A Third Government Agency Bans Vista

by , 11:50 AM EDT, March 13th, 2007

Microsoft has suffered another setback as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Colorado has also banned Microsoft's Vista, according to InformationWeek.

The government agency charged with the promotion of U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology has a meeting scheduled for April 10th to discuss Vista. One of the agenda items will be to discuss "the current ban of this operating system on NIST networks," the story said.

Recently, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration have also expressed various degrees of concern about Vista regarding compatibility with current software and the costs of the migration respectively. Recapping recent coverage, InformationWeek said, "FAA CIO Dave Bowen told InformationWeek that he may forego upgrading the aviation safety agency's computers to Microsoft's latest offerings in favor of desktops running some combination of Linux and Google Apps, Google's new online suite of office productivity tools."

This is the third government agency in two weeks to have banned Vista. The motivation is usually cost and software compatibility, and those issues tend to get worked out over time. Even so, the appearance of resistance combined with recent concerns about open document standards is not encouraging for Microsoft.