IS&T and IT Colleagues Prepare for Release of Microsoft Vista

In order to prepare the community for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system at MIT, Information Service and Technology (IS&T) has worked with IT colleagues across campus and at other schools to outline a phased release process and support strategy. At this time, we strongly recommend that community members wait to upgrade to Vista until your Department, Lab or Center (DLC) is ready to make the transition and support you. IS&T anticipates that most vendors will have Vista-compatible versions of their software available by this summer, but some will lag with their support statement.

IS&T will make Vista media available as soon as possible to the DLC Software Liaisons. Current estimate from Microsoft is that IS&T could have media in hand by February. IS&T also plans to make a download option available around the same time. To find out who your DLC's Software Liaison is, visit the Microsoft Campus Agreement at MIT page. In the meantime, IS&T has reached out to DLC IT colleagues and will continue to work with them to evaluate Vista in their various computing environments at MIT.

Transitioning to Vista is complex – there are new hardware requirements, some critical software (e.g. TSM, FileMaker, SAPgui, etc.) still does not work with Vista, and Vista has a new user interface and many new features. Additional software is not yet supported for Vista by the software vendors. IS&T highly recommends that you work with your local IT staff to plan your transition and remember that they too need time to learn Vista in order to provide you robust support.

IS&T will share frequent updates on the Windows Vista release with the MIT community. For current information, including known issues and how to assist with testing, visit the Windows Vista Release Project Notebook. If you have any questions or comments, please contact vista-release@mit.edu.

The remainder of this message provides more detailed information about the phases of the Windows Vista release process.

PHASED RELEASE PROCESS FOR WINDOWS VISTA

PHASE 1: April 2006 - November 2006

The Vista Release Team tested beta versions of the new operating system within the MIT environment and with different software. The team found that certain critical software did not work with the beta versions of Vista.

PHASE 2: November 2006 - January 2007

The Vista Release Team and community testers will retest the Released to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista and continue to report on issues and resolutions. Training will be offered to IT support providers throughout the community and the IS&T Computing Help Desk will prepare to provide basic support for Phase 3. Until core safe computing components, such as Anti-Virus and Backup, are available IS&T recommends against running Vista in a production environment.

PHASE 3: February 2007 - June 2007 (or later)

New machines that run Windows Vista will start arriving on campus and Vista will be available via the Microsoft Campus Agreement (MSCA).

The IS&T Computing Help Desk will provide support on configuring Vista for the MIT network, obtaining MIT personal certificates, and other basic functionality. Towards the end of this phase, IS&T will begin to offer training, such as Windows Vista Quick Starts, to community members. The Vista Release Team will continue to test new versions of software that are anticipated to work with Vista. For example, the current version of MIT's licensed anti-virus package, VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i, does not work with Vista, but IS&T anticipates that the next version, 8.5, will be compatible.

PHASE 4: Summer/Fall 2007 and onward

IS&T will fully support and recommend Vista once the core set of software, including anti-virus, backup, email, and web browsers, have been fully tested and work. Based on previous operating system releases, we anticipate that some other packages will continue to be incompatible with Vista for some time. We will continue to track these issues and recommend that customers who need such functions wait until the issues are resolved before moving to Vista. Once Vista has been established at MIT, IS&T will work with the DLCs to determine when support for Windows XP should begin to decline.