Release for Vista SP1....

[SteveOBHave]

That kinda goes without saying though and is only to be expected, few companies would be able to gear up for a major OS deployment before SP1 came along anyway.

Dunno sometimes enthusiests need to have it pointed out every now and then because they often loose sight of what (or who) actually make the world go around and why people like Microsoft produce their product.s

The Linux/Open office thing comes up on a regular basis but it's always the headline "free" bit that people see. Linux/open office is generally not free for an enterprise customer as you don't trust a $4billion business to a bit of code you downloaded from the net, that consists of code bolted together by unknown people and has no one standing behind it to guarantee fixes/security updates if the poo hits the fan. In that case you need to go to Red Hat or Novell etc, in which case software purchase price for Enterprise versions become a very small part of the TCO when you take into account support, staff retraining, existing data conversion, compatibility with suppliers/customers blah blah. I can't remember the actual figure but inital purchase price of enerprise software is something like < 10% of TCO.

Linux/OpenOffice is very rarely a serious consideration as a general purpose OS/App for a major company, it's much more often used as a stalking horse during Licensing negotiations with MS. Where Linux and Open source is good is in niche applications and situations where a general purpose OS like Windows may be unnecessary or not as focused.

This has been true for a very long time, but with the likes of Novell producing a more enterprise oriented OS like SUSE for both server and workstation environments, I can't see the perception of the Linux product being so niche for much longer. You're dead right about linux being used as a stalking horse but it is certianly being perceived as being a much more real threat than it used to.

Of course like you say - retraining has been one of the main reasons why everytime open office and SUSE come up in boardroom discussion the general consensus is "computer says no".

At least for our server environments we see much higher productivity and stability targets being met - in fact our email server has an uptime of 149 days - a number almost unheard of from an Exchange server.

 

[dirtydog]

I didn't say you were wrong, I suggested to upgrade your network drivers because it works fine on my PC.

I've just checked it again and installed the very latest network drivers, dated 12th June 2007. It's a Realtek RTL8139 btw. No difference.

What I did try is displaying the LAN status window alongside the system tray icon. Funnily enough the big icon in the LAN status window works exactly as it should, just like in XP. ie. if you are downloading constantly, both lights will stay lit the whole time. Yet while this is happening, the lights in the systray icon are not corresponding to it. You get one light in the bottom, then it goes off and the top one lights, then both go off for a second or two. And then it repeats. It keeps on doing that for a while after the other lights have stopped entirely, once the download has finished.

Got to be a bug surely.

(both lights lit in the window but in the tray icon, the lights are slowly cycling through)

 

[Macro]

This has been true for a very long time, but with the likes of Novell producing a more enterprise oriented OS like SUSE for both server and workstation environments, I can't see the perception of the Linux product being so niche for much longer. You're dead right about linux being used as a stalking horse but it is certianly being perceived as being a much more real threat than it used to.

At least for our server environments we see much higher productivity and stability targets being met - in fact our email server has an uptime of 149 days - a number almost unheard of from an Exchange server.

I tend to agree, a good strong alternative OS generating competition (or at least the threat of competition can only be a good thing. It either gives us an alternative, or ensures MS has to come up with the goods to retain it's market share.

The trouble with products like Exchange (and no offence to anyone reading this ) is the ease of installation and copious use of wizards, along with frankly scary choices of hardware for what should be mission critical services makes for a bad combination. To be controversial and as counter intuitive as it is, I'd suggest Server OSs and Exchange etc should have no wizards and strict HCL. Far too many Exchange / IIS servers are installed and configured on desktop class PCs by techies that "know a bit" about stuff One of the reasons Linux based systems do well is A) no one understands it so it's generally installed / maintained by a professional that has experience / knows what they are doing. B) IBM throw a bucket load of global services bodies at it & persuade people to run it on AS400/high end systems in order to get a win over exchange/windows.

Windows Server Datacentre was the right way to go, no unsigned drivers and only available on pre assessed server kit via OEM. 4 & 5 9s uptime was fairly straight forward. Unfortunately companies are used to MS solutions being relative (compared to say AS400) cheap and won't spend the money on the H/W, environment and training they would for high end systems - even though the company depends on those systems.

It's funny really, companies expenditure on the purchase of enterprise software running a business comes way down the list of total cost, somewhere significantly below office furniture. In fact Windows & Office for a large enterprise costs around the same per seat as a the average decent office seat (although i guess it takes more looking after )