Dell bullish about Vista adoption

Businesses will upgrade to Microsoft's Vista in droves as consumers bring their love of the next-generation operating system from home to work, a Dell executive says.

The company's chief technology officer, Kevin Kettler, on Monday said he's "bullish" about Vista uptake in among enterprise customers. "This will be an important transition for Microsoft as well as for Dell," he told CNET News.com sister site Silicon.com.

Vista will offer major improvements on Windows that both businesses and consumers will want to take advantage of, which is why Dell is preparing for a "more aggressive than usual" uptick in hardware sales, as people upgrade, another Dell executive said.

One Vista feature that will win over enterprises is the ability to run different versions of the operating system depending on the hardware, Kettler said. For instance, a company could install a basic, less resource-intensive version to older hardware and a high-performance version with to newer hardware.

This positions Vista for widespread adoption, Kettler said "It's an easy sell up (because) it's available to everybody in a mixed environment" of legacy and newer hardware, he said.

When innovation is contagious
Consumers eager to try out the next-generation operating system's entertainment features will also drive uptake in businesses, Dell executives said, as those consumers who learn to love Vista at home will then campaign for their IT department to get it at work too.

Dell's Kettler said he sees technology spreading from consumers into the enterprise but noted that innovation moves the other way too--technology originally devised for corporate products moves into the home.

Kettler said he has made this sort of "cross-collaboration" a strategic priority at Dell, where he ensures technologists working on different products--servers, desktops, laptops or TVs--meet up regularly to discuss how the technologies they're developing could help each other.

"We're driving technology from the consumer to the enterprise and from the enterprise to the consumer," Kettler said.

This becomes more important as deployment of products for the digital home brings up issues once pertinent only to businesses, he explained. For instance, the popularity of digital photos may mean families invest in a backup system for their image files. Also, it's more common to see networking hardware in the home that manages several electronic gadgets through one system.

Power management is one area where this collaboration between business and consumer arenas will come to fruition at Dell, Kettler said. "We have some cool things coming which will span across all our products," he said.

Sylvia Carr of Silicon.com reported from London.

[Penguinisto]

Dell better hope so...

...because at this rate, HP will begin eating their lunch by this quarter next year. Kinda sad to see Dell tying themselves to Vista as their greatest hope of not losing marketshare. I wonder if their boxes will be able to keep up w/ Vista while at the same time not becoming expensive behemoths?

OTOH, I do have to give props to Dell for being among the first big OEM's to sell Linux-based servers right out the chute.

[J_Satch]

bullish?

Must be a typo...

[ppgreat]

Clever

Love a good pun.

This isn't the same exec (or exec team) that is causing Dell to spiral downward this year, is it?

I think public prognostication from Dell is probably unwise at this point. Vista isn't a compelling argument for an upgrade right now for discriminating users.

[rcrusoe]

I don't think so

With Vista's high hardware requirements and low to non-existent improvements for business, I seriously doubt if Dell or anyone else, finds businesses upgrading in droves.

Most businesses will get Vista only when they purchase additional or replacement machines, and many will immediately replace Vista with XP.

Let Joe Sixpack and unwise early adopters stomp through the minefield of Vista.

The wise will wait until SP1 at least before venturing too deep into Vista's uncharted waters.

[DraconumPB]

May have a point...

...because my company replaces /XP/ with /2000/ right now. And XP has been out for five years.

[sci50514]

My company won't upgrade

Vista has too high hardware requirement. The upgrade cost is too great for my company and there is nothing business worthy about the upgrade. All the touted security features are fullfilled by other 3rd party software. We are conservative. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[Seaspray0]

I see general agreement

Companies are not showing interest in migrating to Vista as Dell is predicting. Perhaps this is how the claim will be substantiated: Dell moves all OEM operating systems to Vista from XP. A company buys new PC's with the intent on scrubbing them and reloading XP (as XP is no longer available from Dell). Dell claims substantial sales for Vista. As you can see, Enron accounting isn't dead yet!

[birchlake]

Many words to say NOTHING.

All he needed to say was: We are selling the company and giving
the money back to the stockholders.

