If your business is like most businesses in NZ, you run Microsoft's Windows XP operating system on your workstations - the "desktop". You've paid for licenses of Microsoft Office, and probably spend a fair bit of time and money on virus scanners like Norton, Symantec, AVG. etc. and fretting over whether your employees/colleagues have inadvertently introduced various Windows afflictions into your network by browsing dodgy websites.

At the same time, you remember back to the days when your company used to use Microsoft's previous versions of Windows - 2000 or 98, or - perish the thought - Millennium... You were sold Windows XP as the solution to all the woes inherent to those older systems.

Now Microsoft are at it again - highlighting Windows XP's warts in hopes that you'll see the light and flock to their newest offering, Microsoft Windows "Vista".

Microsoft have released a handy guide for business IT consultants who want to sell their companies (or customers) on the idea of upgrading their Microsoft Windows XP desktops to Microsoft Windows Vista. The instructional/motivational document enumerates the many shortcomings of Microsoft's Windows XP with regard to security from external threats (e.g. viruses), security from internal threats (e.g. employees installing software without license compliance, spyware, etc.), and points out that it costs too much to run. Those with a reasonable memory will recall that Microsoft made very similar arguments for XP over Windows 2000 when Windows XP was introduced back in 2002.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Vista has been almost universally panned by pretty much all independent reviews (see, for example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7). Even those who have the most to gain have come out against it - the boss at Acer (the world's 4th largest PC producer and major Microsoft Windows reseller) has little good to say about Vista. Most recently, BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) have recently published a report which, among other things stated:

"We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit..."

Keep in mind - to run Vista, you'll most likely have to

• upgrade all your hardware,
• purchase almost entirely new software,
• buy more anti-virus software,
• find a support provider who understands this completely new system and its many foibles,
• test your existing software, as it may well be incompatible, and
• be prepared for slower performance, even from new hardware (which is anything but "green" computing).

So, it looks like all the uncertainties that have always kept businesses from leaping, boots and all, into a Linux-based desktop infrastructure... are equally present in an "upgrade" to Windows Vista: driver issues, incompatibilities, retraining, support questions.

Of course, when telling you that you should upgrade your current desktop environments, Microsoft doesn't point out that your business has another choice: an upgrade to Linux. Linux would offer you an infrastructure

• that is truly secure - no need to run anti-virus software at all,
• that offers higher performance,
• that costs substantially less to maintain,
• that removes license hassles - compliance, and per-seat costs - altogether, and
• that breathes new life into your existing workstation hardware (so you're not contributing to the hardware landfill!).

Given the amount of money and time involved in these sorts of strategic changes, it certainly pays to investigate the options.

The transition to Linux has quite a few unexpected changes - not least of which is "green computing". Apparently, even if you don't take hardware waste into account, in terms of energy requirements running Linux on the desktop will make your business "greener" as well.

If you want to explore this further, just do a search for "Linux support" and the name of your region or city in Google. You might be pleasantly surprised by how many options pop up.

You could also just contact us.