate on that a bit, as my observations are based on what is happening where I am.

The first thing you do is look at your hardware inventory and categorise it as follows:

1. Will support new OS as it is.
2. Will support new OS if upgraded.
3. Needs to be replaced.

You then need to cost #2 and #3, remembering that #3 contains both the purchase cost and the residual value of the kit to be scrapped.

Then you have all the costs of the actual OS deployment.

Unfortunately most organisations are ruled by accountants, and it is difficult to persuade them to replace something that is working perfectly well as it is. Particularly as there is no obvious tangible benefit in doing so

Just take a look at most organisation's applications...............they don't look much different from Win 3.1x do they? and most would run quite happily on a PIII with onboard graphics.

Accountants don't like paying for "eye candy", believe me, and they have little idea of security.................that is for us to provide through our security models and authorised usage policy?

[alakhiyar]

It is not just the accountants.
If/where the corporation is large enough,
The enterprise levels also have CIOs and CFOs,
And believe me,
If you want to keep your job,
You better have some excellent reasons to justify any additional costs of any kind.