Treeman Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Three quarters of businesses shun SP2 update.Less than a quarter of businesses in North America have installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) according to a new study April 05, 2005 by AssetMetrix Labs.SC Magazine SC MagazineTreeman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffshen Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 i have helped many people upgrade to SP2... but there are bugs on it.... ran into a few already such as dead network cards afterwards etc. and I guess companies want to really test out SP2 in all environments before seriously deploying the service pack... it is a big hit to a business to have all their CPU's dying out because of a new SP... it has only been out for 8-9 months...J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rendrag Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 exactly... to many potential things can go wrong... def don't want to push it out via SMS to 1000 users to have it break. then your IT help desk will cry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FthrJACK Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Some of us, sadly, would be happy if we could get CEO to go as far as deploying XP in the first place, let alone SP2 9 months is actually a very long time, it doesent take that long to test the SP on a few isolated machines. If you run into problems you cant resolve however.. then 9 months would explain it. The thing is with businesses, is they tend to use proprietry hardware on the whole, and therefore fall foul of the rogue hardware component from hell with no visible FCC number and no compatible driver. They then have to rely on their hardware vendor to bring out a driver, which often takes from Julember to never.I still cannot understand why companies and governments willfully throw thousands of dollars at mediocre workstations that tie them to one sided and unworkable contracts with hardware vendors, who then run laughing all the way to the bank. Then, when it comes to renewing the contract.. they do it again and throw yet more money down the drain on yet more proprietry hardware.I only ever see a small number of benefits from this kind of deal, and huge amounts of problems. Most companies, especially small to medium sized ones would be beter off buying non proprietry hardware, or even building their own if they have approprietly skilled staff. I will put my money on that being the reason though, proprietry hardware not being compatible, despite the fact that current versions of windows have more drivers shipped with them as standard than any other OS has ever done before. Its in the Proprietry vendors interests to tie their customers to unworkable, non upgradable equipment, not only the hardware, but the software being part of it. Dont forget they usually ship windows with the workstations, and often have clauses in contracts about not changing the OS version. If they built their own, they could upgrade to newer versions of windows, use old equipment for jobs they might find, dual boot operating systems instead of having a unix machine in one corner and windows 2k machine in another and a winXP in another.. all for different software suites and tasks etc. It could actually save some companies money in the long run to take control of their own hardware, they just tend to take the stupid way out instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treeman Posted April 7, 2005 Author Share Posted April 7, 2005 Hi FthrJACK,That was indeed a thought provoking post!I just wish Microsoft had given us different levels of deployment, ie:Express Install for the masses.Custom Install, or what I'd refer to as compatability mode.Where SP2 would do a virtual install, then report the incompatabilities it finds, (problems) so you could then go out and get what you need.I guess I just don't like having this thing shoved down my throat either.Treeman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suryad Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 I think the added problem is that XP tries to be the be all end all for every computer hardware out there so it is only to be expected that SP2 might have issues with a variety of hardware especially corporate machines where there is a variety of software that is quite complex installed as well. And for best SP2 install, a clean install is required and I doubt corporations would want that...M$ is forcing SP2 down everyones throat and while my machine worked fine with the upgrade not everyones is going to. I think the customer should have a choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purewaveform Posted April 8, 2005 Share Posted April 8, 2005 I think that we need to be carefull here. SP2 is not evil, it really is trying, kind-of. SP2 really is a big deal, there are all kinds of configuration items that need addressing. We were able to test all the software at my work in about three months. It took us another month to get the patches for the stuff that didnt work, and then we also had to make some changes to some of our code as well. all in all about 5 months. And in the end the managers dont want to move, and have me evulating Linux for the desktops. There are just too many variables. There are also no other options, I want this from SP2, but not This. And in the corporate world you really cant use tools like nLite etc, becuase they violate your corporate agreement with MicroSoft, also if you did, you loose support, (which we pay A LOT for) I think that MS just needs to puch back the date and give us more time, we just got a service pack for 2003, and we need to at least test it a little to make sure that the changes to active directory dont have fits with XP SP2. but well see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bullet Posted April 9, 2005 Share Posted April 9, 2005 I think FthrJACK is right. I know that where I work we have many proprietary apps that require proprietary hardware. Many of the apps, in my opinion, are not very good. We have analysts that there entire job is to just make this one app run, or these two apps run. It is almost as if the application is a house of cards just waiting to fall with any little change to there enviroment. That is the reason we haven't implimented SP2 company wide. Our analysts are scared of SP2 and are two lazy to test. There philosophy is "if its not broke then don't fix it". I think that many other companies are taking the same philosophy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
un4given1 Posted April 9, 2005 Share Posted April 9, 2005 I know the reason I haven't moved the company I work for to SP2 is because one of the softwares we use has compatability issues with SP2. It just downright doesn't work... So, I am stuck without SP2 until they decide to fix it. Maybe I'm not the only one in this boat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverHaze420 Posted April 9, 2005 Share Posted April 9, 2005 We are finally going to deploy SP2 in 10 days. It was a big pain in the neck because of the firewall and pop-up blocker. We have users with mandatory profiles who need things differently then the roaming users. Big pain in the neck... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purewaveform Posted April 9, 2005 Share Posted April 9, 2005 Our company is also under the idea "if it isnt broken dont ix it" and to a point that is correct. We have a very serious firewall, and complete email monitoring etc. We havent had a virus etc in over a year. Why update to new security etc, when it isnt a problem for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonu27 Posted April 9, 2005 Share Posted April 9, 2005 Well companies will not be able to stop the SP2 update soon/now.It's best to install it on a clean version of XP.For businesses that's going to be hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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