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Ahh. Old enough for its first service pack...
January 30th marks the first (public) birthday
of Microsoft Windows Vista but the end user is
unlikely to be cheering and helping Microsoft blow
out a candle on its cake because the most
eagerly-anticipated present might not be with us
until nearer Easter. |
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Even when the SP1 (Service Pack 1) is finally
made available ‘before 31st March’, Microsoft cannot really expect a
standing ovation for the set of 489 patches necessary to make its
latest platform run better. However, the patches will almost
certainly answer much of the very public criticism that has been
levelled at Vista: IT experts pointing out that most businesses are
satisfied with Windows XP and so are not calling for a new platform.
Most believe Vista is far too memory hungry and offers too little
support for existing hardware, particular for wireless networking
and building a VPN. PC Pro magazine even went as far as labelling
Vista the ‘top disappointment of 2007’.
So, even with the host of new features in Vista that have been
widely welcomed by the IT community including an improved graphic
user interface, beefed up firewall and anti-phishing capabilities,
built-in .Net software and multi-lingual screens (adjustable to each
user’s native language), many IT managers are still scratching their
heads: where is all the extra power to run Vista going to come from
and why does it support so few peripherals, particularly when
wireless and networking are such hot issues?
Microsoft assures us that the poor support for wireless and
networking in particular will be addressed with SP1. Some customers
are already starting to judge for themselves how the ‘fix kit’ will
work because, early in January, SP1 moved from a ‘beta’ to a
‘release candidate’ product available for download at Microsoft’s
support site (technet.microsoft.com).
Whilst SP1 for Vista will undoubtedly counter many points raised
against the new platform, the one huge impact it will have is to
remind SMEs and enterprises that a move to Vista is inevitable. XP’s
latest service pack may have been given a recent stay of execution,
putting off its planned withdrawal from the market until June this
year, but thereafter development work on this OS will cease.
So if 2007 was the year of keeping a proverbial ‘eye’ on Vista,
reading reports, good and bad; 2008 is going to be the year where IT
departments face up to their responsibility for planning an eventual
and, yes, inevitable migration.
Don’t worry, though, if you spent last year wondering whether you
could get away with putting off a decision on Vista for at least
another year, you have not been alone. Recent Forrester research
suggest 52% of companies have no current plans to roll out Vista in
2008, 11% are putting off a decision until 2009 and 6% are even
putting off deciding until 2010 or later. As for who is planning a
migration this year, Numara Software’s own research suggests the
figure is around one in four.
However, even if you are not one of the 25% making the move this
year, it still undoubtedly makes sense to factor Vista requirements
into any forward planning: it is estimated that the majority of
computers bought two years ago are now not powerful enough to run
the new OS.
So if you’re planning to invest in some new hardware, it makes sense
to consider the performance demands of Vista.
The basic requirements to be considered Vista-capable are:
- 800MHz processor
- 512 Mbytes of RAM
- DirectX9 capable graphics card
To be considered Vista Premium Ready, a computer
needs:
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 GB of system memory
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
- Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space
- DVD-ROM Drive
- Audio output and Internet access capability
So what’s on your network? Unless you are in a
small company where walking between machines and auditing them
manually is feasible, you’re either using, or considering using, a
centralised and automated asset management solution, For many IT
departments, the hardware and software interoperability issues
surrounding Vista are bringing into focus the need for reliable and
centralised IT asset management and software deployment tools. Tools
that will allow them to get an accurate overview of their inventory,
identify what needs to be upgraded or even replaced and with the
ability to push new drivers and applications out to their networked
computers.
Numara Track-It! and Numara Asset Manager are two examples of the
type of asset management solutions that are designed to help with
pre-migration planning, roll-out and post-migration. Other tools
such as Numara Deploy and Numara Patch Manager can enhance these
solutions by providing additional support during the roll-out and
post-migration phases.
For example, once Numara Track-It! or Numara Asset Manager has
helped identify what needs to be upgraded or swapped out, Numara
Deploy and Numara Patch Manager can help IT departments bring their
machines up to the necessary software specifications to support
Vista. Numara Deploy can distribute updates or full packages to
groups of computers on demand or on a scheduled basis and also
extract non-critical, incompatible software from desktops which are
targeted for a Vista upgrade. Any Windows XP or Windows 2000
machines that require the latest Service Pack before upgrading to
Vista can be identified, download and deployed by Numara Patch
Manager.
Historically, businesses have waited for the release of a platform’s
first service pack as a trigger to start migration planning. With
the imminent release of SP1 for Vista and the phasing out of XP
support, IT departments should start using, or consider the
implementation of, asset management tools to take stock and to
ensure a smooth transition to Vista. |
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