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Intel sees no Vista on horizon; decides not to ‘upgrade’ 80k employees to Microsoft’s Windows Vista

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 · 6:37 pm · 46 Comments

“Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said,” Steve Lohr reports for The New York Times.

“The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly,” Lohr reports.

“‘This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,’ the person said,” Lohr reports.

MacDailyNews Take: In other words, it’s a matter of dissing Microsoft.

Lohr continues, “An Intel spokesman said the company was testing and deploying Vista in certain departments, but not across the company.”

“Intel is hardly alone in its reluctance to embrace Microsoft’s latest operating system, which was available to corporate customers in November 2006 and to consumers in January 2007. Large companies routinely hold off a year or so after a new version of Windows is introduced before adopting it, waiting for initial bugs to be eliminated and for applications to be written. ‘But by 18 months, you’d expect to see a significant uptake, and we haven’t seen that,’ said David Smith, a Gartner analyst. ‘There’s not much excitement,’” Lohr reports. “His Gartner colleague, Michael Silver, said that about 30 percent of corporate customers skip any given new version of Windows. But the percentage will be higher for Vista.”

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Comment Feed

46 Comments

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Jesus

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 6:51 pm · Reply

And I am running 10.5 on my 1 ghz 12 inch power book with 1.25gbs ram, 32mb vram, and 5,200 rpm hd…. and it’s smooooth..

Can’t do that with Vista.

Thanks Derin!

Dad said you get a free pass now…
Lee

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:04 pm · Reply

There once was a boy named “Microsoft”. He loved a girl named “Customer”.

Unfortunately, before the boy could cement a relationship with the girl, he came into competition for her affection with other boys.

He could choose to make himself attractive and likeable to the girl, or he could chose to undermine his competition. Microsoft chose to “do in” the competition. Nearly every suitor for Customer was in one way or another, hounded, spied on, undermined, bought out, beat up, etc. This left Customer with little choice if she wanted a life that included a boy. It didn’t make her like the boy any better, but he was just about the only one left in town.

This lukewarm relationship went on for years, with a lack of affection, but little choice for Customer.

Years went buy and the demographics of the town changed. More boys suddenly appeared and Customer had some options. She didn’t need to spend time with Microsoft if she didn’t want to. She dated around and found she liked other boys better. They treated her better, took better care of themselves, and did a better job of keeping their promises to her.

Customer was very desirable, and the new boys were much better suitors than Microsoft. Customer began to see that Microsoft didn’t have so much to offer after all, but the new boys did. In fact Microsoft was often rough around the edges and did strange things. The new boys seemed more refined and polished, which Customer appreciated.

Sometimes, Customer was even irritated at the self serving behavior of Microsoft as he tried to undermine the other boys and cause them to lose their jobs or businesses so they couldn’t court Customer. He was arrested and fined several times for his bad behavior.

As Customer grew older, she began to realize that Microsoft really wasn’t for her, she spent less and less time with him and more time with the other boys in town. Microsoft retired from his efforts to court Customer, but instead of leaving well enough alone, he bestowed the honor of courting Customer to his cousin. To some it was unclear why he would do this, but others suspected the cousin knew of Microsoft’s improper activities in the past, and leveraged his way to be Customers new suitor as Microsoft’s flames waned in the night for Customer.

The cousin continued to court Customer, but with little success. Large boxes of candy and roses were nice occasionally, but underneath, she found no connection with the soulless cousin. In time, as she learned that all boys weren’t like Microsoft or his cousin, someone else became the apple of her eye.
MCCFR

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:09 pm · Reply

So that’s a whole load of systems where the IT staff will have to up/down/sidegrade to XP when they start being forced to buy systems with Vista pre-installed.

