What a Vista Upgrade Will Really Cost You 482
narramissic writes, "James Gaskin wrote an interesting article this week about what he recons it will really cost organizations to upgrade to Vista. Gaskin estimates that each Vista user will 'cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That's each and every Vista user. Money will go to Microsoft for Vista and Office 2007, to hardware vendors for new PCs and components, and possibly a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac.'" Any sense of how realistic those figures are?
FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
-nB
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Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
While many desktop users "are still fine with machines purchased 3-4 (or more) years ago" that does not make it a good thing to do. I know desktop users who are fine with win95/98....do you recommend they stay on those platforms? I sure don't. While users who are using winXP are going to be fine for the next few years, they will eventually need to upgrade. Nobody is saying run to the store the moment vista hits the shelves (well except MS and people who will reap some benefits from those sales) - most people will say wait until SP-1 (/. people will say wait until SP-3552352).
The cost to upgrade will be there, but for organizations who have been using XP for a number of years, they have gotten their use out of it. They can stay on XP, but it will not cost 1.5 to 2.5k to upgrade.
Re:FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
Many small to medium size companies choose not to lease or buy "Big Brand"; meaning, you don't always get a new Windows COA on a piece of hardware.
I just finished a new business install w/ a dual xeon server and 6 workstations. My build estimate was substantially lower than Dell and landed the job. (Specifically, my server build was lower than Dell by nearly $800 for the same hardware -- neither of us providing Win2k3 SBS. The workstations, also beating Dell by nearly $200 per box, all used recycled Win 2k Pros -- COA's pulled from retail, not OEM, licenesed systems that the client provided from their last business).
End nut? New hardware that did not come packaged with new Windows.
Had the client been forced to buy new licenses for the workstations (and not recycle existing, valid, licenses), the cost would have been an extra $870 for OEM XP Pro's.
Now, the client has a rock solid workstation using an OS that is already proven with their OS/Software choice. And they are thrilled.
Any reason to move forward to XP (with another OS migration in the next 1-2 years)? No.
Would the migration to Vista have cost this client more if they had chosen big built OEM? Absolutely, especially when one considers the cost of the new equipment (Microsoft Tax included), and then a secondary migration to Vista a year down the road.
Remember, not everyone leases with a dollar buyout to ride the write off. There are many businesses that are working on a small(er) budget that will definately pay more for the transition.
The nitpicking line is now open... fire away.
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Client's were installed with a very good NAS solution that backs up the single App run off the server.
Each workstation was finalized and then imaged with all necessary mapping configured. The final image is stored locally on a DVD in each station. The reinstall is held on a CF card run through the IDE slot. If failure occurs, booting off of the CF and reinstalling the image takes exactly 12 minutes -- that's 12 minutes from uh-oh to working again. The only necessary step afterwards
is to updat
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Mostly because I wound up with a lot of 12 unopened installs in a closed auction. I'd originally tried this with Acronis TI 8, but kept getting errors during the reinstall. With the mobo's I've used with this procedure, I've not had any problems.
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I'm working on a 2k machine right now that's up 24/7 and wh
Re:FUD (Score:5, Informative)
As I'm in a relatively small town, with a shop on Main St (literally), most of my business clients are within a 5 minute walk. And as such, if a business client needs me now. I place an "out of the shop for an hour" sign on the door and am at their disposal.
To answer the question above parent about undercutting Dell not being worth it:
It's funny. Everyone talks about how business need to evolve to make the required changes to compete. In my situation, it's actually very easy.
I don't sell computers. I sell a service. When a client comes in for a consultation with me, we sit down and map out their needs. I provide the client with a selection of hardware choices and include my recomendation. Once components have been selected, I provide the client with either Newegg or Tigerdirect ordering numbers (in the case of Newegg, I offer to setup a preliminary client account w/o financials, and fill their cart). The client actually orders their own parts and I assemble and provide a one year (hardware) service warranty on each assembled system.
