Two Federal Agencies Ban Windows Vista

ZDNet is reporting that The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have banned upgrades to Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, for their tens of thousands of employees.

Large organizations often wait 18 months or more before adopting new operating systems, until they are sure the transition will be smooth. It's small businesses and individuals who get stuck as the guinea pigs for Microsoft OS updates. You can no longer buy a PC with XP in a retail store or from Dell, Gateway, etc.

"You'd have to be crazy to upgrade a real PC to Vista at this point." noted Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for WIndows last week.

"There appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products," according to a DOT memo.

Hi B.L.,
One quick correction. Paul Thurrott's comment is actually a year old and in regards to the Community Technical Preview Build 5308.

If you look at his review of Vista at the end of December 2006, his view changes dramatically, writing:

"Should you upgrade? Yes, you should. I still prefer clean installs over upgrades, though Microsoft has made progress with refining the upgrade process, and of course you're going to get the absolute best experience buying a new PC with Vista preinstalled. If your computer is more than two years old, you should upgrade to a Vista PC as soon as possible. If you purchased an XP-based PC in 2006, try to get another year out of it. I can think of virtually no Microsoft customers that shouldn't consider Vista per se, though the cost of upgrading can certainly outweigh any potential benefits of doing so."

I'm not excited about Vista but I do have to agree with Bob Clark's comment. Paul's review on build 5308 is one year old, so quoting him one year later after many updates have been done on Vista is very late. I'll consider this post to be too late in the game or better yet, i'll pretend i was reading this post one year ago.