I’m a bit disappointed in you, dear reader. Last week’s issue had a sub-heading of “Deceptive marketing: An oxymoron?” and I take full blame for choosing that, but it wasn’t an “oxymoron” (“Microsoft Works” is the No. 1 choice on the exhaustive Oxymoron List). No, it really was a tautology that I meant – which the American Heritage dictionary defines as “Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy;” i.e., marketing is inherently deceptive.

It’s disheartening when I’m the only one who catches my mistakes!

But the sub-topic of that newsletter – Vista readiness – came up in a conversation I had with the folks at a company I’ve covered for many years. Just after last week’s newsletter hit his inbox I spoke with ScriptLogic’s Marketing VP Nick Cavalancia, who was quick to point out that – in addition to the management and directory tools the company offers – it has a “Vista readiness” tool.

What Nick really wanted to talk about was the latest version (7.6) of Desktop Authority, which does have some interesting new and improved features. But it was the Vista migration support that attracted my attention. The new version of Desktop Authority allows you to not only quickly determine if a user’s machine is “Vista capable” but also to check for the ability to support particular versions of Vista – or particular services in those versions.

Cavalancia also wanted to mention a white paper he’d written called “The Proactive Migration to Windows Vista with ScriptLogic.” I especially appreciate his opening paragraph:

“With each new exciting release of an operating system from Microsoft, there comes the sudden realization by every IT pro that you are going to need to perform the migration to this new platform. This is usually followed by several other realizations about how ‘this program’ probably won’t be compatible and ‘that user’ is going to need their specific settings to migrate, etc. So while the end result (a new secure and more productive OS) looks fantastic, getting there is obviously going to be a challenge. Since you are reading this white paper, I can only assume you a) are planning a pending migration to Vista and b) you’ve come to the previously mentioned realizations.”

Nick might be a marketing guy, but he does understand how IT thinks.