Intel says no to Vista, won’t upgrade to new OS

(TheForceField.Net) June 27, 2008 — The New York Times reported this week that Intel will not upgrade its computers to Microsoft Windows Vista.

In an article written by Steve Lohr and posted on the newpaper's web site, an anonymous source close to Intel said that the company will not migrate to Vista and a company spokesperson said that although Vista would be installed on some machines for testing and deployment in select departments, the company would not be installing it on all computers for its 80,000 employees.

Intel joins the ranks of a large number of corporations that have shunned migration to Microsoft's latest version of Windows, slowing adoption of the operating system in both the SMB market and the enterprise. Many companies perceive Vista as slow, buggy and a resource hog. Lack of support from software developers and for third party device drivers are also considered factors against adoption.

This was not unexpected. Many companies typically wait until the first service pack is released and the bugs are worked out before moving to a new operating system. However, the release of SP1 lacked improvements many were expecting or hoping for and so far has done little to spur adoption.

The decision by Intel is likely to create speculation about the chip maker's relationship with Microsoft, which historically has been very close and is believed by some in the industry as a reason Redmond found itself faced with legal problems related to their Vista Capable program,  a marketing campaign which designated certain OEM PCs shipped with scaled down versions of Windows Vista as being capable of running the higher versions. Some of the machines were found to be lacking the resources to actually live up to the designation, prompting at least one lawsuit. E-mails collected from Microsoft executives and made public indicated Microsoft was aware of the problem but may have felt compelled to offer it anyway to please Intel.

Although Intel does not plan to fully migrate to Vista, the New York Times article reports that the company could change its mind. Intel and Microsoft have a long history together and enjoy a close relationship. Soft prompting from Microsoft could influence them to upgrade after all. For now, however, the company reportedly has no plans to do so.

 

 

Electronic Design Magazine