Why blanket statements are bad for everyone
Heh, I guess the very title of this post is a blanket statement now that I read it. That’s OK, if Jason Busch can summarily make the following statements, I suppose it’s only fair that I make one too. At the beginning of an Outlook2007 performance horror story, Jason says:
"Hey, category managers in charge of IT spend. Want to make yourself a friend of the business for life? I’ve got a secret for you: don’t rubberstamp your CIO’s decision to upgrade to Vista or Office 2007. In fact, tack on a big "reject" to the request or the requisition. And don’t do it to save money. Do it to save your hide."
I really do feel for Jason as he’s clearly having some issues with Vista, Office and (in particular) Office 2007. I have zero doubt that his Outlook client isn’t behaving as snappy as it did XP. Of course, I don’t know why that’s the case and I’d be upset if I were him too. The fact is: everyone’s Windows computing environment is different because it’s an open system. Another fact: I’m running Vista and Outlook 2007 on machine with lower specs than Jason and it’s working just fine. I even have more mail to index and store than he does: 545 MB compared to his 150 MB. One last fact: I’ve run the same OS and Outlook 2007 client on a Samsung Q1 UMPC (both 900 MHz Celeron and 1 GHz Pentium) and while not super-speedy, it’s not the slow-grinding machine that Jason sees.
Do I doubt there’s an issue in his computing environment? Absolutely not and I hope it gets resolved for him. Do I think we should all summarily dismiss any software because someone has an issue like this: again, absolutely not, especially when it works fine in other computing environments.
Not just him!
http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/02/27/microsoft-vista-no-luv-x-2/
For what it’s worth, I have Office 2007 on two machines. On my much-lower-speced Fujitsu P1610, Outlook 2007 is OK. On my high-end IBM/Lenovo T60 with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM, everytime Outlook checks for e-mail, the whole machine comes to a standstill. I’ve tried every fix there is and nothing works. Hence, I’m sure Vista/Office 2007 is fine on many machines, but knowing that it can take down some high-end machines for no clear reason, how could anyone in their right mind recommend it without reservation. Outlook 2007 still behaves like a beta program. Fine on some machines, awful on others. If I told you a plane yoiu were going to get on had only a 1 in 10 chance of crashing, are you telling me you wouldn’t choose to drive instead?
Funny, and there I thought blogs were meant to be the place to express opinions and provide advice. Why is it suddenly a blanket statement and thus bad?
Office 2007 and Vista both perform differently on many systems, such as Thinkpads vs. Latitudes, with default installations using top end hardware right out of the box. That’s not a blanket statement.
I’ve seen tests performed on several different manufacturers systems with installations and benchmarking performed in unison. Sometimes you could see a big difference just by changing out the brand of DIMM’s. But I tend to agree with keeping Vista and Office 2007 out of large enterprises with inconsistent hardware. Unless you’re willing to standardize the environment for supportability.