NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - Microsoft may have put the nail in the coffin of its own Vista operating system (OS) after releasing Service Pack 3 (SP3) for the XP OS during the past two months, according to a number of credit unions that are avoiding Vista until Microsoft truly sunsets XP.
“We will never see Vista here,” said Brad Williams, VP-IT at $1.4-billion South Carolina FCU here. “I am going to guess that XP will get us through to the next OS release by Microsoft.”
iQ CU is of the same mind: “Considering Microsoft's ‘new every two’ mantra, it is likely another desktop OS will be out before we consider migrating from XP,” said Brad Wood, information systems manager at the $392-million credit union in Vancouver, Wash.
That’s an about-face for South Carolina FCU. Williams told Credit Union Journal last year that Vista would be on all the CU’s desktops this year.
But times have changed. Though Microsoft claims that it will take XP off the shelves at the end of this month and cut off Extended Support in 2014, the computing giant may rethink its strategy: consumers are circulating a mass Web petition to save XP and businesses are demonstrating what some see as a lackluster adoption for Vista.
“I think it's pretty likely that XP will continue to sell for a good long while,” Williams said.
Many credit unions told Credit Union Journal that they will stave off Vista as long as possible, keeping their operating systems current by installing XP SP3 within the next year.
SP3 offers a few enhancements to the XP operating system, including improved detection of black hole routers, Network Access Protection, an update to the menu text in the security options, and a change in the Windows Product Activation process, said Jackie Buchanan, CIO at $610-million T&C FCU in Bloomfield Hill, Mich.
Still other CUs said they won’t upgrade to SP3 or Vista because they have kept XP current all along by adhering to an ongoing patch management program.
The question most IT managers are asking about Vista isn’t “what’s wrong with it?” but rather, “what’s right?”
“I’m sure there are lots of things Vista offers that aren’t available in XP,” said David Merritt, director, IT, at $110-million cPort CU in Portland, Maine. “But until Vista provides something we can’t live without, or XP can no longer meet our needs, I don’t see a business case for investing the resources in upgrading.”
Steve Mooney, VP-information services operations at $1.6-billion Tinker FCU at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., had stronger words for Microsoft’s latest: “Vista is a disaster at this point, and Microsoft has a great deal of work to do before it becomes mainstream in business.”
Vista lacks two fundamental components of computing: stability and reliability, said Mooney, whereas XP is “well-established,” said Wood.
Furthermore, Vista doesn’t seem to talk to most third-party systems.
“In the past, when Microsoft released a new OS or service pack, it wasn’t long before our third parties started getting their software compliant and then started announcing end of support for the old OS version,” said Williams. “However, with Vista, this appears to be the complete opposite. So far only a few of our vendors have officially announced a compliant version of their software with Vista and none of them have given an end-of-support date for XP.”
Wood pointed to an FTP client program at iQ CU as an example. “With XP, the client we are licensed for works great. With Vista, this client must be upgraded, and at a cost. This is a rather small issue, but when you consider the many small utilities used by credit unions, and the hundreds of PCs used, these small expenses can add up very quickly.”
In fact, Vista could put a chink in the armor of Microsoft’s business computing dominion, Mooney continued.
“This could spell the end of the operating system dominance by Microsoft,” he said. “Vista turned out to be a bad move. It uses at least 4GB of RAM just to execute, requires a greater level of processing power, and the security is problematic.
“I believe Microsoft’s blunder will allow other OS opportunities, such as Linux and Mac OS X, to gain significant ground, said Mooney.
Microsoft sees it differently. “Windows Vista is being adopted by businesses at a rate that is similar to past releases,” according to Microsoft.com. “We’re seeing positive indicators that we’re already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream.”
Microsoft could not confirm that any North American credit union is currently relying on Vista.
MORE
Read more about Microsoft Vista at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
'Geeks' Excited, But Not Deploying Various Vista Strategies
Why South Carolina FCU Has Chosen To Taking Vista By The Horns
Vendors Report That Not Many CUs Upgrading To New Microsoft OS
For more info on this story:
* www.cportcu.org
* www.iqcu.com
* www.scfederal.org
* www.tcfcu.org
* www.tinkerfcu.org (c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
