DOT Bans Windows, Office 2007 & IE7?

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InformationWeek says they got their hands on a memo from the Department of Transportation banning the upgrade to Vista, Office 2007 and IE7.

Citing concerns over cost and compatibility, the top technology official at the federal Department of Transportation has placed a moratorium on all in-house computer upgrades to Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, as well as Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007, according to a memo obtained Friday by InformationWeek.
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This made news why?

Any company/business making the jump this early would be asking for it.
 
asside from the "duh, no kidding" factor to this story... it's not like MS releases it's latest OS to major IT departments accross the country for compatiability and deployment strategies.
 
My work even advises us not to upgrade to IE7 yet, at least not until the employee "portal" website becomes 100% compatible with it.

Banishment is a pretty over-the-top way to do it though.
 
No sensible business is going to implement this product until SP19. I'm still using all Win2k. The last (and only) decent corporate OS from microsoft.
 
This is very typical of government organizations and I'm not sure why anyone would make a big deal about it. I know most .govs haven't moved to vista yet and have not plans to for some time to come.
 
We just got a new computer at our office, it HAD to come with Vista (bought from Dell :eek: ).
Yet, everyone else in the office I make sure there computers run FireFox.
 
theDreamer said:
We just got a new computer at our office, it HAD to come with Vista (bought from Dell :eek: ).
Yet, everyone else in the office I make sure there computers run FireFox.
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We just got new work computers with XP Pro again. :D

God-damn 17" LCD has at dead pixels though.
 
theDreamer said:
We just got a new computer at our office, it HAD to come with Vista (bought from Dell :eek: ).
Yet, everyone else in the office I make sure there computers run FireFox.
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Most companies are going to put their own image on the pc anyway. We're not touching Office 2007 or Vista anytime soon, though they are currently doing compatibility testing for IE7.
 
I understand Vista and Office 2007. With office 07 using a new file format, getting everyone to either save their files in the older format or have everyone else download the compatibility add-on would be a nightmare. With any large corporation, a new OS will need months of testing to make sure it will work with everything that everyone uses. This is totally not news.

However I don't understand IE7. In my experience IE7 improves its compatibility with websites and applications. I upgraded my 550 users to IE7 a while back and my calls with IE problems has dropped dramatically.

I am moving everyone to Office 2007 next school year when I can upgrade everyone at once. I am still deciding whether or not to move to Vista next school year or give it another year.

From a personal standpoint, I love both Vista and Office 07 and have them installed on all of my home computers.
 
techspews said:
This is very typical of government organizations and I'm not sure why anyone would make a big deal about it. I know most .govs haven't moved to vista yet and have not plans to for some time to come.
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The airforce is in a heavy push to implement Vista and (Server 2007) because they want UAC. MS basically paid them not to go to Linux. And I know this because I work for a IT consulting company who does DoD work and is own by a high ranking colonel.
 
Fooshnik said:
No sensible business is going to implement this product until SP19. I'm still using all Win2k. The last (and only) decent corporate OS from microsoft.
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In my personal experience I have seen far more issues with windows 2k than I have seen with windows XP.
 
I haven't had really any problems with the new Vista Laptop that my father got yesterday, other than having to change back to English Non-Unicode settings because they haven't got an Applocale application for it yet.

That's the only complaint that I have with Vista thus far: no Applocale so I cannot install my Japanese games on it without f***ing up a few other programs.
 
brom42 said:
However I don't understand IE7. In my experience IE7 improves its compatibility with websites and applications. I upgraded my 550 users to IE7 a while back and my calls with IE problems has dropped dramatically.
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Probably for the reason that their intranet portal sites are designed with IE6 hacks and workarounds that no longer work in more web standardized IE7 :)
 
brom42 said:
However I don't understand IE7. In my experience IE7 improves its compatibility with websites and applications. I upgraded my 550 users to IE7 a while back and my calls with IE problems has dropped dramatically.
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We have at least 10 major apps at my work that will not work with IE7. All are vendor provided and we are having to wait on them to upgrade.
 
The Fed Govt is always the last to do any major upgrading. When I worked for the FAA back in 96 and 97, they were still running WIndows 3.11 and DOs on most of the work stations. It was not until WIndows NT SP3 came out and brought the full 32 bit desktop to fruition.

I personally love Office 2007. I cannot upgrade to vista yet because of the SLI issue. I am going to wait a while longer to upgrade to Vista.
 
I'm in the same boat with IE7. When it went final everyone was told not to upgrade to it. We have two apps that would break if IE7 was installed and that would mean a lot of trouble considering one of the apps is required use by anyone dealing with the public in any way or needs to make a note on an account.

I would be surprised if there was an upgrade to IE7 before another year passes.

As for Vista, that will probably be at least another year or two before it shows up on any systems. I'm running XP on my work computer but there are a lot of them with Win2k yet. I'm also still using Office 2000 as are most people if not everyone. This is a state government entity of thousands of people.

 
I work for part of the DOI and while we can upgrade to vista, office 2k7, and ie7, we are advised not to due to compatibility issues. Most of my offices use ie7, but none use office 2k7 or vista.
 
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