Further Windows Vista Delay? Bring It On!
Posted by Harry McCracken | Tuesday, May 02, 2006 3:04 PM PT
This eyebrow-raising story from Reuters says that research firm Gartner has told its clients that it believes Microsoft will likely let the release schedule for Windows Vista slide again, to the April-June 2007 timeframe. Gartner is apparently saying that the sheer complexity of the OS will necessitate the further slippage.
(
Update: Here's
PC World's own news story on this, by my IDG News Service colleague Elizabeth Montalbano.)
Microsoft, Reuters reports, is disputing Gartner's take on things and saying that Vista is still in track to get to corporate customers by the end of 2006, and into retail packaging and onto new PCs in January of 2007.
I have no inside info here, and I don't know if Gartner knows something I don't or is just going out on a limb,
as it's been known to do in the past. But I'd hope that Microsoft takes all the time it needs to get Vista right. Better for users to bide their time and Bill Gates to suffer further embarassment if it makes the product safer, more stable, and more usable. An extra round of fixes--implemented before Vista ships rather than after the fact as a flurry of patches--can only help.
All the companies who make and sell Windows PCs might disagree with my blithe attitude--they're hoping, of course, for Vista to goose their sales sooner rather than later. But as Gartner seems to have pointed out, a little extra delay is not a big whoop given that Vista has already officially missed the 2006 back-to-school and holiday seasons.
Here, incidentally, is my
Up Front column from our May issue on Vista delays and Apple's Boot Camp (written before this latest speculation).
So will you shed any tears if Windows Vista takes a bit longer to wend its way to store shelves?
At the rate the Vista's gonna come out 100 years old! And I'm a 16 year old not a 96 year old by the way!
Yeah. Even with the delays I'm gonna delay my purchase... just like in windows' xp. I just got it last year and it has save me LOTS of trouble :)
I don't get it, I got XP on Day One, and haven't had any serious problems with it. In fact, I only upgraded to SP1 and then to SP2 this past October because Visual Studio 2005 required it; otherwise I'd still be using the original.
No version of Windows is very much "trouble" if you know what you're doing, and you're careful about doing things that might pose security/stability risks.
My problem with Vista is the fact that most of the things that would have made me REALLY want it, Microsoft has decided not to include, and now comes the chain of delays. This might be the first version of Windows I actually DO wait a while to get; not because of expected headaches, but because there is little about it that is so compelling that it would justify what I am sure will be an exorbitant cost.
Doesn't surprise me, probably will be delayed again and again
If Microsoft is going to delay it further, I hope they just say "heck, let's throw in WinFS and all the other stuff that this OS should have."
Microsoft is acting their role and its to the detriment of technology. No one sees a dire need to upgrade so they aren't going to push another OS out until enough people are ready for the switch. This is a large demonstration of how a market shouldn't behave. Since they do not have any real competition, the cost of delay is negligable. In a more capitalistic market, other OS's with newer features and more advanced technology would be taking advantage of this moment, microsoft wouldn't have the ability to delay like they do. A microcosm of this is the Firefox V. Explorer fight. Ironic how IE 7 will be released before Vista; I think not. Microsoft has the muscle to flex whenever the time is right and all we do is sit back and watch. It's truly a sad state for tech.
Meh, XP is working fine for me. I really have no desire to switch. And besides, I have most of the features now anyway with stuff like Windowblinds and what not. I really don't even want to switch.
Heh, what is funny is the fact that Halo 2 will only run on Vista. So.....PC Gamers have to wait another year to play it.
Greg: There's nobody more capitalistic than Microsoft! They simply won the market. They win because they produce the best product. There's nothing stopping everyone from buying a Mac, or running Linux on their computer. People WANT TO USE Windows. Can't blame them for that.....
There's nobody more capitalistic than Microsoft!
I have a minor in economics and the true capitalist is the U.S. Government. As said there is no real rush besides the one game so far, but hey they can hold their game off too for the PC version anyhow.
The single biggest issue is going to be "re-training" the corporate enduser on the new Vista. Microsoft tries to change the "thinking process" of the enduser (don't worry where you save stuff, just run our search engine to find it--no more worrying about filenames and folders) with this release.
Its a good piece of software but its going to alienate the very basic user.
He, I held up to my copy of Win95 OSR 2 until 2002 when I switched to XP. It was definitely worth it.
At this point Vista doesn't seem to provide much of an incentive to switch. I doubt I'll be switching within the first couple of years.