I do hope Microsoft will be honest in their sales reporting and not try to report such systems as Vista sales. We all know how important it is for companies to provide information to their shareholders that enables them to make informed investment decisions.
shen

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:13 pm · Reply

I wonder what microsoft internal (including what emploies use at home) adoption rate is?
amyhre

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:14 pm · Reply

Touching story, but you forgot the part about how Microsoft seemed to almost exclusively demand anal sex to prove her loyalty. Other than that, it’s pretty good.
Jubei

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:23 pm · Reply

Wow, I love how MDN sticks that list of related articles. I should just copy that list and the next time I get a silly MS “bend over and do what your wish MS Masters” spout FUD about the Mac, I can flood him/her with that list….
Random Number Generator

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 7:51 pm · Reply

With no sign of viable Vista in the foreseeable future, the next step for Intel is to gradually migrate its 80K employee’s on to the more advanced Mac OS X.
Bartsimpsonhead

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 8:03 pm · Reply

Now that Bills cleared his desk and gone, I wonder how many more of these ‘no compelling case for adopting Vista’ stories (and others openly dissing M$) will ‘leak’ out?

I can imagine some companies not wanting to openly upset Bill, but hold no loyalty to, or fear of upsetting Money Boy Balmer.
MacDave

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 8:26 pm · Reply

@Lee

Freaking beauty mate. <sob, sniff>
MacSmiley

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 8:54 pm · Reply

Good’un, Lee. I’ve preserved your story for all posterity in my tumblelog.
G

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 9:20 pm · Reply

Oh! Snap!
What a shot to the Vistas.

If true, Intel just told it’s biggest source of $ (crappy machines running winblows) you are no longer relevant.

Monkey Boy must be sacrificing flunkies by the score to the great ‘I no longer matter’ gods
Jay

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 9:29 pm · Reply

If you think Vista is bad, you should have to suffer through MS Office 2007! Our office “upgraded” to Office ’07 from Office ’03 two weeks ago and it’s almost enough to make me want to go find another job.
Mr. Reeee

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 9:39 pm · Reply

The thing is, we’ll be hearing more and more stories like this as time goes on. The fact that it’s Intel makes it all the more satisfying.

So, let’s figure that Windows 7… or whatever snappy thing they’ll call it… will be released, optimistically in 3 years.
Add another 1 to 2 years to that for “full” corporate adoption and that ends up being around 5 years from today.
XP is 7 or 8 years old now?

So in 4 or 5 years, a huge chunk of business… and you can bet government computing… will STILL be done on an operating system that’ll be over TEN years old! That’s pathetic.

I can’t imagine what Apple will be doing in 5 years!
marko

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 9:46 pm · Reply

I love how Windoze sufferers are passing on Vista saying they’ll wait for the next version of Windoze. That means a Decade will have passed them by. YIKES

Lovin life and Mac OS X
bizlaw

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 9:52 pm · Reply

Intel didn’t do anything to harm itself by not adopting Vista. Remember, Intel doesn’t sell computers with Vista preinstalled, it just sells processors.

Intel hitched it’s fate to Apple, and is reaping the benefits of Apple’s hands-on approach to designing processors and other chips for its Macs (see MacBook Air). Intel will be just fine, because AMD doesn’t seem to be able to get out of its own way to mount a real challenge, and because Intel is working with Apple to innovate, not just wait to see what the market does and then react.
DogGone

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 10:01 pm · Reply

Hey Lee,

Good story – have you got her number? I have a 15 inch beauty that she won’t be able to say no to!
ken1w

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 10:02 pm · Reply

I feel bad for consumers buying new (non-Apple) computers and having no choice but Vista pre-installed. NOT…
Get Real

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 10:09 pm · Reply

“because Intel is working with Apple to innovate, not just wait to see what the market does and then react.”

How does that fit with the reality that on the day Intel launches a new processor every major PC company announces they are shipping a machine with it, yet Apple takes 3-6 months to use it, and by then Intel is almost ready to launch an enhanced version?

Apple is always about a half a generation behind. To move out of that follower role, they need to start introducing new machines when new processors are released, not months later.

The same applies to new graphics accelerators.
shen

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 10:30 pm · Reply

“Good story – have you got her number? I have a 15 inch beauty that she won’t be able to say no to!”

15? wow….

mine is only 4.5 inches…..

….but it is multi-touch!
Think

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 11:36 pm · Reply

@ Get Real

The processor and logic board for the MacBook Air was an Intel/Apple design that they did together.

Anyone else get that chip first?