SillyDog701

[Antony]

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) bans all in-house computers from upgrading to Microsoft's latest Windows, Explorer and Office. Reason: "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also has a similar ban.

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.

(...)

the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says.

(...)

The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users.

For full story, please see: Microsoft Hit By U.S. DOT Ban On Windows Vista, Explorer 7, and Office 2007 (InformationWeek, 2nd March 2007)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2

[Shadow Angel]

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) bans all in-house computers from upgrading to Microsoft's latest Windows, Explorer and Office. Reason: "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also has a similar ban.

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.

(...)

the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says.

(...)

The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users.

For full story, please see: Microsoft Hit By U.S. DOT Ban On Windows Vista, Explorer 7, and Office 2007 (InformationWeek, 2nd March 2007)

i think you should change the title of this thread. the title "US Govt. bans Windows Vista, IE7, Office 2007" insists that the u.s government has banned vista, ie7, and office 2007 over the whole of the u.s, when in fact, it's the department of transport.

your title is a bit misleading!

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[profman]

To put some perspective on this, read the below article on why the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US is "waiting" to adopt Windows Vista:

Why we 'banned' Windows Vista

Here are some quotes from that article:

The prestigious National Institute of Standards and Technology has put a ban on Windows Vista, but that's standard procedure, according to NIST's chief information officer.

NIST, which does research and sets standards for things like cryptography for government use, is among several federal agencies that have put a moratorium on the use of Vista. The agencies are taking some time to make sure that the new Microsoft operating system meets their needs.

It is not unusual that large organizations aren't rushing to install major software updates. These organizations tend to do a lot of testing before upgrading. The same happened when Microsoft released Windows XP, and again with Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Microsoft widely released Vista in late January.

Simon Szykman, chief information officer at NIST, was slightly irked by some of the media reports on his agency's move, which painted the ban as a major slap in Microsoft's face. In fact, Szykman said, this is business as usual. Ultimately, NIST expects many of its PCs will run Vista. Still, Microsoft has predicted a swift adoption of Vista by businesses. ...

Q: What is your current position on Windows Vista?
Szykman: Our policy states that we're not allowing users to install or deploy Windows Vista for the time being. We consider this to be an interim policy to give us the time to do the adequate testing of Vista before we deploy it. We don't expect to have any obstacles that would prevent us from eventually deploying Vista. ...

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[Sonadow]

i can understand a temp ban on Vista and Office 2007. (especially Office 2007, with extentions and formats not readable by older systems)

but ban IE7? that's just soo...wierd...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5pre) Gecko/20070604 Firefox/2.0.0.4 Navigator/9.0b1

[Dr Lobster*]

this is no different to the stance of where i work for and vista. i see no reason why we should upgrade, there are some features some users will find helpful and improved, but for the most part, many users are actually using a propriety piece of software so many of the improvements will actually be invisible to them as it's not actually features of the operating system, they are using the same piece of software which will function the same on vista as it does on xp.

i think the other issue is support for legacy hardware and software, lots of companies have old kit, scanners, printers, ms-dos apps, old 16 bit windows apps - vista pretty much wipes these out and upgrading those type things just adds to the investment and in some cases isn't possible.

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