BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

Just to prove that Microsoft DO listen to their partners there have been some major changes to the Action Pack.

Remember the consternation around the removal of OEM software from the Action Pack which meant you had to perform an upgrade? Well that has now gone and the full products are included. so you can do a fresh install on bare metal without having to do the upgrade.

As well as that a whole stack of sales aids and other goodies are going to be included to help you be more proactive when it comes to promoting Vista etc.

Important changes for Action Pack Subscribers regarding Windows Vista provides the full details. Thanks to David Overton for the heads up on this. David has loads more info on the changes in his blog post.

I’ve installed Vista SP1 on 2 machines now. My home machine and my laptop. Installation on the home machine was straightforward although it did take 50 minutes. You are warned before the install it could take an hour or more so this isn’t a trivial upgrade your customers can do in 5 mins.

On the laptop I got an installation failure due to an unsupported language:

The fix for this can be found in the following Microsoft KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947876

Technorati Tags: Vista,SP1,falure,KB947876,language

Finally we are now officially supporting Windows Vista Business on our client networks. Why the long wait?

Well, for a start we use Ultra VNC as our preferred method of remote control, either via VPN to the clients router or RDP to their server and then VNC to their desktops. Up until recently Ultra VNC hasn’t supported Vista completely. In particular, when a UAC dialogue box pops up it can’t be seen at the controlling end, so it requires interaction at the client end which isn’t ideal as they will often be working on another machine or gone out to lunch etc.

UltraVNC 1.0.4 RC8 now has greatly improved support for Vista including the ability to see the UAC dialogue. It’s still in beta but we’ve tested it in several scenarios and are happy with the stability and speed it provides.

So is there anything else stopping us pushing Vista as the desktop OS of choice? Well we still have to be careful to ensure that all the apps the client is running will work with Vista but the list of non-compatible products is growing shorter by the day. Looks like Vista may finally be reaching that critical  point where there really are no show stoppers to recommending it. About time too!

I keep reading articles about the disappointing take up of Vista particularly in business which made me think about the reasons why.

Many of the articles blame the lack of any major perceivable benefits in Vista for the poor uptake. What a load of twaddle that is! Vista is packed with great new features that we should be pushing on our customers. No, lack of new benefits is a red herring. Personally I blame software developers and ISVs, and here’s why:

We talk to business clients on a daily basis. We know for a fact that many of them want to upgrade to Vista to get the benefits but can’t because they are running Line of Business (LOB)applications which don’t yet support the new O/S. It seems unacceptable to me that this long after the launch of Vista there are software houses out there that have yet to produce a version of their software that runs properly on Vista, and I’m not just talking about the small guys who haven’t got the resource but some of the big players as well. It’s not like they couldn’t have started development during the beta and Release Candidate stages of the O/S.

OK, so assuming we sell Vista into a client as all their LOB applications support it, that leaves the question about how we support it from an infrastructure viewpoint. Guess what, the remote control software we use isn’t Vista compatible yet - back to the software developers needing to pull their fingers out! I know we could use Remote Assistance but that relies on interaction from the end user, and often they aren’t available when we need to work on their systems.

So, where does that leave us? Between a rock and a hard place! So, Microsoft, if you want your SBSC and Certified Infrastructure partners to shift more copies of Vista - tell the ISVs to pull their fingers out please.

Ever wanted to know what the end users Vista downgrade rights are? Then check out this pdf that explains all.

OK so you want your users to be upgrading to Vista but sometimes for whatever reason they’re not ready for it. The ability to exercise these downgrade rights overcomes the objections, and they can then install Vista when they’re ready.

 We’re going to print off a copy and put it up on the machine room wall in our office.