Will Vista be Costly?

The Associated Press released an article today about how the Department of Transportation will not be migrating to Vista, citing upgrade costs and compatibility issues. I have to believe that most IT shops have these same two concerns: "How much is this going to cost?" and "Will my users be productive once we get there?"

Microsoft has resources available to address some of these concerns:

• An On-Demand Webcast on deployment tools and technologies
• A Hardware Assessment Tool

Microsoft has also provided quite a number of resources on Application Compatibility:

• Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 - one of the coolest tools in this kit is the Standard User Analyzer. Remember when W2K came out and you had issues running some of your apps becuase of permissions issues in the registry or file system? You probably (like most) gave the user either Local Admin or Power User rights (whichever worked) to get them running, but never addressed the issue. This was becuase there was no easy way to figure out which reg keys and NTFS permissions were keeping the app from running. Enter in the Standard User Analyzer (SUA) - this tool checks for and recommends which premissions in the registry and file system will need to be changed in order for an app to work. Killer!
• Guidance on "Getting Started" with App Compability

I recently completed writing a ScriptLogic whitepaper, "The Proactive Migration to Windows Vista" in which I not only cover how to migrate to Vista with ScriptLogic's Desktop Management solutions, but also discuss having a proactive mindset towards your migration so that the migration itself is nothing more than moving "Sally's" PC to Vista instead of you spending countless nights and weekends in front of "Sally's" machine post-migration trying to get her environment close to what it was on XP and getting her apps to function.

Even if you have no plans to use a ScriptLogic solution as part of your Vista Migration Strategy, give the whitepaper a read, as it truly gives the migration to Vista a VERY different twist - one where some of the migration actually occurs potentially MONTHS before Vista is ever rolled out.