

Army will upgrade all its computers to Vista by December









Comments     Threshold


Man I can already feel the headache...
By Wightout on 5/23/2009 7:52:54 PM , Rating: 2
Im in the Army.

The manuals we use for our maintenance are all on computers (Dell laptops that are 3+ years old). It runs slow with XP on it.

Can't imagine how well these machines are gonna hold up with vista on it... =/

RE: Man I can already feel the headache...
By Belard on 5/25/09, Rating: -1
RE: Man I can already feel the headache...
I hate comments like that....







RE: Man I can already feel the headache...
By marvdmartian on 5/26/2009 10:10:32 AM , Rating: 3
Can't say how the army is, but since I work for another DoD branch, I can say how my computer at work is, and I agree with your assessment that the computers will need some fairly decent upgrading.
My computer at work is an Athlon 64-3500+ with 1GB of ram, running Windows XP (SP3) and Office 2007. Normally, that would be just fine for everyday word processing, e-mail, and other office related activities, if you're running a normal version of windows and office, with everyday security programs installed.
However, I think the problem isn't so much with the hardware, but rather the half-crippled software they put on the machines. For reasons of security, Uncle doesn't want a standard form of Windows on his computers (of course, we wouldn't want our soldiers, sailors, marines & airmen playing solitaire, would we??). I fully understand why they do that.
But what it does is take a computer that should be able to handle the OS they put on it, and cripple it with so much "security" that it runs like a hog. Seriously, it takes upwards of 5 minutes for me to log on, wait for all the security reminder pop-ups, start up Outlook, and get it to check for new e-mail, AFTER I log on!! Believe me, it's oftentimes frustrating using that machine, when it seems to take twice as long to accomplish any task!

IMHO, the government should, at the very least, look to upgrade any computer (or replace it with a new unit), BEFORE they upgrade the operating system. But since DoD is notoriously slow in upgrading, I won't hold my breath. Oh, and believe it or not, the computer I use at work is considered "new" as of 3 years ago, when they upgraded me from a 1.3GHZ machine running 256mb of ram, which had been an upgrade from 2 years previously, when I ran a 500MHz machine with 256mb of ram in it. Yeah.....

RE: Man I can already feel the headache...
By wallijonn on 5/26/2009 11:59:41 AM , Rating: 1

I think you'll find that the latest Win7 candidate flys on that hardware configuration.

By adiposity on 5/26/2009 12:34:04 PM , Rating: 2

With nothing else installed, maybe. But that was not the problem...I'm sure XP was quite fast on that machine with a clean install, too.



By extraflamey22 on 5/26/2009 4:52:55 PM , Rating: 3
I'm a network administrator at a USAF base. I'm sure this varies across the different branches, but I received the following machine a month ago as a "Quarterly Buy" to replace my old XP workhorse, and there's already an updated configuration available that's better than this one.

Windows Vista Enterprise SP1
AMD Phenom 8600B Triple-Core Processor 2.3GHz
4.00GB RAM
ATI Radeon 3100

From the login screen to reading email in Outlook takes about 1 minute 20 seconds, with local DCs and remote Exchange servers, and this is after NAS authentication to the domain. Honestly, it just sounds like your ADPE shop/Resource Advisors aren't doing their jobs and keeping your workstations up to date.

From an administration stand-point, Vista is a huge improvement over XP. SMS/SCCM is vastly more dependable with Vista, MSRA is now built-in instead of being tacked on in XP, and Vista plays much nicer with multiple CAC readers when interfacing with the UAC and our PKI infrastructure.

Granted, there are some user-education issues with a new OS, but you're always going to have users who are just not tech-inclined, and aren't willing to expend the minimal effort required to learn something new.

By krumph on 5/27/2009 3:22:39 PM , Rating: 1
I am retired Army and work in IT and thats a bad move by the Army. Vista sucks rock bottom. We have test laptop that has 4 gig of ram and the performance is really bad. windows98 runs fasters than vista. good luck to you all. another bad decision by the Army.

By Dfere on 5/29/2009 8:50:51 AM , Rating: 2
As compared to what?
I just saw a friend who is a bookkeeper, she is still running XP with a 2.3 MHz celeron and only 256 MB of RAM. Because she runs her own business. I'm upgrading the RAM as much as possible for her now.

I use a two year old Vostro for my daily work needs, and I digitize all documents. I'm constantly running scanning software while running tax and accounting programs and haven't hit too much of a delay... on a notebook.

The Army isn't Anandtech. It isn't up to the ARMY to give you the latest and greatest hardware.

I only recently upgraded my home processor (which I do casual gaming and work on) from 1.8 MHZ to almost 3. From the posts here, if true, show the ARMY is spending more per soldier than is needed for average gaming, and is at least on par or better than the tax and accounting departments of even large manufacturing companies I consult with. These specs are seriously ahead of even a lot of medium sized business clients....