My billing is very simple that way -- I don't handle inventory, so there's no taxable sales. I provide service only and charge flat rate service fees that are set as to complexity and provide scalable discount for quantity. i.e. Workstation builds are $150 a pop. More than three builds gives a 10% discount, five builds - 15%.
I sketched the initial idea and handed it to my accountant for refinement. I now have a very simple business model that is beginning (after two years) to show some real stability.
The majority of my PC business is walk in cleaning jobs and reinstalls for Mom and Dad. Occasionally I get to build cool stuff (high end gaming rigs and HTPC's), I've got 8 systems on the floor for closed LAN party gaming, a 12'x 10' chromakey green screen for novelty digital photo's, and now we're branching out to cover novelty karaoke recording and mobile garage band and gig recording on the weekends.
So, again, when asked how it's worth competing with Dell... because I don't try and rape each client for every last dollar they have. I offer advice and reasonable service charges.
Fortunately, my wife and I own our home. We have no children (or plans for them) and, generally value our friends, and peace of mind more than keeping up with the Jones family.
Also -- we try and incorporate our own personal interests into our business (I'm a musician, therefore: recording, she's an artist and photographer: so, greenscreen photography. We both like gaming - so, closed LAN parties on Saturday nights).
The last part sounds a bit preachy, sorry. But after the article yesterday on dwindling IT jobs in the country (and a few very solid reader comments about hardware support and instllation), I just felt verbiage heavy.
It's easy to compete, when you don't. Use the current market as an advantage and wipe away your inventory. If you don't have the pockets to compete with Walmart, Circuit City or CompUSA... don't. Use online sellers to your advantage and build off their lower prices.
Works for me.
Re:Exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Installing identical software on many machines is easy too. Either use dd to copy an entire drive (BTW, this even works with Windows: boot from a USB device if possible, otherwise a DVD+RW drive [DMA-capable, won't slow down the bus] on hdb and have hard drives on hda and hdc); or set up your own local mirror of your favourite distro, and install over the LAN via http or ftp.
Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
So the requried hardware for Vista didn't really cost me anything extra because it was I was going to buy it anyway as part of my system upgrade cycle (I have a system upgrade cycle?!?), and Vista didn't cost me anything because it came "free" with the hardware.
Well that's a relief. I thought that money I was going to spend was real. I can't wait to tell the CFO the money I'm telling he's spending doesn't really cost him anything.
And I guess the good news is that I'm no longer paying this same nothing twice, too.
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The article should read 'upgrading all your computers to brand new ones, trashing all your old hardware and putting Vista and (for some reason) MS office on them will cost $3000'.
B
Re:FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:FUD (Score:5, Informative)
If your department/company is on desktops then the upgrade costs for a rollout will be minimal anyway as a vista PC will likely only be a couple hundred more than a bottom end XP box from dell, and I'm sure the entire optiplex line will be Vista compatible.
-nB
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he reality is the latest and greatest is rarely all it's cracked up to be.
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I guess you missed the part about the volume of PCs that are notebooks?
Physical abuse takes it's toll far more than software issues. All one needs do is refresh with the latest and greatest image for that notebook build and you've fixed any software issues. The hardware takes a pounding, that pounding increases the rate of parts wear out on the notebooks, that's life.
Really, not to flame, but I don't get your point.
-nB
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Re:FUD - A lot of misconceptions here... (Score:4, Informative)
Not to pick on you in particular, but there is a pretty big misconception out there that Vista requires everybody to upgrade hardware. I was at a TechNet event (mandatory for work) last week regarding Vista deployment and the MS rep stood in front of 1000+ people and told us that officially, Vista absolutely WILL run on *any* box that comes with a Microsoft "Designed for XP" sticker on it, which most people are already using in a corporate environment (and if you're not, then you're clearly not the early-adopter type anyhow). Part of the install checks your hardware capabilities and turns off eye-candy and such to (hopefully) make a reasonable-performing system.