[ITrogue]

riiiiiiight

what will drive my company to move to vista is business needs, not cool factor. Our users here do not demand what OS we run. We are not migrating until late 2008 and that is if we do not find compatibility problems with our VOIP and CRM software. With his christmas bonus on the line i'm sure he believes every word he is saying.

[keith.in.trinidad]

Agreed

My company has only just made the move to XP and Office 2003, largely because of pressure from local Microsoft and because we would now have to scrub every PC we buy to put back Win2K.

Hardware cost is already an issue, and I don't see us buying more expensive hardware just to be able to support this new OS, and then lock down features that we don't want accessed by our counter reps - the broadest user base.

Further, given a move to browser-based apps, and I know that we're not the only company that has made or is making this move, all of Vista's niceties will be for naught in our environment.

Dell may be right in that there's a lot to be made in OEM licences as they push out boxes with various versions of Vista installed, but that's not going to drive business adoption of what could be the new and improved Windows ME.

[fred dunn]

Yes, As they can't reinstall it. They'll love it.

Uh Huh. Right. Used car salesman pitch if I've ever heard one.

[CoolDudeCR]

Why should your company make the move to Vista?

I see no reason!, in fact, my company is not moving to the new
OS. Since most of our internal applications are Web based we
can use any OS on the market.

Lately we've been trying Ubuntu/Firefox with a test group of 30
users and we are very pleased with the results, installation is
extremely quick since we made a disk image we just copied 30
times. No worries about viruses or spyware (this implies a cut
back in antivirus/antispyware licenses). Users don't have root
rights, then, they cannot mess up their computers and finally
and more important, users don't feel any performance difference
from their Windows/Firefox counterparts at the office.

[slim-1]

Vista is the biggest reason to go with Ubuntu Linux

Sometimes Microsoft couldn't push more people to Linux if they were trying to on purpose.

[fred dunn]

or SUSE Linux Enterpsise Desktop...

Either would be a good XP alternative and damned if I'm going to Vista.

[t3st3r`]

You will love Vista's license.Just try to read this crap, MS is MAD!

Surely you will love Vista.
There is trojan-like WGA spyware built-in :).
There is IE7 with antiphishing spyware feature which sends all your URLs to MS servers by default.Dream of Big Brother is now real, you're trashing your privacy yourself :)
There is rootkit-like technology built-in, just to keep you away from your hardware.To ensure their damn DRM is safely shreds your rights.
There is signed kernel drivers in x64 Vista.Just to do the same.Not to protect you - MS simply do not cares about you.It cares it's own profit.That's all.So, it will not protect you against hackers too much but will cause major headache with drivers availability.
There is DRM and DRM update designed to completely shred your rights.
Even if being Administrator, you do not have full control over your system.You cannot load your own driver, never.But MS can completely control all things instead.
Let's MS to decide how many times you can reinstall OS, instead of you.Because "we always know better what you're need for" - this should be next MS slogan, really :).
And I'm pretty sure you will have a funny time if you will read Vista license.In short terms, you have rights to pay money and do not have any other rights.What a sucking license.Most sucking license ever seen on market.

I'm lovin' it - MS is always increadible in fxxng it's users :D.What a bastardized company.So if you still wanna Vista, you're surely welcome.MS urgently needs such hardcore idiots as customers, really! I'm unfortunately not a case.I will stick to XP and shifting to Kubuntu Linux because XP support will be dropped some day.

[t3st3r`]

You will love Vista's license.Just try to read this crap, MS is MAD!

Surely you will love Vista.
There is trojan-like WGA spyware built-in :).
There is IE7 with antiphishing spyware feature which sends all your URLs to MS servers by default.Dream of Big Brother is now real, you're trashing your privacy yourself :)
There is rootkit-like technology built-in, just to keep you away from your hardware.To ensure their damn DRM is safely shreds your rights.
There is signed kernel drivers in x64 Vista.Just to do the same.Not to protect you - MS simply do not cares about you.It cares it's own profit.That's all.So, it will not protect you against hackers too much but will cause major headache with drivers availability.
There is DRM and DRM update designed to completely shred your rights.
Even if being Administrator, you do not have full control over your system.You cannot load your own driver, never.But MS can completely control all things instead.
Let's MS to decide how many times you can reinstall OS, instead of you.Because "we always know better what you're need for" - this should be next MS slogan, really :).
And I'm pretty sure you will have a funny time if you will read Vista license.In short terms, you have rights to pay money and do not have any other rights.What a sucking license.Most sucking license ever seen on market.

