[I was going to reply to another one of the Vista threads here, but I wanted to start fresh (without wading through oceans of rhetoric and insults)].
Because of the nature of my job, I WILL upgrade my personal work PC to Vista and try it out with Office 2007… because I’ve got to evaluate it. I have 40 users who would not be able to get to grips with the likes of Ubuntu if their lives depended on it, and forcing them to stop using Windows would be career suicide.
[Don’t talk to me about Macs. Yes, they work well, the OS is great, no virus protection needed, etc. HOWEVER, THEY’RE RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. I could never talk the senior management into doubling my IT budget. Never. Don’t try to argue it with me, I’ve already tried and failed.]
I think that some of you folks are right on the money: more and more people will try some version of Linux when it becomes clear what a ripoff Vista is and Microsoft completely stops supporting XP.
But there’s no way for me to FORCE my user base to switch. They can barely use their PCs *now*! A blanket, company-wide switch to any build of Linux would grind our business to a halt. I’d have to do some serious training sessions for everyone, *starting with senior management* (the biggest Luddites in the whole company).
Even if I could demonstrate the business need / savings / logic / feasability of switching to Linux, they would still balk because they themselves (senior managers) would be terrified of it.
My only option is to do what my friend down South is doing – switch to some build of Linux (probably Ubuntu or Knoppix) on all my servers and leave the client workstations running XP Pro. Of course, that still leaves the question of ‘what to do when XP reaches end of life?’ and I have to go for a Linux/Vista mix.
The prospect of trying Vista doesn’t fill me with joy, honestly, but I’m going to have to get on with it. I’m trying to earn a living here and I can’t do it by pushing Linux on a bunch of terrified older users who can barely hold a mouse.
