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  Vista: To Delay or Not To Delay?
Time: 00:52 EST/05:52 GMT | News Source: Microsoft Watch | Posted By: Robert Stein

Should the recent delay in Office 2007 be taken as a sign that Vista needs another pushback, too? Or should Microsoft stick to its January 2007 Vista ship target? When Microsoft revealed on June 29, right before the end of its fiscal year 2006, that it was delaying Office 2007 by some unspecified number of days/weeks/months, Microsoft watchers understandably began wondering whether Windows Vista would suffer the same fate.

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#1 By 8556 (12.217.111.92) at 7/11/2006 9:21:19 AM
To get it out by January 2007 Vista should be tweaked for "today's" systems, giving a low priority to older software compatibility and hardware drivers. Retail versions can be pushed back six months or more until better compatibility with older programs and more stable drivers are available. Volume license customers are wise enough to wait to, or never, deploy Vista on older machines.

#2 By 6859 (206.156.242.36) at 7/11/2006 9:32:03 AM
I vote delay. Get Vista to be as correct and perfect as they can before they release, this also gives hardware vendors to get up to speed with certification of Vista systems. Just once, I'd like a MS system to ship that didn't need patches in the first 5 months.

#3 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/11/2006 11:10:40 AM
#2: I agree completely. It is much more important for MS to ship a good quality OS than to pump something out the door as quickly as it can. Of course, I have no hardware currently that could support it, and XP works well for me right now anyway, so I have no great need to upgrade as soon as Vista hits the streets anyway. But I feel it is more important for MS to put out a quality release than one pumped out before it is ready, just to make the press happy. I would imagine that the number of customers who NEED Vista as soon as possible are a small percentage of the overall customer base.

#4 By 61 (71.251.125.167) at 7/11/2006 11:13:19 AM
Yeah, I say wait until June/July, they aren't going to be missing out on any sales, and you will still make the back-to-school season.

#5 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/11/2006 11:31:18 AM
The delay is already happening. Gates just said that it's only 80% that Vista will ship in January. They're hedging their bets already.

#6 By 3 (62.253.128.15) at 7/11/2006 11:48:03 AM
yeah, its a sure bet to be delayed by at least 3 months or more anyway now.

#7 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/11/2006 12:29:49 PM
Microsoft should just bite the bullet, and announce that Vista will be ready for the 2007 Christmas holiday shopping season. That will give them time to stabilize the product, and maybe even add a few features that were previously removed, maybe making the product worth upgrading to. There is nothing worse than upgrading to a new version of an OS, and then discovering that many of the apps you use on a regular basis no longer work, and MS has to release patches to make them work again, or the company that made the product has to make a patch of something. Best to delay a bit and get all those kinks worked out beforehand.

#8 By 61 (71.251.125.167) at 7/11/2006 12:57:55 PM
What's really awful is the next public release is RC1 (they are skipping beta3)... so, basically, if there are no "showstoppers" in RC1 it will be the release.... it just simply is not ready for that at all.

#9 By 665 (67.185.84.40) at 7/11/2006 2:16:48 PM
It's funny how everyone is encouraging Microsoft to delay Vista, but if they do announce a delay people will be bemoaning it and talking about how much MS sucks. That said, I agree they should delay. Release it when it's ready!

#10 By 12071 (203.206.253.53) at 7/12/2006 9:46:38 AM
#9 That's because Windows Vista (2001 - 2006/7?) is right up there with Duke Nukem Forever (1997 - 2006/7?) on the vapourware podium. The only difference is that we haven't seen at least 1 story per week on Duke Nukem since 97 like we have for Vista since 2001 (it's coming! it's almost here! it's fantastic... and has all these features which we'll then have to cut out otherwise we'll never finish it)! After this it'll be a suprise if future Windows releases don't take on a more OS X approach.

Having said that - they've come this far so why rush it at the end? What's an extra 6 months on top of 5 years? We'll all still laugh at the OS that has taken 5 years to make and has had many of it's initial features cut out (not suprising over such an extended timeline mind you) but at least bring out a well tested, stable version rather than trying to hit some arbitrary deadline (which may or may not be arbitrary if you factor in the number of Software Assurance licences that are due to expire at the end of this year!!).

#11 By 61 (71.251.125.167) at 7/12/2006 11:17:15 AM
The only major feature that has been killed is WinFS.

But yeah, I definately feel they should wait.

Honestly, though, they should have killed the registry in this release and added a virtualization layer for backwards compatability.
The development cycle on this is longer than Windows2000, and something like this should definately have been done with all the other major reworkings of the OS (net stack, audio stack, WPF, and WinFX).

#12 By 32132 (64.180.219.241) at 7/12/2006 11:52:50 AM
"Vapourware"? Strange spelliing teaboy.

How can you call an OS millions are using vaporware?

Linux on the desktop is vaporware. Less than 1% market share.

Its not like Microsoft loses money if Vista is late. 95% of new PC's sold will have Xp or XP MCE on it if Vista isn't out ... and when it comes out, 95% of new PC's sold will be running Vista.