I'm lovin' it - MS is always increadible in fxxng it's users :D.What a bastardized company.So if you still wanna Vista, you're surely welcome.MS urgently needs such hardcore idiots as customers, really! I'm unfortunately not a case.I will stick to XP and shifting to Kubuntu Linux because XP support will be dropped some day.

[Magicland]

Full of Bullish is more like it.

If they were that bullish, they'd already be offering the Vista upgrade coupons. I don't know anyone stupid enough to buy a dell now without one.

[t3st3r`]

Full of bullsh!t, to be exact :)

A way more correct wording.I will not use Vista even if MS will pay to me for doing it.Thanks, I do not need OS which completely takes over my PC and let's MS to rule it instead of me.So, Vista is for those hardcore idiots who does not cares about their privacy and rights at all.Others should read license TWICE and have to think if such restrictions are worth to pay any moneys for it.

[t3st3r`]

Maybe they mean "bullsh!t" ? :-O

Maybe they mean Vista's increadible ****** license?

[Direwolf5[M]]

State of Louisiana not upgrading

The State of Louisiana has NO plans to upgrade to Vista, and they have informed their MS Rep of this. The hardware requirements are too steep, the standard PC for a state worker has a low-end video card, minimum memory, limited e-mail and No web browsing software. so why would they want this bloated mess? BTW my contact at the state says that he has talked to IT managers from other states and they also do not plan to upgrade.

[bluemist9999]

Not being adopted at my company or by me

Our IT guy saw the license restriction (you can only reinstall once), looked at the stiff hardware requirements (1 GB of RAM to boot) and decided he'll stick with XP as long as possible.

If Microsoft wants to see Vista widely adopted, they will need to ease on the license restrictions (as long as a Vista copy is running on only 1 PC, that should be enough) and make more modest hardware requirements.

For home use, I want to get the most out of my PC---not have Vista's eye candy slurping up all of my processor and RAM. There aren't enough changes from XP to persuade me to upgrade.

[Ryo Hazuki]

Good luck to your company and to you

Your super IT guy should think better about the fairness of the license (what did he want, buy once and renistall has many times you want?), buy a pair of glasses (Vista requires only 512 MB RAM) and have much luck sticking with the less secure Windows XP. Microsoft doesn't have to let people buy one license and install Windows on hundreads of PC's to have Vista widely adopted and that's exactly what this news is about and I think requiring 512 RAM when the usual nowadays is 1 GB is not exactly what I would call "stiff hardware requirements". I am just like you: I want to get the most out of my PC - you don't need to have Vista's eye candy slurping up all of your processor and RAM, you can turn off those features and have it looking just like Windows 95 (just like I use my Windows XP). If you think there aren't enough changes from XP to persuade you to upgrade, than you mustn't give any credit and/or importance to security and/or you didn't bother to learn a little about the changes in the network stack in Windows Vista and the locking down of the core part of the OS, that contains the dll's, before you decided to jump into the bandweagon and ignorantly bash Microsoft like (almost) everyone else.

[t3st3r`]

Yet another dude with WORKING brain.

Congratulations!You can see things not everybody notices yet but which can cause major headaches anyway.This proves your and your IT guy's have brains which are working and that MS brainwashing still sometimes fails :).Let's clueless stupid users to upgrade just to get funny UI.

[matt_parker]

Now It Is Clear Dell Will Be In The Sinking Ship Too!

Dell needs to get a clue! Bad move to associate themselves so strongly with Vista. Do they really think people are going to upgrade computers just so they can run Vista? I don't particularly think XP is all that great, but I am sure to not spend lots of cash to get a bigger resource pig that is protected even worse now that Microsoft's greed has expanded to thinking they can also do the protection! There is little real protection now. All this will do is focus annoyances straight on Microsoft instead of diffusing to companies such as Norton or McAfee!

