I’ve been running Windows Vista for over 6 months now, and I have to report that overall I think it is a great product. Microsoft has already sold over 20 million copies of Vista in just a couple months and it is looking like sales are going to keep moving forward at a steady pace.

With Apple’s anti-Vista campaign and much of the negative media about Vista, it can be hard for most people to make a decision as to how they feel about Microsoft’s latest OS. The only way to make this decision though is to just test it for yourself. Vista brings with it a whole host of new features that increase end-user satisfaction and ease IT administration, and Microsoft is going to make sure this time around that people realize this as quickly as possible.

Managing mixed environments can be a challenge, but we still often see many business running a combination of Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional. With Windows 2000, Microsoft waited 4 years after Windows XP was released before they stopped selling it to OEM’s and through Retail channels. This time around with the release of Vista, Microsoft is going to end XP sales by on January 31, 2008. This will definitely come as a surprise to many IT administrators and decision-makers that were considering waiting for a few years before moving to Vista.

What does this really mean, aren’t I still going to be able to run all of the current Windows XP computers that I have? Yes, of course you can keep the computers that you currently own, but all computer purchases in/after 2008 are going to come with Windows Vista.

The good:

1. Software developers will be forced to make their software compatible with Windows Vista sooner (if you are a developer and your software doesn’t work with Vista right now, you better hop to it if you want your customers to stay loyal to your product)
2. Employees will get the newer operating system they are already requesting and IT administrators will have an easier time justifying deploying Vista with its product life-cycle end date approaching soon.

The bad:

1. Some businesses are going to have a hard time preparing for Vista in less than a year. Although small businesses can easily run mixed environments, this just does not work for larger businesses since the two operating systems can be very hard to support from a help-desk perspective.
2. This can be seen as a forced upgrade (I approve of it though since Windows XP was supposed to be replaced a lot sooner and many of the features in Vista are standards that were needed a long time ago).

My final question to any of you reading this is, are you ready for Vista? What are your plans? Options:

1. Freeze computer purchases after 1/31/08
2. Purchase surplus computers loaded with XP in December of 2007
3. Allow computer purchases with Vista immediately and support a mixed environment
4. Deploy Vista immediately on all computers
5. Allow computer purchases with Vista after Service Pack 1 is released
6. Deploy Vista after Service Pack 1 on all computers
7. Never buy new computers again and just fix all your current computers
8. Mac OS X
9. Linux
10. Uhhh, what’s this Vista thing? We are going to upgrade from Windows 95 this year to Windows 98!
11. Slide rule and punch cards