The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
After playing with Windows Vista and listening to the thoughts of various reviewers, there is not much doubt that Microsoft's new operating system is a considerable improvement on its previous efforts. However, for most users, upgrading will mean buying a new PC and for many that's where the problem lays.
A couple of months ago, I listened enviously
as a colleague described his experience of upgrading from his five year
old Mac to a new Intel based Mac.
"I simply connected the two Macs together and up popped a box on the
screen which asked me if I wanted to upgrade to the new machine," he
said. "I answered yes and then lay down on my couch. A couple of hours
later, all my applications and data that was on my old Mac was now on
my new Mac. Everything was the same except that on the new machine it
ran about five times as fast."
That story made me want to run out and buy a Mac except I knew that I
was doomed unless I started all over again from scratch - new
applications, new peripherals and whatever.
Having just been handed a new business laptop PC, which will be used as
a replacement for my ageing desktop, I realise the work that lays ahead
of me. Moving the data and applications across from one PC to another
is no trivial task. There is no "do you want to upgrade to a new PC?"
button.
For business users, upgrading is the problem of whoever they hire to do
the job. Home users would rather not pay anyone but they will probably
have to - especially if they want to run a home network, using the new
PC as the hub to share the Internet, and hand down the old PC to
another family member. Configuring a home network is no trivial task in
the PC world.
Then of course there is the issue of licenses. Will moving your
applications to the new PC be an issue? With all this business about
activation keys, will users be forced to prove that they're
reinstalling applications because they're upgrading to new PCs and that
they've de-installed applications from their old machines?
These are all questions home PC users would rather not - and really
should not - have to address. However, Vista in most cases means new
hardware and therefore address them they will or be damned. In some
cases that may even mean a move away from Windows to a more consumer
friendly environment like you know what.
A parting question for Microsoft: during all of those five years of
Vista development, did it occur to you that it might help your case
with consumers if you developed a "do you want to upgrade to a new PC"
button?
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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