Retiring XP means wasteful upgrades to Vista-capable PCs

Every so often, an organization has to refresh some or all of its users’ PCs. Perhaps the sales team’s laptops are suffering from wear and tear and need replacing. Maybe the finance department requires more powerful desktops to run a newly purchased, resource-intensive, business-critical app.

From a sustainability (that is, green) standpoint, those scenarios are perfectly reasonable — especially if your organization is recycling the old systems for reuse and even investing in perfectly useful refurbished systems that meet your company’s business needs.

On the other hand, refreshing your organizations’ fleet of desktops for reasons that have no positive impact on your business whatsoever is clearly wasteful (that is, not green) on many levels: It’s a waste of your staff’s time and energy. It’s a waste of your organization’s money. And whether the systems end up refurbished, recycled, or tossed in a landfill, it’s a waste of resources.

Thus, I have to get behind InfoWorld’s Save XP campaign. (No, there was no interoffice memo requiring me to do so.) If you’re not already aware, Microsoft has announced plans to end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008. Redmond has committed to continue supporting XP for a few more years. OK, that’s great. You can continue running your business on XP comfortably for a while longer. Or can you? Sure, you may have enough XP licenses for your current number of systems, and those licenses can presumably be transferred to new machines when it’s time for a refresh. But what happens to a company that happens to be enjoying success and growth and thus has to purchase additional systems for new hires?

That’s where the headaches begin. You won’t be able to buy new systems loaded with XP, at least not easily. You could scrounge for used machines that have legitimate XP licenses on them — an approach I certainly advocate if it meets your needs. However, that route might not be ideal for all organizations that want to continue with XP but need the horsepower that more up-to-date PCs offer. In short, as XP licenses become increasingly scarce, banking on acquiring XP licenses to suit your long-term needs becomes a gamble.

The safer route is to do what Microsoft presumably wants you to do: Migrate to Vista — even if you don’t really want to. Given the criticism the OS has garnered for its subpar performance and judging by its sluggish adoption rate, moving to Vista isn’t particularly enticing to many organizations.

But again, with XP licenses becoming more difficult to acquire, making the Vista migration becomes appealing — the way a sprained ankle is preferable to a broken one. What then? Do you take a piecemeal approach of buying systems loaded with Vista as you need them? That sets up you up for the headaches of managing two different desktop environments at once.

Or do you just bite the bullet and make a mass migration to Vista? In the long run, that’s probably easiest of all from an IT administration standpoint — but for many organizations, the migration would require a systems upgrade more or less across the board, thanks to Vista’s propensity to hog more resources than XP. Thus, the easiest route is also the most wasteful: Essentially, you’re retiring perfectly good machines for more powerful ones, yet you’re not reaping a measurable business benefit. In fact, you may just be taking a performance ding. As I said before, that’s hardly ideal from sustainability standpoint.

So add me to the list of those opposed to Microsoft’s decision to stop selling XP licenses come July and thus force companies to make difficult choices that resolves in headaches, wasteful and unnecessary systems upgrades, or some combination thereof.

Rather, here’s what Microsoft really needs to do: Shelve Vista, just like it did Windows ME. Extend XP’s stay of execution until Windows 7 comes out. Work on making Windows 7 greener. That is, drop the obese code, which your engineers have publicly acknowledged needs trimming. Kill the system-hogging resources that don’t benefit end-users. Dare I suggest Microsoft release a new version of Windows that uses the same system resources as XP does, if not fewer?