Ten things to consider before taking the Vista plunge
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If a business is planning to install the latest Windows operating system, certain factors should be evaluated first.
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The new Windows operating system is worth the upgrade. Here's why.
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By Cater, Nick  For the non-techies among us, one word is all you need to know for the next few weeks: Vista.
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InfoWorld - Although Microsoft may not have the first service pack for Windows Vista ready at the end of this year as some expected, financial analysts say that a delay should not have a negative effect on enterprise adoption of the OS.
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Bad reviews won't hurt Vista. Neither will the Mac. Or Linux.
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Microsoft is coming to your living room. Get used to it.
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InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.                                                    "Don't be afraid. Just switch to Linux and become a member of a really free society," wrote Carlos Raul Gutierrez.[ Find out the deployment secrets of early Vista adopters ]"Windows Vista was the reason I bought a Mac mini. I didn't want my only choices to be an operating system that would soon be obsolete (XP) or one that was buggy and would break much existing hardware (Vista), and I'm not enough of a geek to use Linux (do things from the command line? Puhleeze...)," wrote "Jack."How realistic is a switch to Linux or Apple's Mac OS X? For some users -- often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers and CTOs -- it is clearly an option that already works quite well. In the past year, running Mac OS X or Linux as your default OS has been made easier by the capability to run Windows in a virtual machine, giving you access to both Windows-only applications and Web sites that rely on Microsoft's Internet Explorer-only ActiveX technology. But in a business environment, switching to a Mac or Linux PC may not be quite as easy.The Mac OS X option Of the plausible alternatives to Windows, Apple's Mac OS X has the largest market share and history. InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager has written that the latest version of the Mac OS, Leopard (10.5), is simply the best operating system available. And Macs are indeed popping up more frequently even within IT circles -- I've seen more MacBook Pros in the hands of CTOs and IT execs at conferences in the past year more than I've seen Mac notebooks in such venues ever. Although there are no real numbers on just the business adoption of Macs, it's clear that Apple is in growth mode, gaining an increasing proportion of all new computer sales for more than a year now.InfoWorld's Yager has chronicled the adventures of one PC user who switched to the Mac OS, showing that for an individual, the conversion was ultimately a rewarding one. The TechWeb site has also provided a good guide on how to make the switch to Mac OS X.A key tool for any Mac OS X switcher is a virtual machine to run Windows for those apps and Web sites that require it. Both Parallels Desktop 3.0 and EMC VMware's Fusion software will do the trick, as InfoWorld's comparative review has shown.Although Macs are compatible with most typical hardware, such as monitors and drives, fitting a Mac into an enterprise's management systems and ERP applications can be a different story. Yager's Mac Enterprise blog and the Mac Enterprise user group both provide advice on managing Macs in a traditional IT environment.The Linux option The more technically inclined may be attracted to Linux, the most popular form of desktop Unix. Linux desktops typically are challenged by limited hardware compatibility (due to lack of drivers), limited application options, and user interfaces that require active participation to get work done, which tends to keep Linux away from the general user population. But those who work with a Linux server all day may find that using it on the desktop as well actually makes their lives easier.Just as Mac users need occasional access to Windows, so do Linux users. Because Linux distributions run on Windows-compatible hardware, it's straightforward to use desktop virtualization software, such as Parallels Workstation, Sun's (formerly Innotek's) VirtualBox, and EMC VMware's Workstation software, to provide access to both environments.Although some enterprises have committed to wide Linux deployment -- such as automaker Peugeot Citro?n's plans to install 20,000 Novell Suse Linux desktops -- most have left Linux to the engineering and development staff.InfoWorld Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall Kennedy argues that desktop Linux is doomed to remain a tiny niche OS, given the Linux community's lack of interest in providing a UI that regular people could use. Kennedy tried to spend a week working on nothing but the Ubuntu distribution of Linux but gave up on the fifth day.But Kennedy's take isn't the last word on desktop Linux. Frequent InfoWorld contributor Neil McAllister put together a special report on how to move from Windows to Linux, concluding that the effort was not as hard as you might think.Who's right? As with any platform choice, they both may be. A one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic. And that likely explains why many businesses will have a mix, dominated by Windows XP today (and perhaps Vista in a few years) but not exclusively tied to Microsoft's OS.
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Microsoft is polishing Vista with a long-awaited service pack in hopes of greater adoption among businesses.
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The keyboards, mice, Webcams and headsets sport features for the upcoming Vista operating system.
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Tycho:  I don't know whose fault it is exactly, mine or theirs, but I won't be installing Vista anytime soon.  I would like some crazy shit to happen when I minimize something don't get me wrong.  I want my windows to go Waja-wajow(!) is possible.  But if there's a great reason to "trade horses midstream" or whatever the going metaphor is I haven't discovered it.
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DecemberÃ¢ÂÂs Patch Tuesday finds Vista in the bad guysÃ¢ÂÂ sights. Plus: Get Office 2007 SP1, get your fix for Flash, and avoid an HP laptop disaster.
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A Desktop Pipeline reviewer invites readers to step into the SP2 waters, and offers some suggestions on how to do it as safely as possible.
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DirectX 10 and other enhancements should seriously boost Vista graphics.
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LicenseWise and Windows Vista Hardware Assessment help users navigate Microsoft offerings.
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After more than five years of  development, over 50 million lines of software code, a $6  billion investment and a few headaches, Microsoft Corp.'s   Windows Vista finally reaches consumers this week.
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A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe."Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system."Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB .iso file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."Crafting vLite wasn't easy, he said. But the time Nuhagic spent on its predecessor, nLite, which similarly squeezes Windows 2000 and Windows XP, paid off in spades. "Since I had four years of experience with tampering [with] older Windows, it was a lot easier than nLite," Nuhagic said of the development of vLite. "Also, it was easier than in XP because Vista does not have the old-style installation. It doesn't install components one by one, but simply extracts the image. Where XP would fail during install because a certain file was missing, that issue is not present in Vista."Even though vLite features a simple graphical interface that lets users remove a component with a click, Nuhagic warned that the utility isn't designed for the average user: "Because of certain possible compatibility issues with the programs out there [that] expect full Windows, I'd recommend [it] only to users [that] want exactly that kind of tool. In other words, I would not recommend it to someone who installs their OS once every few years. But if you do it every few months, then it's a must."Nuhagic couldn't say how many people use vLite, or even the number of times it's been downloaded from his Web site. "I don't have counters installed because the FTP mirrors were donated, and I would have to upgrade my hosting for some extra script processing," he said of his shoestring operation. It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that nLite, the Windows XP miniaturizer, remains four to five times more popular than vLite, based on the number of visitors to the different nLite and vLite Web sites.Microsoft knows of the tools -- Nuhagic said the company has contacted him in the past about possible employment -- but it's done little to quash the condensing. When asked whether it had any thoughts on vLite, a company spokeswoman e-mailed a lukewarm warning."Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows Updates and Service Packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," she said.But vLite's users praised Nuhagic's efforts with blunter language. "Thanks for spending your time making our OS less bloated," said one.VLite 1.1 can be downloaded from Nuhagic's Web site.
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Resistance to Vista was expected among the large companies that have leverage with large PC vendors, but even in the consumer and SMB ranks, the clamor for XP is significant. The beneficiaries? Possibly, "white-box" system builders and direct-sales channels.