Intel says 'no' to Vista upgrade

When I have to run Windows, whether in VMWare on my MacBook Pro or on a work-issued laptop, I strip down my XP installs to the bone, switch the theme to the plain-jane Windows 2000 look, and never look back. I cannot fathom upgrading to Vista under any circumstances, as long as my apps -- Oracle software, database design software, and Office -- will continue to run on XP.

There needs to be a compelling reason to upgrade your OS, because most users don't care about the OS. They run applications. If the OS is moderately stable (XP is) and the applications run on it, why upgrade?

Apple continues to offer some nice features with its OS upgrades, and since the development features in Leopard are so strong, many apps are starting to be Leopard only. Is there anything comparable in Windows Vista, except maybe some specialized 64-bit apps?

I would assume not too many if any here do Windows support at the level of using MS's deployment tools and such along with managing such systems.

The good...MS has some nice features in Vista as well as Server 2008 that are good for tech's like myself and these features never get any press.

The bad...a tech supporting Vista in an environment like mine is, is proving to be nearly suicide. MS has things so confusing regarding what deployment tools to use it's crazy...one example is the number of times that they've changed names of these products since the beta. I've seen ImageX and XImage along with AIK to WAIK and back to AIK or maybe it was the other way around. Then there came the BDD, BDD 2007, and then change it to MDT 2008.

Of course then there are the bugs in sysprep and their answer file system that is much more complex than it needs to be. Apparently they never figured out that while sysprep under Win2k and XP weren't all that complex once you understood it, there were alot of people out there that never got it or really struggled. Their answer? Make it five times more complex...I guess they hope to make money off of books and classes.

With the bugs I mentioned above apparently MS never bothered really testing anything remotely like an unattended install. Apparently their use of "unattended" is merely a marketing buzzword. Yes, we just love to have to hit the internet for hours to find workarounds for what should work as advertised.

Sure we get paid to deal with this stuff but it's a frustrating job to be in. Now I can't wait to hear the faculty and staff request to have UAC disabled and then watch some of their software break.

I can see why Intel said no. Apparently their support team has a voice that is listened to. Sure wish someone where I work was listening.

I think the real bellwether was the private sector.

I also agree on saying no, but there is that one BitLocker feature that is in Vista Business only that could be helpful for some people.

HAhah! Maybe they should use Macs.

The advantages to Vista are that it's a little more user friendly and it's prettier. I don't see why a business needs to switch. Especially when hardware can only perform worse or not at all on Vista compared to XP.

Can we get an RSS feed for TUAW which only contains Apple-related stories?

Haha!! Vista actually sucks!! I just wrote a review on it actually, its not completely biased!! http://macaddict.eu/2008/06/23/windows-vista-review/

What a coincidence, I too say 'no' to Vista!

I don't see many compelling reasons to upgrade existing PC running XP to Vista either (at least for corporate users). At the same token, I don't see much downsides for getting Vista with a new PC, provided all the drivers and applications you depend on work.