Does It Compute?

DOT Bans Vista, Office 2007

In January, the CIO of the US government's Department of Transportation issued a ban on Vista, Office 2007 and IE 7, stating that there was "no compelling technical or business case" for adopting the software and that in addition there were additional reasons not to upgrade due to concerns about compatibility with specific software programs used by the DOT. This latter type of concern is critical for law firms as well. Many of the programs law firms use –  practice management, document management, trial support software, etc. are produced by companies that do not have the resources to do extensive beta testing on a large pool of users with the new operating system. Therefore, while they may advertise that they are Vista-compatible, this frequently comes with reservations and exceptions: the fact of the matter is that there are almost certain to be problems with Vista as the user base expands. Early adoptors that want to have "cutting edge" technology are likely to discover why people often refer to this experience as being on the "bleeding edge." My advice: wait. Six months if you are feeling adventurous, or until Service Release 1 is out, a year if you want to be relatively certain that your software will actually work with Vista. In the meantime, if you have to buy a new PC, buy one that satisfy the heavy-duty memory requirements for Vista, but run Windows XP on it. That way, you can reformat the hard drive and install Vista when you are ready.

Does Vista Really Need 4GB of Ram?

I follow Brian Livington's Windows Secrets newsletters religiously, together with the columns by Woody Leonhard. They can be counted on to tell the truth about Microsoft products, a rare commodity these days. You can't go wrong if you follow their advice, whether it be about the operating system, patch management or features of the Office suite. So I did a doubletake recently when the main hardware/operating systems editor, Paul Langa wrote:

"So, does Vista really need 4GB? No. Vista will run in a limited way with as little as 512MB. It will run passingly with 1GB, and fairly well with 2GB. But, if you're looking to get as much out of Vista as it has to offer, then yes, you need 4GB of RAM."

Microsoft touts the new Aero features, but these are very memory intensive. In fact the "Home Basic" version of Vista does not support these features. So if you want to experience what Microsoft calls the "Wow" factor, you need a lot of memory. You also need an amount of memory on your video card that was used until recently only by gamers (256 or even 512Mb). In a backhanded way, the Dell web site offers confirmation for this analysis, offering 4GB of memory and 256 (minimum) or 512Mb of video memory as options on some higher-end models - these options were not listed 6 months ago. As Microsoft might say, WOW!!

Welcome to "Does It Compute"

Welcome to John Heckman's blog.
This blog will be devoted to issues concerning Legal Technology and software, in particular Document Management and Practice Management programs, as well as more general thoughts about the computer/software industry. I will also feature "Tips of the Week" - productivity enhancing tricks and workarounds for program limitations. As the title indicates, I will deal with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.