Roughly half of those users are unable to meet the basis system requirements for the operating system, Softchoice said, while 94 per cent would be unable to meet the requirements for Vista‘s premium features
Dean Williams, the company’s services consultant and author of the report, says: “Lifecycle management simply isn’t a high priority. That is the underpinning of why this gap exists,”
While many companies have been extending the refresh rate of their desktop infrastructure from about three years to five or more, Williams says support costs scale rapidly after the 42-month mark and end up surpassing the year-over-year total cost of ownership.
The older machines are not ready to run Vista in part because 41 per cent of the firms Softchoice polled do not have enough RAM. Those upgrades might not be a big challenge, but processor speed is another story.