Upgrades are futile
By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 06 March 2007, 09:10
THE US DEPARTMENT of Transportation has told its workers not to upgrade to Vista, IE7 or Office 2007.
According to Information Week, the DOT's CIO Daniel Mintz has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading".
He added that there were good reasons not to upgrade including problems of cost and compatibility.
Apparently DOT is thinking about bringing in Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware. One of the main problems is that a lot of DOT's software will not work on Vista.
While it is possible that the Department could move to Vista in the future, it would have to be if all DOTs concerns were met, Mintz said. Apparently DOT has more confidence in Microsoft than it had 10 years ago, it just will not be using it. It is currently using Windows XP. µ
Izvor: Inquier (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38021)
WinXP je svojevremeno predstavio sumnjivu vertikalnu nekompatibilnost, a sa Vistom su konačno preterali. Molim Linux ljubitelje da ne upliću Linux ovde, jer to nije tema (iako se pominje. Mada, naravno da nije zabranjeno komentarisati i na taj način). Tema je kontraproduktivnost nedovoljne kompatibilnosti. Namenski softver je još uvek aktuelan (i biće i dalje, doveka), što defakto ostavlja pod znakom pitanja upgrade na novi OS, od strane dobrog dela poslovnog sveta. Odricanje od stabilnih i oprobanih rešenja, a sve zarad ostajanja "u trendu" ne zvuči naročito opravdano. Ili možda zvuči?
Doza nekompatibilnosti mora postojati, jer inače ne bi bilo razvoja, ali granice moraju postojati. Pogotovo kad je u pitanju tržište poslovnog softvera.
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