#13 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 12:50:52 PM
#12: coffee boy, donut boy, teaboy...

What's with you and your fascination with boys?

#14 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 1:18:52 PM
#11: Of course, WinFS was the most exciting new feature originally slated to go into Vista. The new file system was what all the excitement was about. The eye candy (aero glass UI) is nice, if you have the hardware to support it, but the features presented as part of WinFS was what really got me excited about Vista originally, as it was with many others, I am sure. Otherwise, with just some UI updates and security and stability enhancements, this is more like XP R2.


#15 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 1:19:41 PM
I also seem to recall that there was another major feature that was supposed to be in Vista, but got cut as well. Does anyone remember what that was?

#16 By 32132 (64.180.219.241) at 7/12/2006 2:24:12 PM
#13 I just assumed you were a childish male who served coffee to the employees of your company who had real computers.

Shall I call you coffee girl instead?

#17 By 39852 (204.101.172.146) at 7/12/2006 2:31:42 PM
The conversation was actually interesting to read until NotParker started trying to get attention.

#18 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 2:44:19 PM
#16: You're so wrong, so often, that you have a promising career as a tech analyst. Perhaps you could study under Rob Enderle or Laura DiDio?

#17: Get used to it. Make any negative comment about MS and watch him start to froth about how Linux doesn't exist and Firefox has 3 security flaws per minute. None of what he says is true, but it is entertaining watching him contort himself into a pretzel defending Microsoft.

#19 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 3:03:18 PM
#17: NotParker and mooresa56 will start with the name calling and off topic posting as soon as someone says something negative against Microsoft, and they have no actual facts to refute the comments with. Usually in the most childish way possible.

#18: To be more correct, he claims that desktop Linux does not exist. Despite all the people using it on their desktop. Of course, according to much of what Parker has written, anything less than a complete monopoly percentage is insignificant.

#20 By 61 (71.251.125.167) at 7/12/2006 3:39:40 PM
#14, But it's not just UI updates and security enhancements.

It has a completely new net stack, a completely new audio stack, a completely new presentation layer, a completely new API, and a new audio and video driver arch.

#21 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 7/12/2006 4:28:05 PM
#20: I realize this, but from a user perspective, most of that merely constitutes increased performance, stability, and security, if all goes well. All under the hood kind of stuff. As a developer, I can appreciate what that means for the creation of software to run on the platform. However, from the perspective of a general user, that doesn't affect the day to day use of the system. WinFS would have radically improved how information is stored, referenced, and accessed. This would be of more importance to the average user. Especially the business user. The low level guts of the OS are expected to just work, from the general user perspective. That is kind of where I was coming from in the post. Sorry I didn't make that clearer the first time.

#22 By 32132 (64.180.219.241) at 7/12/2006 6:08:15 PM
I think coffee girl and donut boy have the patent on "frothing". They can't stand a little joshing about their own admittedly low place on their companies hierarchy.

#19 "Despite all the people using it on their desktop."

.38% market share (or .5% or 1% at most depending on the site) is a pretty trivial market share.

.38% http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2
.5% http://www.webhits.de/webhits/browser.htm
1% http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats/

On all those sites, IE7 has a bigger market share than Linux.


#23 By 17996 (131.107.0.105) at 7/12/2006 7:19:02 PM
#11 - And what would you propose instead of the Registry? INI files? XML-based config files? This would kill performance. And remember, the registry isn't just a replacement for INI files, it also contains stuff such as file type and COM object registration (the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT key), and dynamic information such as current hardware configuration (which can be different every time the machine boots).

#15 - Some other features that were cut include the Castle home networking technology and certain synchronization features... But since the Reset, there haven't been a huge number of cuts.

#24 By 61 (71.251.125.167) at 7/12/2006 7:35:05 PM
Patriot, ini files would not reduce performance at all. Over time it would increase performance as the registry gets bloated, bogged down, and corrupted with tons of crap from crappy installers.

A lot of people say with ini config files, your config files would be everywhere, which is simply not true. You either store them in your program's directory or you could store them in Users\Username\Application Data.

Installing apps should NOT write to the registry at all, or any other system that Windows relies upon to run properly.

#25 By 12071 (203.185.215.144) at 7/12/2006 10:23:50 PM
#11 " The only major feature that has been killed is WinFS."
That may be the only "major" feature as you put it, but there have been plenty of other features cut along the way! If you remember back to 2001 then you'll remember there was a plan to re-write a large subset of the code in .net (something I was looking forward to infact as a developer) but was later given up on when the codebase was changed to be based on Windows Server 2003. Many rumours were spread at the time - many pointing to potential speed issues with .net 2.0 but nothing really concrete came out of it. A pity in many ways.

#12 ""Vapourware"? Strange spelliing teaboy."
One's in American English, the other's in British English - which is more than I can say for "spelliing"!

#24 The bonus of having ini/xml files in the program's installation directory is that you can simply backup the whole directory, copy it back when needed and the whole application will run just as it did with al you preferences intact. No more needing to run complex setup scripts to load up a ton of data into the registry.

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