There is reason to be skeptical that it will perform just as good as XP, on exactly the same hardware, but he said that this was one of Microsoft's priorities.
Anyhow, my point is that most people won't *need* to upgrade just to run Vista. XP Ready == Vista Ready (although not necessarily "Vista Optimal").
Not everything is about technology people! (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't anyone know the WHOLE reason why the TCO of computer infrastructure rises after three years? Don't ANY accountants read
The TCO of computer hardware includes "depreciation expense". The government allows a certain percentage of your fixed assets to be written off for tax purposes.
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We are in the semiconductor industry, and while your wanting sales and MarCom to have notebooks is obvious, I'll agree the rest is not so obvious:
Techs: Notebooks allow them to have their computer no matter where they are (in a lab, at their desk, in the cafe, checking e-mail over breakfast, etc.) What I've noticed is that most of the techs desks are now empty. They've set up shop in the lab and basically live there. Since labs are up to 3 buildings away from peopl
Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be the cost of:
- replacing/training desktop support?
- training the rest of the workforce?
- lost productivity due to the above?
Re:FUD (Score:4, Funny)
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Of course. Are you new here?
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I really hope you aren't suggesting that the differences between Vista vs. XP are similar to Vista vs. Linux.
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remember, most corperate users have the IQ of a small box of rocks and they absolutely freak when things change. XP was a dramatic enough change we had to schedule training for most of the sales and marketing staff.
and do not get me started on office 2003. incompa
Maybe (Score:2)
I don't have those answers (I'm one of those "switchers-to-Mac") as I haven't seen Vista.
VISTA requires ALL new hardware (Score:2)
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I somehow doubt they'd upgrade Jenny in HR to a Vista ready machine when she can do her job with a 512MB Celeron, do you?
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When something in her machine blows up the IT department will grab a machine from spares, throw the latest image on it and give it to Jenny in HR. At that point she will be running on Vista.
IT depatments (at least the one here) don't spend money for the hell of it, but they are not going to try and save $500 in hardware costs only to increase support costs by several times that. The fewer builds you have the better, that's the way you deal with 100K unit PC deployments. Sure you have a ton
Yup.® FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Corporate customers don't pay between $750 and $1k for Office - our enterprise licensing for Microsoft products (which includes the OS, Office Professional and Server and Exchange CALs) runs about $200 per PC per year.
Re:Yup.® FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
So you pay, at a minimum, $600 for that copy of Office. The only way that SA would cost you less is if you upgrade Office every 2 years or less. And exactly how much money would you spend to stay on *that* upgrade treadmill? Why would you even *want* to do that, even if the software were "free"?
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last time I was in corperate IT we certianly did not buy the high end stuff for sales. marketing and management. we bought lower-middle to give performance where needed and certianly opted out of the 3d graphics capabilities.
Have you even tried running vista? I have. and it sucks without a good 3d card. kind of like how XP sucked on the p-III hardware that was normal when
Re:depends on the company (Score:5, Funny)
heh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:heh (Score:4, Interesting)
Because we need to keep a number of machines fairly current, I can spread around the older machines to places where they are useful two or three times until they are either no longer useful or have been supplanted by something better.
For the record, I've still got some PII-233 machines out and about - I don't believe in upgrading for the sake of upgrading!
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There may also be legal issues particular to the preparation of taxes. That I'm not certain about, but governments may be touchy about limiting the liability of ANYONE involved in the process. Or they may want to certify the programs (and charge for th
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
heh, what were they doing (Score:2)
Seriously, when I was writing simple C programs on an 8088, that was suuuuper slow and an upgrade shaved about an hour of compile time a day. For programming, I chose an extra monitor over a dual core box. Long gone are the days of starting the compile and finishing the cup of coffee before its done.
