“In a new setback to Microsoft’s public sector business, the influential National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] has banned the software maker’s Windows Vista operating system from its internal computing networks, according to an agency document obtained by InformationWeek,” Paul McDougall reports for InformationWeek.
McDougall reports, “According to the formal agenda for the meeting, NIST technology workers will attend a session entitled ‘Windows Vista Security’ to discuss ‘the current ban of this operating system on NIST networks.’ NIST officials weren’t immediately available to comment.”
Full article here.
“Windows Vista Security.” The government never fails to generate laughs.
Related articles:
Microsoft’s Live OneCare ‘security’ failureware: dead last in test of 17 Windows security apps – March 07, 2007
FAA considers dumping Microsoft’s Windows and Office for Linux and Google Apps – March 07, 2007
US DOT, FAA ban ‘upgrading’ to Windows Vista, Explorer 7, Office 2007; looks at Macs – March 02, 2007
The Register reviews Microsoft’s Windows Vista: ‘Don’t buy it’ – February 20, 2007
Forbes: ‘Windows Vista utterly unimaginative, internally discordant and woefully out of tune’ – February 09, 2007
Digit: Don’t buy Vista; Microsoft may be driving millions to stick with XP or move to Apple Mac – February 05, 2007
TIME Magazine: Microsoft’s Windows Vista ‘an embarassment to the good name of American innovation’ – February 02, 2007
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007
Digit: ‘Microsoft’s Windows Vista may be the best reason yet to buy an Apple Mac’ – January 29, 2007
Pioneer Press: Windows Vista shows ‘Apple is an innovation engine; Microsoft, not so much’ – January 29, 2007
Windows Vista disappoints, so get a Mac – January 29, 2007
CNET Reviews Windows Vista: Is that all? Clunky and not very intuitive vs. Mac OS X; warmed-over XP – January 24, 2007
Mossberg: Microsoft’s Windows Vista offers lesser imitations of Apple’s Mac OS X features – January 18, 2007
Windows Vista disappointment drives longtime ‘Microsoft apologist’ to Apple’s Mac OS X – January 17, 2007
InformationWeek Review: Apple’s Mac OS X shines in comparison with Microsoft’s Windows Vista – January 06, 2007
NY Times’ Pogue reviews Microsoft’s Windows Vista: ‘Looks, Locks, Lacks’ – December 14, 2006
Dave Winer: ‘Microsoft isn’t an innovator, and never was – they are always playing catch-up’ – December 01, 2006
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard is 64-bit done right, unlike Microsoft’s Windows Vista kludge – August 14, 2006
Microsoft Windows Vista: If you can’t innovate… try to impersonate Apple’s Mac OS X – August 10, 2006
Analyst: Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard sets new bar, leaves Microsoft’s Vista in the dust – August 08, 2006
Microsoft botches another copy job: Windows Vista Flip3D vs. Apple Mac OS X Exposé – June 26, 2006
Windows Vista rips-off Mac OS X at great hardware cost (and Apple gains in the end) – June 13, 2006
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
NIST nixes VISTA, at least until it’s fixta.
Vista is a joke. It’s sour eye candy that might as well display its dialog boxes to the end-users in a foreign language. Microsoft has failed.
The problem is that Vista’s woes do not translate to Mac wins in this environment. The gov will move to Linux before it moves to Mac (IMHO).
Vista sucks hard. Nothing more need be said.
Perhaps, Spark, but the enemy of my enemy, blah blah blah.
So, how long before we see the dreaded “beleaguered” permanently attached to Microsoft?
Lucky 7
Nice one, Ron.
And where I work, they’re planning an entire company-wide roll-out of Vista starting in October. New PCs purchased from here on are already coming with a Vista load (pun intended).
Glad I have a Mac on my desk. My boss even signed me up to be a “field-test” guinea pig before the big roll-out. So I asked if they’d let me install it on my Mac using Parallels – we’ll see how it goes…
Spark,
Perhaps. But, in the grand scheme of things, for the betterment of the people, etc., etc., it’s not about Apple becoming the defacto standard, but rather, no longer tolerating abusive, shoddy, and even dangerous technologies. I’d love to see a major shift in what is considered acceptable (or better) technology, even if it was at Apple’s expense.
Hey, at least Linux is better than Vista.
Linux and Mac OS are both based on Unix – so I see it as a win for our side.
GO TEAM!
