An informal survey shows that most colleges are delaying the installation on campus computers of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista, released to the public a year ago. Gary O. Roberts, Alfred University’s director of information-technology services, polled colleges online and asked them two questions: Has their campus switched to Vista, or do they plan to upgrade to Vista in the next four to six months? Twenty-eight college officials answered no to the first question, while five officials answered yes. To the second question, 25 respondents answered no, and six said yes. Mr. Roberts said Alfred would not adopt Vista until 2009.
The data confirm what Jonathan Stallings, an account manager for Matrix Integration, has been been observing about his clientele, which are largely colleges and universities. Matrix Integration, based in Jasper, Ind., is a technology vendor.
“I don’t know of any colleges that have plans to go to Vista this year,” he said. Mr. Stallings said that Vista did not integrate smoothly with other software and that college help-desk staff didn’t know the software well enough to support it. “Super-technical people, like engineers, love Vista because it’s a more powerful operating system, but the general user hates it,” he added.
Greg Smith, chief technology officer of George Fox University, said techie students on campus applauded and cheered when they found out the university was not planning to support Vista.
Still, colleges may be compelled to move to Vista sometime next year. That’s because Microsoft is telling PC manufacturers, such as Dell and Gateway, that after this summer they won’t be able to ship out computers with the old Windows XP operating system in them. So as students buy new machines, they will start getting used to Vista and expect college technical staffs to be familiar with it. Meanwhile, Microsoft is allowing colleges with whom they have license agreements to downgrade the software on their PC’s from Vista to XP.
The problem for many students, though, is that CD’s of Microsoft’s XP-Pro are becoming more expensive at college bookstores. Microsoft is trying to nudge students to Vista. Noel Lephart, director of information services at Indiana Business College, said that the campus bookstore used to be able to buy a CD of XP-Pro for $70, but that now it costs about $90. And that price increase is passed on to students. —Andrea L. Foster
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