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I work on a mid-sized C++ project where the build times are approximately 30-40 minutes. I can finish a can of dew in that time, easily. Incredibuild has drastically reduced that time to about 6 minutes.
Note: I don't work for Incredibuild, just am a customer w
Re:Try Telling That to the Coders (Score:5, Interesting)
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My biggest peeve is a lack of development focused PCs, we're saddled with the 'standard' footprint that everybody gets. I don't want email, or office or anything else non development related on my dev box. All developers should get 2 machines - 1 cookie-cutter footprint for mundane office stuff, and one completely unshackled and free dev box (on a separate dirty LAN).
The amount of prod
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Of course if you need to reimage your machines every 6 months, then you're obviously doing some other things wrong too.
Re:depends on the company (Score:5, Informative)
I tried RC1 over the weekend. With a 2 ghz processor and 1 gb RAM, at Idle I was pushing 70% physical RAM usage and a constant 10% load on the processor. I wrestled with Neverwinter Nights till it ran and the graphics lag was unbearable, not unplayable, but when it runs qwuite smoothly on the same system with XP or 2K3 server, there is an issue.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the heck do you need to upgrade everything at once?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's common practice to upgrade to every other major Office release. Organizations still running 2000 are considering the upgrade to the latest.
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True. And you can tell clever from not so clever companies by which versions they use. 6 was ok, 95 (7.0) was a lemon, and 97 (8.0) was the best ever, in my experience. 2000 (9.0) got mixed reviews, as got any version since. I have 2003 (11.0), and it is pretty slow even on a recent machine. 2007 (12.0) actually looks pretty good again, although very different
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Here is the breakdown: (Score:5, Funny)
$ 900: Vista License
$2100: Solid Gold Mouse
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A solid gold mouse is only $2,000 (Score:3, Funny)
Article Text (Score:4, Informative)
I estimate each Vista user will cost your company between $3,250 and $5,000. That's each and every Vista user. Money will go to Microsoft for Vista and Office 2007, to hardware vendors for new PCs and components, and possibly a few bucks to Apple for those users jumping to a Mac. After all, if Apple's higher cost has been the factor keeping your company from trying a Mac, that factor just washed away.
Why $3,250-$5,000? Here's my calculation. Feel free to tell me what your company has budgeted, and whether you believe your own numbers.
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000. Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement. You need 256MB of video RAM to run Aero properly, no matter what Microsoft's marketing says. I don't know of any motherboard-based video chip sets that include 256MB of RAM. Upgrade? While in the PC, add memory: Vista needs a minimum of 1GB of RAM. The hardware cost of the RAM may be less than your labor costs getting that installed in every PC. If your exiting PCs can take full advantage of Vista, I'm happy for you. I don't believe you, but I hope your upgrade goes well.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000. After all, your company always buys the "professional" packages, right? And they have to be installed, right? If you're getting a much cheaper quote on both packages installed and tested, let me know.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers? Can you run both on one box? Didn't think so.
Document your objections now, because next year the vice presidents will blame IT for their busted budget. But the housing market appreciates you taking up the slack. James E. Gaskin writes books (16 so far), articles and jokes about technology and real life from his home office in the Dallas area. Gaskin has been helping small and medium sized businesses use technology intelligently since 1986. Write him at mailto: james.gaskin@itworld
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Now, how much of a productivity boost do you think people will get from the new version of Windows. The majority of
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For most of our people, I think we're around $500/system, including the extra XP license.
If we were to put Vista everywhere, we'd have to upgrade about 90% of our systems. Not likely to happen. Despite being a Microsoft shop, if we upgrade before three years go by, it will be either do to developer demand (and then only their machines), or we'll be shifting our staff to a nicely manageable Linux system, like Novell Desktop.
New Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
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I have a system less than a year old at home that kicks the crap out of my work PC and Vista STILL runs like a dog on it, I fail to see how my work PC that just barely chugs along on XP will EVER run vista, aero turned off or not.