[Ryo Hazuki]

Interesting comment regarding world's biggest PC vendor & software company

Dell is only the biggest PC vendor in the world, you think they have to get a clue? Yes, terribly move to associate with the successor to the OS that is used by more than 85% of people who use computers. They don't think people are going to upgrade computers just so they can run Vista, they know most of them will. You may not think XP is all that great but many of those 85% of people chose it for some misterious reason and you shouldn't understand anything about computers if you think Vista is less secure, because all Microsoft did was block the access to the core part of the OS (drivers, dll's, etc.) which just makes it more secure. Now there is real protection, unlike before. All this will do is focus credit on Microsoft instead of in companies such as Norton or McAfee who suddenly have to rewrite all their software to make it work in an OS where they no longer have free direct access to the its core level.

[fdunn3]

Just as I thought Dell was coming around...

They go and say something as stupid as this.
You bet those home users are going to take their experience with Vi$ta to work with them and if they still plan on the Christmas Upgrades installed by the end-user then there are going to be a lot of users that don't think too highly of Dell and Microsoft anymore.
When non-tech saavy users buy "pre-Vi$ta" systems from Dell or anybody else for that matter with the promise of the Vi$ta upgrade disk when it comes out it is going to be a disaster. Users are going to have lost all of their Christmas pictures on their PCs because they had to perform a restore due to an upgrade gone wrong and in general there will be at least 50% of those systems in a state of non-functionality.
All of this just after they paid their hard earned money for the system.

Dell and Microsoft had better rethink this because it is a guaranteed disaster in the making.

[rapier1]

A Mac User's views on Vista

So I've been using OS X for 3 years now. I've been using various
flavors of Windows or DOS for 22 years. I've been using *nix for
18 years. Lastly, I've been beta testing Vista for the past 18
months.

I'm not a fan boy. I don't think of computers like a religion. They
are tools to perform a task. As such the right tool will depend on
the task. Vista, in my view, is a better tool than XP in most every
way. In some aspects it is superior to OS X (the network stack
and kernel efficiency) and in most cases it is at least on par with
OS X in terms of usability and functionality. I think the
windowing environment and ease of use is better than Linux but
it is inferior to both in terms of security and ease of access to
security policies. However, I expect that to change within 18
months as all the major OS variants move towards the middle
(increased pressure on Linux and OS X and security fixes and
upgrades once Vista is in wide release).

All in all I think most people using XP now will be reasonably
well served by switching to Vista in the next 6 to 18 months.
Some of them might be better served by switching to OS X but I
think they'll tend to be in the minority - the true compelling
must have application just doesn't exist as an OS X exclusive.

Also, the game market is still owned by MS and will remain there
as long as OS X relies on a MACH kernel. No way around it. As
much as I like my Mac it simply is not a good platform for games
- while they are progressing by adopoting an industry standard
HW architecture they still don't have the mindset that will allow
games to really shine. Partly its their adherence to the MACH
kernel (which has significant overhead (30%+) due to messaging
requirements) and partly its because they really dont' want to
give up control of the hardware specs. One of the biggest
problems of MS is that they support a relatively open HW
environment - of course this is also the reason why MS is in its
dominant position.

Anyway, like I said, having used Vista for 18 months now I have
to say it really is a significant advance over XP. It is at least on
par to OS X in most aspects as a desktop OS. As an application
OS I'd still stick with Linux.

[gernblan]

It's actually a different kind of bull.

You know, the kind they make fertilizer out of?

[2Blue4u]

Hmmm... Not

Maybe Dell learned from the past, and is trying to repeat it! Some recent Tech. "history":

Xbox360 -- "Who would pay $450.00 for a....."

Ipod----"I already have an MP3 player..."

HDTV---- "screw $1500.00 for a tv......"

As long as dummies have Credit Cards and big companies make lots of commercials... money will flow.

Without deviation, progress is not possible. (Frank Zappa}

[2Blue4u]

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Maybe Dell learned from the past, and is trying to repeat it! Some recent Tech. "history":

Xbox360 -- "Who would pay $450.00 for a....."

Ipod----"I already have an MP3 player..."

HDTV---- "screw $1500.00 for a tv......"

Alienware-- "$3500.00!!!! ***????"

Why aren't you all happy that Dell just made Intel have to work even harder to be the top Chip Maker? Competition is good for the consumer....real good...

As long as dummies have Credit Cards and big companies make lots of commercials... money will flow.