Tuesday, March 6th 2007
US Department of Transportation bans Vista, Office 2007, and IE7 from their computers
The US DOT (United States Department of Transportation) has decided that they will not upgrade their office computer to the latest software available from Microsoft. Their reason is very simple.
Source:
The Inquirer
There appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading.Alternate motives appear to be cost, which is considerable, even for the average upgrader (full Office 2007 retails for around $330, Windows Vista Business retails for about $300 full). And so, instead of upgrading all of their Windows XP computers, the US DOT will instead be considering PC's based on Novell's Suse Linux, and may also use Apple Macintosh computers. The US DOT may also not have the hardware to support the full version of Windows Vista.
24 Comments on US Department of Transportation bans Vista, Office 2007, and IE7 from their computers
Also Zek, maybe I missed something, but the USDOT isn't the Department of Justice.
Beating the dead Horse! DOT (Dep. of Trans.)
And how did you get the DOT mixed up with the DOJ?
I think security is a pretty compelling technical and business case, especially when you are dealing with computers that deal with a large amount of people's information. I mean think about it, think of how much damage someone can do with the information you give at the DMV. The DOT computers hold all the information on your driver's license, you social secirty number, everything needs for identity theft. That is why they are idiots.
They might have a few apps that break because of IE7, but those should have been fixed in the beta stages of IE7's release. They had months to deal with those issues.
And about IE7, I can't speak for the DOT, but our company won't test until the product is in final.
i know of one company around here that also blocks FF but allows Opera for web browsing, they block IE from being able to get online(security software on each box) because it is still far from being as secure as opera or even ff.acctualy if setup properly by default its not hard to teach ur avrage user to use linux over windows, using KDE or IceWM or Enlitenment or even Gnome(properly configuared for windows users ofcorse) even my mother didnt have any problem surfing or doing office stuff on my xandros test box when he main pc was down for a week(had to clean it of viri my father got on it at the time, also had to format it after backing up her files, took time because its an older box with an ata33 bigfoot hdd.....)
xandros is so easy to use once setup that even my pairnts who are AFRADE to try anything new or diffrent where able to coap with it, infact my father was acctualy impressed at how fast i was and how easy it was for him to get on his office system with cirtrix(xandros has the client on their app server)
mind you these are NOT technical people at all, they are infact FAR FROM IT, my father cant fix word when he accdently hits the insert key :)
but they where able to deal with the diffrances easly.
vector SOHO(on my laptop) works fine for my mother as well, with icewm its just as easy for her as using windows.
i dont care for suse or most of the other top named distros tho, mostly because they arent as good for everyday users as their fully free counterparts.
DOT or whoever should have looked at desktop BSD as it offers a better base behind it IMHO.
oh and yes my mother delt with Desktop bsd fine as well, tho she did bitch about it not having opera already installed for her( i forgot, she dosnt like FF due to its interface limitations.)
Far from being as secure? IE has 6 unpatched vulnerabilities and is rated as only Moderately critical. Firefox has 3 unpatched, and is rated Less Critical, which is only one notch below the IE7 rating. IE isn't as secure as Firefox, but isn't is far behind. Saying it is far behind in security is like saying the C student is far behind the C+ student. Opera with its 1 unpatched vulnerability is the most secure though. However from a security stand-point sticking with IE6 is just plain stupid.
using IE at all is just plane stupid, its non standred complyant, its ms crap, give it up.......
Who cares what is more standard compliant, does standards compliance affect my web viewing at all? No. Websites will always have to worry about working with IE long before other browsers simply because that is what people use. So as a user, I don't worry about standards compliance.
As an ex-web developer I learned that it was much easier to just shut up and code for IE than it was to spin my wheels complaining about working around IE. At the end of the day I still have to code for IE, at the end of the day tomorrow I will still have to code for IE. No amount of complaining will change that.
STANDARDS is what keeps everything working. NOBODY should have to TENDER to microsofts lack of willingness to work with the rest of the world. Which mostly do it better then microsoft, the problem is they got BIG BIG and everyone knows how to use it, now they are cocky and ignorant. Why do you think various versions of linux have had such huge amounts of public funding boosts and tons of people are starting to use it, learn it, and program for it? It's not because Microsoft owns the world, its because a large group of people are growing very sick of their big boy on the block attitude.