For smaller organizations with only a few machines and no centralized administration control, Microsoft’s Windows Vista does make sense. It does have better security than Windows XP, although a robust antivirus solution is still mandatory, as this does not come standard with Vista — and it will warn about this until you load an antivirus solution.
 (Page 5 of 5)A commercial alternative to Vista is, of course, the Apple Macintosh operating system Mac OS environment, which now uses an underlying Linux kernel with the polish of the Mac graphical user environment. These machines still seem to be the favorite in some educational environments and those involved in graphic design and photography, but there are fewer commercial packages available for this operating system than for Vista due to the sheer market penetration of Microsoft. As time marches on, we will all eventually move to Vista, and just when we become comfortable, there is now Windows 7 over the horizon with a possible release date around 2010.
it will most likely represent an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, step.Vista is here to stay and for new machines, unless you have some really old peripherals, why wouldn’t you choose it? For businesses, as you refresh your hardware fleet, it is logical that you would go to Vista. There are also alternatives out there such as Linux, which may represent a lower cost, but maybe a higher risk, in a commercial context. However, Mac OS is fine if you like its interface or need to run products that specifically use its capabilities. I am pleasantly surprised by the robustness of Vista and the ease of installation compared to XP. Sure, there are some programs that have problems, such as my TV tuner card software refusing to work, but the hardware works brilliantly under Vista media center. I am sure that, in a few more years time, I will be upgrading or building a new machine so that I can run Windows 7 or whatever it will be called, but that is the landscape of the IT world: constant change and hopefully, constant improvement. |
