Microsoft's Vista faces ban by US government bodies

According to to a report in the InformationWeek, the influential US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a part of the US department of commerce, has banned Windows Vista from being installed on its computing network.

NIST, a non-regulatory federal agency that promotes US innovation and industrial competitiveness by developing standards and technology, is due to meet on 10 April, to discuss concerns about Microsoft Corp's Vista operating system.

In December 2006, Microsoft released its Windows Vista, the new version of its Windows and office for businesses, ahead of a planned roll out of other products, followed by the launch for consumers.

In another report a week earlier, InformationWeek had also revealed that the US department of transportation and the federal aviation administration (FAA) have already banned Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7 from being installed on their networks.

According to this report, the CIO of the FAA has gone to the extent of suggesting that he may opt to run Linux and Google Apps instead of Vista and Office, because the Vista operating system was incompatible with the FAA's legacy applications.