Australian IT managers are not succumbing to the Windows Vista hype, instead opting to run pilots, delay installations, or shun the operating system entirely. The first retail copy of Vista, signed by Bill Gates himself, was sold at midnight on Monday, accompanied by a cable TV countdown and a flurry of media attention.
However, IT managers remain unconvinced of the benefits in upgrading to the resource-hungry platform.
Warringah Council, North of Sydney, has no plans to roll out Vista and is instead concentrating on deploying Windows XP.
The council's acting IT manager Richard McManus said "We don't have any plans at all to install Vista because we are [happy] with our current operating systems. We are continuing to deploy XP on our machines and will stick with that."
St. Andrews War Memorial Hospital in Townsville IT manager Anthony Winters, shared McManus' sentiment, stating the hospital is not deploying Vista and has no plans to do so.
Other IT managers, such as the Sydney Foreshore Authority records department coordinator Stephen Parkes, will base installation plans around Vista's updates and potential problems.
"We are using Microsoft Windows 2000, and don't have immediate plans to implement Vista straight away," Parkes said. "We might look at installing Vista later on, but that will depend how well it does [and] on user review."
Adelaide City Council IT project manager David Carroll said its Vista roll out will be dragged out between 12 to 18 months and will follow a detailed project implementation procedure.
"We will roll Vista out over an 18 month period, but I'll probably have Vista on my home computer before then so I'll know its [problems] and will be more familiar with it," Carroll said.
A Southern Cross University IT manager, who requested anonymity, said that while there are no immediate plans to go to Vista, the operating system will eventually replace the current XP desktops and will be rolled out initially to staff and then students in accordance with strict project implementation plans.
An e-mail poll of 40 IT managers conducted by Computerworld US last week found only three respondents expect Vista to be deployed on more than half of their companies' systems by year's end, despite the removal of some of the barriers that hinder upgrades.
Many users cited concerns about upgrading to Vista such as the need to test applications and a desire to wait for bug fixes that will be in Microsoft's first service pack release.