Vista Migration Tool Released

ScriptLogic customers worried about migrating to Vista have been offered a new tool from the company to help spot potential problems.

The free MSI Readiness Analyzer is designed to help deploy Vista in a way that takes advantages of technology in the OS, and also points out where problems might occur in running installation routines on specific systems.

The results generated by the software could be used to help with third-party installation packages, but dovetail best with ScriptLogic's own installer, Desktop Authority MSI Studio 3.6, and Vista migration package Desktop Authority 7.6.

"Our research shows that our customers will install Microsoft Vista; it's just a matter of time," said ScriptLogic's Nick Cavalancia. "A significant issue for those migrating to Vista is whether applications will run properly when installed on the new operating system. Many companies have home-grown applications. For them, the compatibility is critical to ensuring that business impact is minimized during the migration."

The biggest challenge for Vista migrators has always been application compatibility, which even a year on from the software's launch, still plagues some enterprises in a manner that makes Microsoft's claims of low ownership costs look ridiculous.

The MSI Readiness Analyzer promises to root out hard-to-spot hardware and software issues before any serious upgrades are undertaken, while performing validation on the install. Incompatibility with Vista's security and alerting model is a special issue to watch for.

ScriptLogic has published a guide to Vista migration on its website.

Related Links:

• Go back to category System & Utilities to read more reviews and articles.
• Go back to Software Magazine's main page.