IT Pro Momentum Program Notes from the field: Vista Assessment and Myths

From now on I will post on a regular base the messages I receive from IT Professionals who are part of the IT Pro Momentum program, it's always interesting to hear what other people say about our Technology, the first post will be about a Belgian Consultant who did an audit to see if his customer was able to migrate from Windows XP to Windows Vista and if their could be application compatibility issues.

Here is the quote I received:

One of the joy of consulting is also to be able to audit environment.
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit and audit the environment of an electricity provider in Belgium and audit the possibilities for them to migrate from Windows XP sp2 to VISTA.

I conducted the audit using tools available such as Vista Hardware Assessment toolkit, but also did some interviews.
I was amazed to find out that there was already reluctance to migrate to Vista -just based on "I have heard" stories.
Again to my surprise, even in a well managed environment, I found out that the general experience has a lot to do with perception.
The perception that Vista was less stable than Windows XP.
I spent a lot of time explaining that despite XP was more stable than Windows 2000, I had a couple of BSOD during the first year of using it. So far in Vista -NONE.

The perception that Vista doesn't bring anything and sticking to XP is good enough.
To this I had to argue the fact that yes XP is good robust and well known. However Vista brings a lot of features and a better control over security with UAC. (oh those millions question I do not want to answer) And there I discovered how little Group Policies were used and how little computers were managed.

XP runs faster than Vista on my computer (Vista Premium hardware).
my answer : Hell yes Windows 98 even faster..!!!!
So this is a few of those experienced interacting with IT Professionals and still hearing these kind of comments.

If you are a member of the IT Pro Momentum program and want to share your experiences with us please send me a mail arlindo.alves@microsoft.com

If you are not participating on the program yet then read this post if you're interested to know what this program is all about.

Technorati Tags: IT Pro Momentum,Windows Vista