As far as turning off aero, have you ever dealt with a user who's "screen saver" did not look as spiffy as the next guys? On the helpdesk I work at, I estimate a full 5% of the calls are users caling in for such 'vanity' purposes. One guy gets vista, they will
Moo (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me as realistic as the numbers in this story [slashdot.org].
OK, some details.
Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of that.
Methinks this person knows not what he speaks of. My "corporate" computer is more powerful than my (admittedly older) gaming PC.
Is this guy serious? The "primary" upgrade inducment is looks? I bet he doesn't have a girlfriend...
Vista, for better or worse, has quite a bit more to offer than just "looks".
So, i should believe this guy more than MS. Granted MS has a stake in saying it needs less, but this guy seems to have it in for MS just the same.
Even if that was true, why does that affect corporate PCs, which are usually higher quality.
Actually, if we're talking corporate, upgrades are rarely done for a variety of reasons.
I assumed this meant "existing". Exiting is a different word, having nearly the opposite meaning.
And sarcasm? *This* is an article?
The rest of the "article" is worse FUD than MS puts out.
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forgot an f (Score:4, Informative)
App upgrade cost shouldn't be counted (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Hardware upgrades that would have happened anyways. Apply the "Microsoft Tax" and cost of supporting Vista -or- the manpower cost to install XP to the vista-upgrade cost, leave the rest segregated.
2) Application Software upgradest that would have happened anyways, or that would have happened but for the fact the new software requires Vista
3) The cost of upgrading vista, including supporting Vista, training end-users, license fees, Microsoft Tax on new computers if tax is above license fee for the version of XP you were using, and for companies NOT upgrading, the manpower involved to "downgrade" from Vista to XP.
Yes, that's right, "upgrading" to Microsoft will cost you manpower for every new MS-license-equipped PC even if you stick with XP. Happy Happy Joy Joy.
Office and Windows? (Score:3)
New PC's to cost $1500-2000? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if I wasn't a budget oriented IT guy, I sure couldn't justify spending $1500-2000 on a system. For that everyone better be getting hotrod laptops w/ 17" widescreen displays.
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then add on the time it takes you.
Then add on the cost of retraining the staff
then add on the cost of lost productivity due to the switch.
Bingo $1500-2000
No reason to upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not Really.. (Score:4, Informative)
Come on, people. Sheesh.. If it works in my VM Ware image, it will work with old hardware..
Vista's requirements (Score:2)
If a company wanted to upgrade all its machines to Vista they'd first need to buy computers that support the minimum requirements, unless Vista support machines with integrate
Vista will cost me nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
I switched to Mac in March, and after a few Windows-only tool withdrawls, I must say I am doing fine and will never switch back. I'm tired of the weak security and exploits. Using Windows started to feel like walking down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood at night. When you feel like you have to continually watch your OS to make sure it's doing the right thing, in my op it's time to get a new OS. So I did.
That's not to say Mac is perfect and I'm sure the time will come when security will become a more focused concern for Mac users, but I have faith (oddly) that Apple will see this coming, remember what mistakes MS made (and will no doubt continue to make), and adjust accordingly.
And if I'm wrong, there's always Linux
XP will stick around (Score:5, Insightful)
If the move to Vista is stretched out over a number of years, much of the cost will be absorbed by normal new hardware spending, and I don't see XP becomming rare until the next decade.
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Excuse me? We still have people in this very company using NT4.
And you know what? They realized long ago that there is absolutely no additional value in 2k or XP over NT4 for the average office worker.
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One of my home systems runs NT4 - PII 450, 384M RAM, all SCSI. Been running 24/7 since December 1998. Not one problem - ever.
Someone forgot about bundling (Score:2)
These numbers are correct, if their IT people are incompetent.
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I just pictured an IT person working for a fortune 500 company going to Best Buy or something and buying 100,000 copies of Vista Pro (or what ever the high end version is called)....