Linux making inroads can only be good for the Mac. Anything to change the perception that Microsuck is the only option…
BuriedCaesar->And where I work, they’re planning an entire company-wide roll-out of Vista starting in October. New PCs purchased from here on are already coming with a Vista load (pun intended).>
How sad. They could have a roll-out tomorrow using Macs. At least you’ll be able to show them how it’s done on a Mac. I hope the owner knows about your Mac, not just IT.
It’s offical, Vista does not meet standards.
OBL says WOW!
went to see “BREACH” the movie this weekend…learned alot about what is behind America’s worst security breach! — Dell Computers and other old “dinosaur” type machine..if you are planning to see it, you’ll understand what I mean.
the government, never listens..
Gman
I really hate to stand up for Microsuck, but the first version of OSX was a work in progress too.
BuriedCaesar,
Not to wish bad things on others but it’d be nice if all the shiny new machines with Vista refused to work so the people in charge of buying them would see what a huge mistake they’re making.
ARTIST,
Yeah, but it’s my undestanding that Apple pretty much worked from the ground up on OSX where Microsoft is just adding more junk to their already bloated beast. But I could be wrong.
ron,
Oh the corn, the corn!
Did you get my reply about iTunes 7 and 3rd gen. ipods?
Artist: Bad comparison. The first version of OSX was a totally new operating system for the Mac platform. If anything, Vista is equivalent to a MacOS “point” upgrade since the underlying OS is still the same ole Windows. Not only that, but 5 years in the making of a point upgrade and you’d think they would be able to come up with something significant.
@ BuriedCaesar
We already have Vista rolled out company-wide where I work. All our workstations were upgraded during the first weekend in February. We went through an extensive pre-screening for all of our engineering and CAD apps with the beta releases up to the production release for the three months prior.
I must say our Vista upgrade went flawlessly with no problems whatsoever and our engineers and technical writing people absolutely love the new operating environment.
Our engineers used to use Ashlar-Vellum CAD/CAM software on G5’s. When Ashlar failed to update the software to MacTel they replaced all the G5’s with 64-bit Dells running Windows. I’m afraid the Macs are gone in our business for ever.
No government agency (or sensible private enterprise, for that matter) is going to implement a new OS without an extended testing and verification process to ensure stability, compatibility and security.
ARTIST: The problem is that Vista isn’t the paradigm shift that OS X was. Puma was a whole new OS that was gradually improved in Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger.
Vista is still using the NT kernel that was introduced with version 3.5 in 1994 and gradually “improved” with 4.0, 2k, and XP. If anything XP was the paradigm shift as the old consumer Windows was moved from the DOS kernel to the NT kernel.
Vista is just a mess because instead of doing small gradual changes, instead of paring down the obsolete code, instead of basics like ensuring compatibility with Plug and Play drivers Microsoft over-promised, over-complicated, and under-delivered on the project plus they quintupled their workforce to do it. That is the greatest tragedy and most under-reported failing with Microsoft is the complete and utter disaster that is their human resources management.
Linux and open source in general are Apple’s allies. Mac OS X is based mostly on open source code and Apple gains from the work of the open source community. Apple also contributes back a lot of good stuff to that community. Apple has little to fear on the desktop. The open source community is very creative, but so anarchic that when it comes to polishing off the interface and achieving a great user experience, that the open source products suffer from the consequences of all of the in-fighting. Also, the open source projects tend to work in spurts and there is no guarantee that they will be kept up to snuff. Apple is also taking this user experience approach to the server market, but it still has a way to go.
Apple crosses the “T”s and dots the “i”s and generally insures a top notch user experience. This is a great model giving geeks what they want and also letting Apple grow like gangbusters.
“I must say our Vista upgrade went flawlessly with no problems whatsoever”
… that after smoking 50kg of opium… perhaps… liar!
Makes sense. What do Standards and Technology have to do with Microsoft anyway?
Are .DOC, .WMA, .WMV, ActiveX, .NET etc. standards? No. Only one technologically retarded corporation controls such formats.
The Apple on my desk uses .TIF, .AAC, .JPG, .MPEG-4, .PDF, etc. Does Apple control these formats? No. Do I need to pay extra to use these formats and technologies? No.
Maybe this is how you get +90% market share with unsecure, less than mediocre products. Lock users into ugly, lame technology rife with non-standards?
“… that after smoking 50kg of opium… perhaps… liar!”
My, my. It really hurts you Mac fanboys to think that the business world doesn’t revolve around a piece of fruit, huh?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Apple Illusion…………….
My father in law just got a vista system. For some reason his system was saving to a restore section of the hd. And it was full.
He couldn’t figure out how “the damn thing was already full.” So I told him I’d take a look.
