It's been a while since Microsoft introduced Vista. With the release of Service Pack 1 - all of the latest bug fixes and improvements released in one pack - is it now time to consider migrating to Vista.

It certainly looks pretty, but what is in it for you?

Introducing Vista

Windows Vista is a genuinely new and exciting piece of software. Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Advanced security. Vista runs programs in different places on your computer at different times, which makes hacking much more complicated. A technique dubbed “Bitlocker” encrypts data on hard drives too, so that if a laptop is stolen, the information on it cannot be accessed.
• A whole world of connections. In the world of Vista, business doesn’t end on the desktop. Vista treats online resources, file repositories, networked resources (like data centres or SharePoint sites) in the same way as local files. This makes collaborative working effective and genuinely easy.
• Search functionality. Searching with Vista is spectacular. From the Windows button, you can search emails, documents, programs, saved web pages and just about anything else, at a stroke.
• Easy expansion. Vista comes equipped for just about anything your office expansion needs could demand. Managing wireless connections, home-working, commissioning new computers and networking are all simple procedures which no longer take hours of downtime.

That’s the good news. Vista is powerful, and highly collaborative.

Upgrade Strategies

But there’s a downside, too. Vista is a behemoth of a program. It sucks up system resources to the extent that many machines older than one year or so simply won’t be capable of running it effectively. Cute extras (a visually impressive interface called Aero and a bunch of extras for photo management, for example) are irrelevant to most business activities, and are therefore just an unwanted overhead.

Even top industry analysts say that they expect businesses to move very slowly towards Windows Vista. Sure, most new machines will have Vista pre-installed, but you are well advised not to make the leap to Vista immediately- you will almost certainly have to replace many of your office machines.

Our advice is to wait until natural expediency means most of your office machines are worth replacing, and then go fully across to Vista. Again, industry expert opinion is that this will happen for most small to medium sized companies in the next 6 to 18 months. There’s nothing wrong with Windows XP, the current default operating system of choice, and Omniis will continue to support XP for many months to come.

Purchase Options

Vista also weighs in as (justifiably) Microsoft’s most expensive operating system, and with no less than six versions. There’s something of an argument raging at the moment, because Vista in the UK costs significantly more than it does in the US: unfortunately we don’t think that’s going to change- you’ll have to accept it as a business expense and one of life’s little injustices.

For any but the smallest businesses, you should be considering the “Enterprise” or “Business” editions. They are more expensive than the “Home” versions, but it’s worth the extra expense. Also, be sure to investigate Microsoft’s bulk-licensing options. Even for five employees, discounts can be as much as 60%, representing an excellent opportunity to save whilst giving your staff the best possible software.

Vista v. Office
Now let’s make things even more confusing. At the moment, you probably use Windows XP as your operating system, and run the Office suite of productivity software (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.)

Whilst we advise you to move slowly towards Vista, there’s also a new version of Office: Office 2007. And the exciting news is, Office 2007 is incredible. It puts the sort of powerful computing at your fingertips which was unthinkable even two years ago. The presentations produced by PowerPoint 2007 would put a graphic designer out of business. Task management with Outlook 2007 is a doddle. And Excel 2007 can cope with spreadsheets that are millions of records long. Office 2007 really is a great leap forward.

And you can get started with Office 2007 without upgrading to Vista. Again, you should only do this with fairly powerful machines, but 60-day trials of Office 2007 are available from Microsoft’s website, so it’s worth checking out now.

In summary…

It is now getting increasingly difficult to purchase a computer which has Windows XP pre-installed onto it. It could be time to take the plunge, the vast majority of the bugs should be resolved by now and all of the hardware manufacturers have now updated their drivers to take full advantage of the new operating system.

Older hardware may still struggle, so if you are going to Vista budget for a new computer as well.

So whilst I say a cautionary yes, be careful, do the research, make sure all of the applications you depend upon do work on VIsta.