Sorry this early in the morning it struke me as funny.
Aero in the workplace? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hooked on drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
MS and the MS-kateers really pushed Sharepoint at work like it was the greatest thing since the wheel. It did nothing for me, and I really didn't see the point (a few small end-user hand-holding convieniences and the usual glazed-over security problems, but that really seemed to be the extent of it), but it was *FREE* . Just like that first hit of crack, sans the high, but complete with the addiction and heavy hidden future costs. The curious thing is the MSkateers, when asked about security, just say "Its secure", after they give you the usual nasty attitude.
*sigh*
I'm almost to the point of keel-hauling vendor reps on a parking lot who give you free stuff to get you hooked. Dell gave us a blade server with one blade, in the hopes of us filling the rest of the slots. We won't put anything on that box, because of Dell's disasterous server track record (100% rate of failiure of some component withing the first three months, 0% for everybody else). Its hard to tell a CFO you have to say 'no' to this new free thing that looks to have some kind of value, and then get money for important projects in the future.
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This is FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, Vista is a trainwreck, but unless there is some gigantic inexplicable performance disaster between current versions and the released build, the above is very much in the 'obvious fabricated attention-grabbing FUD' area of truthiness. Given that Vista works fine without with 128Mb video RAM and 512Mb system RAM, the argument above boils down to 'Hi guys, I need hits on my articles so I'm going to make preposterous claims and get linked to!'
If I were spreading Vista FUD, I'd focus on the much more difficult question of 'what will it actually do for you? Specifically, what does it do that Win2k doesn't?' Sadly, the main answer is 'Well, Microsoft will make sure that new stuff doesn't run on Win2k'.
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They are on a 3 year lease, we get a new kit every 3 years. Will it run Vista? The desktop guys say yes, but it is not pretty.
But then, this is a business, it doesn't have to run pretty.
Nah. (Score:2)
The big, big cost will be user education and support - which TFA didn't mention. Even 2000 to XP confused people enough to have a significant extra support cost.
Th
Totally unrealistic (Score:3, Informative)
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
Even if we ignore this very important flaw, a Vista basic ready machine from dell is sub $600. Including a laptop. I bought one myself a month ago, and it has 512 RAM and is Vista ready. Very decent machine for the money.
Add maximum $100-$150 for a DirectX9 card (Aero Glass), and you have a full blown Vista desktop for sub $750.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000.
Existing Office versions work just fine in Vista. Many people use Office 97 in XP.
Also "depending on your volume purchases" is quite a stretch. Notice the prices of Office and Vista (the corporate editions) and you're looking into more like sub $500 for both, if you're that keen on the new Office, that is.
Office Pro 2007 upgrade is $320-ish. And most people don't need Pro, they need the basic Word/Excel/PowerPoint pack. Upgrade: $239.
Vista Business upgrade is somewhere in those figures too, so sub $500 for all goodies, and sub $250 for Vista.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers?
Again he presumes we need Office 2007, while his heading says "Vista" upgrade: misleading. If the back end is good for your business, good enough to outweight the cost, the cost doesn't matter.
If it doesn't, then you don't buy it, simple as that.
----------
Totals:
Vista upgrade only - ~$250
Vista + Office upgrade - ~$500
Vista + Office + PC upgrade if outdated hardware (avg) - ~$750 (pessimistic: $1000)
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You confuse "Vista ready" (aka: Minimum specs) with "useable". We all know what Win95, XP, etc. are supposed to run on, and I've seen machines considerably beyond those specs that are slower than my old C64 on GEOS used to be.
Don't forget that for corporate use, minimum specs won't cut it. There's additional software that needs to run, networks to be accessed, and besides, the minimum requirements to run Office at an accep
NOT FUD (Score:2)
Complete FUD (Score:2)
Cost to my company of upgrading will effectively be zero, as it'll come free preinstalled on PCs that we'd have been buying anyway.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Now, let's go back to our prices..