I used to be able to get around XP like a pro, or at least a serious amateur. But Vista made me feel like an idiot. I couldn’t even figure out how to select that partition to see what was in it!
Everything was so hidden from me that I couldn’t figure out how to get around the system at all. Add to that all the dialogs and screen clutter and I started to feel sick navigating the system after about 5 minutes.
I wasn’t even interested in exploring to see what I could find. 5 minutes in I just shut the laptop.
“It sucks,” said my F-in-L. “I basically have to learn a whole new system. I should have bought a Mac.”
Yep. I wouldn’t go near Vista with a ten-foot pole.
The state of internet journalism is rather alarming. Rarely does the truth get in the way of a good story and internet journalists, by and large, are interested in one thing, and one thing only; getting hits on their web sites.
I work for an IT consulting firm that hires out to various US government agencies and I can assure you that there is no “ban” on Microsoft’s Vista operating system, as reported here, in any government agency. Merely that all new technologies, whether they be software or hardware, must undergo a stringent regimen of testing to insure compatibility with all layers of IT infrastructure before deployment.
What is being reported as a “ban” here is nothing more than a moratorium. And I question the integrity of any journalist who reports it as otherwise without solid references. Unfortunately we have internet journalists, such as Paul McDougall, who can invent a story based on government agency documents that just happen to fall into the possession of InformationWeek. Until these “agency documents” are made public (and InformationWeek is willing to face the legal ramifications of making them public) this is nothing more than a fabrication to get hits on a web site.
Steve–get a life. this is a MAC site asshat.
Everybody hates a troll. Especially trolls that makes stupid, uninformed comments.
Word of NIST’s Windows Vista ban comes a week after InformationWeek revealed that the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration have both imposed similar blackouts on the operating system, as well as on Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7.
All I can say is…WOW
“All I can say is…WOW”
As in WOW, I didn’t realize that in the real world all IT departments want to control unauthorized upgrades to new OS and software versions?
My, my. It really hurts you Mac fanboys to think that the business world doesn’t revolve around a piece of fruit, huh?
HAHHAHHHAH not at all. Some business are actually getting smart and allowing Macs in their environment. It takes time but it is happening.
Stevie troll, the all thing does not hurt at all. Mar users are actually amused and bemused to see that the business world still puts up with that Windows crap on a daily base and still do not realize that they have been revolving all this time around Bill Gate’s shaft.
re: @ BuriedCaesar
We already have Vista rolled out company-wide where I work. All our workstations were upgraded during the first weekend in February. We went through an extensive pre-screening for all of our engineering and CAD apps with the beta releases up to the production release for the three months prior.
I must say our Vista upgrade went flawlessly with no problems whatsoever and our engineers and technical writing people absolutely love the new operating environment.
Our engineers used to use Ashlar-Vellum CAD/CAM software on G5’s. When Ashlar failed to update the software to MacTel they replaced all the G5’s with 64-bit Dells running Windows. I’m afraid the Macs are gone in our business for ever.
—-
SO BLOODY WHAT!
Big deal!
One company has a succesful transition to Vista.
Well my friend, 99.9% of the businesses around the world were not priviledged to have been involved in the beta process and therfore had no access to test their systems before spending shot loads of cash on an overpriced XP service pack that took 6 years and 10$ billion to copy from OS X.
It’s THOSE companies that matter.
Btw, all the companies that I deal with are all having problems with Vista.
When I talk to them I just say to them go over to Mac OS X.
Alot of them already have…
“I really hate to stand up for Microsuck, but the first version of OSX was a work in progress too.”
Well that argument MIGHT work if Vista was a total re-write like it was supposed to be. M$ simply could not go through a transition like Apple did. That is why it took them 5 years to slap new wall paper on XP and call it Vista. And just recently Apple went through, and you may argue they still are going through, a processor change. Either one of those would bring M$ down, Apple did it in a few years. That is quite amazing.
“Well that argument MIGHT work if Vista was a total re-write like it was supposed to be. “
OSX wasn’t a total re-write of anything. it was DIFFERENT to Apple’s previous OS, but it was basically BSD/MACH with a new GUI.
The core OS existed for a decade before Steve even began working with it to add the new GUI. Then it was in development for 9 years before being sold to Apple, and another 5 years by Apple before they released it as a product.
So I wouldn’t get cocky about Apple is able to achieve on the OS side compared to Microsoft.
New “Versions” of OSX continue to be what Microsoft would have called “Service Packs” with upgrades to applications and the GUI rather then fundamental OS changes.