Texas Bans Vista
Friday, April 3rd, 2009Computer World is reporting that “Texas state Senate bans Vista from use in government agencies“.
“We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide,” Sen. Juan Hinojosa said during a Senate session debating the rider Wednesday evening. “And the XP operating system is working very well.”
Wow, I can’t believe I am going to defend Microsoft, but is Senator Hinojosa using the same Vista I am? Since upgrading to Service Pack 1 of Vista, it’s been as reliable as Windows XP.
The article from Computer World goes on to say that some agencies and state offices have already upgraded to Vista. But doesn’t answer the question as to how those migrations went? Did something go terribly wrong that influenced this decision? Or is it just these “known nationwide” problems that Senator Hinojosa speaks of? Which problems are those exactly?
I’m an Apple fan-boy. But even I confess that Vista is an okay operating system. If installed on new hardware and used with new peripherals to avoid driver problems, it’s fine. As fine as XP is. If the Texas State Legislature wants to really make some improvements, have an impact on their budget and not outlaw a single product from one company then why didn’t they pass a law to promote open source solutions? Linux is a perfect solution for many office uses. I’m sure some agencies have some Windows-only software on the client side for server side databases. But they should be moving away from such a proprietary model anyway. That is what is really tieing them to Microsoft.
In 2007, Texas considered a bill to require state agencies to adopt the Open Document Format but that failed. Seems like they should consider that again. Embrass something good, but don’t hate on the misunderstood.
Read the whole article at Computer World:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9130992&taxonomyId=89&pageNumber=2
Tags: Computer World, law, Linux, Microsoft, open source, Texas, Vista
