enterprise Windows Desktop

Migrating to Vista…or Windows 7?

I’m a long-time fan of Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley’s blog on ZDnet entitled “All about Microsoft.” It’s usually informative, sometimes entertaining, and often thought-provoking, as with her recent July 23 (2009) blog The Scarlet V: What’s a Vista business user to do? The blog itself raises some interesting points, but it’s the Talkback discussion — where users share their comments, views, and rants — that really makes this particular posting so interesting.

Foley reminds us of Microsoft’s changing stance on enterprise migration to Vista, as follows (the points recounted are hers, the paraphrasing mine):

• Until recently, MS told enterprises to keep migrating to Vista if said migration was underway; otherwise enterprises should skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7
• In May (2009) MS pretty much clammed up about Vista and hasn’t said much new about migrating, pro, con, or indifferent

This led MJF to Mike Angiulo, General Manager for Microsoft’s Planning and PC Ecosystem team (man, wouldn’t you love a title like that? to whom she posed the question about whether or not MS is abandoning its Vista users. Short version of his response: 1. No we’re not. 2. Lots of good stuff for Windows 7 will also work for Vista. FWIW, Dell is also taking a similar line, and the USAF is continuing its Vista deployment, with 90,000 desktops and notebooks already deployed, but is also moving as quickly as possible to get on the Windows 7 bandwagon.

The talkback section includes 150 postings as I write this and they make for fascinating reading. The attitudes span everything from “Vista sucks” and “Microsoft is the spawn of the devil” to “Vista is rock solid, and poses no problems for my organization” with many conceivable intermediate points of view also represented. The fragmented state of the Vista user base is clearly represented, and among those actually interested in using MS operating systems, I see a trend for most enterprise users to favor a move to Windows 7 as soon as it makes sense to do so. Some enterprise users say they won’t move until SP1 comes out, while others say they’ll wait for SP2. Microsoft already knows the road to widespread adoption is long and full of potholes. Let’s just hope that Windows 7 helps to improve road conditions rather than making them worse, as was an all-too-common perception for Vista until SP1 came along.

But only time will tell. Stay tuned!

Patch Tuesday Back to Normal for July ‘09

According to the most recent Security Bulletin Advance Notification for July, things are a little less hectic this month (6 bulletins, 3 for Windows, 3 for other products) than they were last month (11 bulletins total). What we see this time around is a bit less threatening and potentially dangerous overall, which is not to say that you can simply skip this month’s go-round: all three of the Windows bulletins earn Critical ratings for remote code execution and should therefore be handled immediately. Two affect most Windows operating systems, and the third affects all DirectX versions from 7.0 to 9.0c for most Windows operating systems.

The other three bulletins are rated important. One affects MS Virtual PC versions 2004 and 2007, plus Virtual Server 2005 R2. Another affects ISA 2006 versions, and the third affects Microsoft Publisher from the Office 2007 Suite. The first two involve elevation of privilege, while the third involves remote code execution.

Other items for the upcoming patch release include a new version of the MS Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, and other items may appear in the official release bulletin when it’s published on Tuesday, July 14.