So, let's not count everything from zero and buy/build new pcs for vista from scratch - those number will NOT be that big
Wow! It's really worth it! (Score:4, Funny)
Keeps IT employed - No joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely inaccurate (Score:3, Interesting)
Why $3,250-$5,000? Here's my calculation.
And here is why he is wrong:
New PCs will cost $1,500-$2,000.
Darn few existing corporate PCs will have the video horsepower needed to run Aero, Vista's primary upgrade inducement.
Depending on your volume purchasing agreements, new copies of Vista and Office will total between $750 and $1,000. After all, your company always buys the "professional" packages, right? And they have to be installed, right? If you're getting a much cheaper quote on both packages installed and tested, let me know.
The real value of Vista and Office 2007 includes new collaboration services. This means new back end servers. Most estimates place the back end support cost at $2,000 per user, but I used a range of $1,000-$2,000 for my calculations. Why get Office 2007 if not new SharePoint and Exchange servers? Can you run both on one box? Didn't think so.
The items the guy completely missed is training costs, deployment costs, and business process changes. Those will wind up costing the organization just as much, if not more than the licensing costs. The cost IS higher than licensing alone, but not to the extent that this guy claims, nor for the reasons he expects.
-Rick
Here's what I see happening (Score:2, Insightful)
Small businesses will delay their upgrades until they absolutely have to get off XP/2000 server/2003 server. The small businesses that I've done contract work all own their machines, they don't lease. They upgrade as much as possible until it no longer makes sense. Many are still using P2's and P3's loaded with as much RAM as possible to be able to run XP smoothly. Because their current environment simply works, there's no rush to upgrade.
Medium sized businesses may test the wate
It was hugely expensive to move to XP... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, this isn't to say I agree with the figures. I haven't seen them, yet. With 2000->XP and OS9->OSX, there typically weren't hardware upgrades required. It was mostly technician time. But there was a cost, and it's not inconsequential.
If you would have started three years ago... (Score:3, Interesting)
...moving your key production applications to web-based alternatives, standardizing on FireFox and Thunderbird for web browsing and email, and getting people comfortable with OpenOffice by handing out disks for everyone in the company to take home and play with then today you could laugh at Vista upgrade costs because you could use any client OS you wanted.
Some companies have actually been doing that and now it's paying off.
I believe his calculations are going to prove pretty close to on target. If they're over it won't be by much. I use the following rule of thumb guide for hardware/software upgrades/refresh:
Math and reality suck when you are a whiner! (Score:3, Interesting)
All PCs eventually get lifecycled, and all new PC's come with a copy of Windows (Vista starting next year) whether you like it or not. Worst case you have to upgrade from Home to Professional versions at purchase time. If you want to use your existing PC, then just pay the upgrade fee. Unless your hardware is old, it will probably run Vista with a minor memory upgrade. If your hardware is old, buy a new Vista ready PC.
Vista needs more powerful hardware. So? Once upon a time a new PC had a 286 processor and less than a 1MB of memory. By christmas most PC's will be Vista ready. If you really want the full Aero experience, upgrade the video card when you buy the PC.
Office 2007. If you already have a version of office... upgrade! Why would you buy new? If you don't have Office now, then you don't need Office 2007.
Finally. Why do you need Vista & Office 2007? For most of us XP & Office (XP or 2003) is good enough for now. Do you need Vista & Office 2007 or want Vista & Office 2007? If you are an early adopter, then its the price you pay.
Short of it. If you have never owned a PC, the cost of buying a Vista ready PC with Office 2007 is probably going to be steep. As you have no legacy requirements (how could you if you have never owned a PC?) then think Linux or Mac. Otherwise you are buying into the perpetual M$ upgrade program with both eyes open, so don't complain. If you do own a Windows PC with Office, then you are already in the loop, so upgrading is the cost of doing business.