Computerworld's "Vista" About Face

Interesting how the tone & tenor of Computerworld regarding Windows Vista has changed post-launch.

An article on Vista today begins like this:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9010188&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

Microsoft is losing consumer operating system market share to Apple for many reasons, but most of those reasons can be oversimplified thus: Mac OS is simple, and Windows is complicated. That's why it may be such a costly error for Microsoft to make the Vista upgrade such a confusing mess.

Until today, even experts couldn't tell you off the top of their heads the differences between each of the many Vista versions -- or even how many versions there are -- or what the basic requirements are for the Upgrade versions. Ordinary consumers are baffled to the point of paralysis.

I have to say that my next PC will probably be an iMac, as my 8-year-old HP Pavilion is showing it's age. The 24" version is particularly stunning. That said, a MacBook Pro isn't out of the picture.

Back to the press...in Big 12 country, the Sooner State is again a bit ahead of the curve...pity for them. Listen to the way Computerworld opens this article:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9010230&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8

Unlike most large organizations, the University of Oklahoma plans to deploy Windows Vista on more than one quarter of its 65,000 PCs by the end of this year.

Because of those early migration plans, Dennis Aebersold, the university's CIO, is already well versed in the new operating system's volume activation features.

But Aebersold was disappointed to find that Microsoft Corp. has yet to release its Volume Activation Management Tool, which the school needs in order to use a proxy server to centrally activate multiple Vista desktops via a single connection to Microsoft's systems.

To meet Microsoft's requirement that Vista be activated and validated on systems within 30 days of installation, the university also plans to use an internally hosted Key Management Service developed by Microsoft to support automatic activations.

But Matt Singleton, the school's director of IT services, voiced concerns about that method of activation as well. He said Microsoft's KMS offers no user-based authentication, so to enable students who aren't connected to the university's network to activate Vista, the IT department will have to customize its firewall rules to allow only authorized users to access the system running the KMS.

"We believe the new volume-activation process can be beneficial for license compliance purposes," Aebersold said. "But the existing tools need more work and should have been released sooner."

Sooner...(chuckle).

Regular readers of this blog (all of whom have too much free time on their hands) will note that I view just about everything from Redmond as suspect...it's the stuff from Speen St. that I usually trust a bit more. In my opinion, Computerworld's coverage of Microsoft as it applies to Vista has been all over the map - especially as it applies to their electronic content - to the point that one could make a good case against them as a reputable, independent journal.

Having corresponded with Don Tenant, I know he'd find this troubling and unacceptable. I hope he has a chance to see how wide an arc his publication has travelled with regard to it's "positions" on Vista.