US Army to adopt Vista and Office 2007 by end of 2009

US Army to adopt Vista and Office 2007 by end of 2009

The US Army has promised to update its computer systems to Windows Vista and Office 2007 by the end of the year.

Even with Windows 7 and Office 2010 on the horizon, most companies have yet to make the change to the latest Microsoft software. The United States Army this week announced it will be moving all of its Windows-based computers to the Vista operating system and will also be ditching Office 2003 for Office 2007. These changes are to be completed by the end of the year, which is of course when Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be in their infancy.

Marcus D. Good, chief of the Army's Information Technology Systems Support Division, explained that this was not an overnight decision:

The Army has been testing Vista since its release and has run it through the Army Golden Master program. The Army Golden Master program is responsible for the release of the Army standard baseline configurations for commonly used computing environments within the Army Enterprise Infrastructure, the team responsible for making sure applications that ran on XP will run on Vista.

As it currently stands now, estimates are that half of the army's computers are currently using Office 2007 and 13 percent are powered by Vista. Both applications were released by Microsoft in the same timeframe, but for the Army, the switch to Office 2007 began before the switch to Vista. This is a typical occurrence in the industry because Office 2007 rarely requires upgrades to hardware, while Vista might be a different story when it comes a large network of computers (the Army has an estimated 744,000 desktops).

A preview of Vista for soldiers and employees who have never used the operating system is available over at usarmy.skillport.com and train.gordon.army.mil. source

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Are you fucking kidding me - VISTA??? - they are putting that piece of shit on 744,000 military computers. Sounds like a brilliant plan with Windows 7 just about to come out.

 

A lot of the older computers probably can't even handle Visa.

 

looks like the good old Bill G. has cut a good deal.

 

The end user doesn't really care about the operating system. I'm guessing that the 13% using Office 2007 are sending out docx formated documents and creating all kinds of havoc.

 

I just got out at the beginnng of this year (so less than 6 months ago). Most of the computers run off of 1 GB of RAM (that is maxed out for their mobo's)

Or, like my last laptop I had in the Army, had 4 GB of RAM and 1.2 gHz CPU lol.

I remember talking with the Garrison Commander about this for the Garrison I was assigned to. I was trying to get the head IT job for the whole post I was at for a little bit, before deciding to come back to Texas. I found out about this when the Army was first thinking about it. This has been in the works for nearly 2 years.

 

Sounds like they were so slow to update that they are going to catch the tail end of vista.

 

They should just skip Vista and wait for Windows 7.

I have Win 7 beta installed on my computer and I don't hesitate to say it's awesome.

Vista is a damn mess. But I think they've finally got it right win Win 7... as long as they don't screw it up by the final release that is.

 

Zibblu, asking MS not to screw something up is like asking Bush for peace.

Edit: And I actually supported the wars for a while lol. But I grew tired of them after getting shot and blown up all the time, and missing my daughters first words and steps . Now I'm happy being a computer geek with a webhosting biz and not in the army anymore lol. And a person who is not a registered republican...long live Ron Paul!!!