Lenovo 'sceptical' about Vista

 

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By Tim Danton in Barcelona

Posted on 2 Nov 2006 at 23:10

On the day the world discovered the launch date of Vista, Lenovo's vice president of notebook marketing, Marc Godin, suggested take-up of the new OS among businesses would be even slower than the switch to Windows XP.

'I'd love to see a large enterprise tell me why they need Aero Glass,' he said, referring to the advanced graphics capabilities of Vista. 'I'm really sceptical. Why would [a business] significantly increase the requirements of its machines for some visual goodies?'

Godin also feels it will confuse consumers: 'It's added an extra level of complexity. I'm concerned about the confusion for an end user. Which version should I buy? There are five to choose from. Then there's 32-bit, 64-bit? Can I get all the drivers I need to support my environment?

'I think it's going to be slow [in terms of adoption] in the enterprise, even slower than XP. That's what I'm hearing from customers.'

Godin added that Linux was starting to build up momentum in the enterprise space. 'We're seeing very large roll-outs, 20,000 workstations. People were talking about it before, and now it's happening. It's very surprising, but it's happening.'

Lenovo's comments come soon after an attack from fellow PC-maker, Acer, who accused Microsoft of ratcheting up the cost of Windows Vista.

The only good news for Microsoft is that, unlike Acer (see the next issue of PC Pro, on sale November 16), Lenovo is still firmly behind the Tablet PC concept. Godin claimed that enterprise clients were actively asking for Tablet PCs as part of its ThinkPad range. 'They view this as a strong factor in their decision to buy Lenovo laptops,' he said.

When we asked if the Tablet PC market was even big enough to be concerned about, he added: 'It's a small market but it's very fast growing. Large customers want [Tablet PCs] so they can have a complete range of notebooks for their business.'