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Windows Vista Delayed Again
Trenty writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has delayed Windows Vista yet again. Jim Allchin told analysts that the OS would not ship in January of 2007, which is a 1-2 month delay. Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year."
Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year.
Not really all that odd. I believe it's called a pre-sale. People do this on eBay all the time, selling items they don't yet have, but will send along when they get them.
In the software world, we've had a vendor offer us a new product, which we may actually like, at a 75% discount if we sign up by September. The product isn't entirely finished yet and it would likely be two years before migration, but the pricebreak is clearly meant to ensure they have some income. I have no idea what their books look like, but suspect this move is the result of a dire need of revenue, so it makes us go "hmmmm..."
Where do you suppose Microsoft would like to enter the income for these early sales? Revenue recorded early is revenue you can't record later. I rather doubt they are turning over a Special Bug-ridden Business User Version early. They'd be flayed in the Information Trade press. (Then again, it's probably happened a few times already, which could explain how little attention CIO's pay to these magazines, they just scatter them on their desks to look Connected and Managerial.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Like anyone didn't expect this. Are they too busy with Organimi or whatever? Xbox 360? Their URGE music store?
Has Microsoft EVER released anything that was ON TIME?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Is it me, or is Vista just becoming less and less relevant?
And the thing is, I use to be an MS fanboy but with the rapidly changing environment of security issues and such, who can wait _years_ before considering other alternatives?
-- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
An OS with less holes is better than an OS with more holes. Let us wait patiently...
Oddly, even though they are citing the need for more time to tweak security, business editions will available to volume licensing customers before the close of the year
When a product is ready to be shipped Microsoft releases it immediately through MSDN subscriptions. It's products are always available for download to registered customers a month or more before it ends up on the shelves. Round that time of year I doubt they would be wanting to go to the expense of pushing it to the stores round Christmas.... I mean it's not like anyone out there is going to buy a copy of Vista to fill a christmas stocking.
This doesn't surprise me at all. A staged release of a system like Vista is only sensible. I'd want to know about every little possible glitch or issue on installation of the system before, mum, dad, grandma and grandpa start installing the thing.
More to the point, if a computer program is B bits in length, then testing it requires time that is O(exp(B)). If the new version of the computer program doubles the length of the original version, then the required testing time is O(exp(2 B)). In other words, the testing time for the new version is exp(B) times the testing time for the original version.
Microsoft management probably put a gun to the heads of the grunts doing the programming and the testing. The management then realized that even if they theatened to kill the grunts, the grunts cannot defy the laws of finite mathematics, automata theory, and testability to finish the product by July 2006. Hence, the product has been delayed until 2007.
In 1990 (?), Intel management actually pulled the trigger on that gun. The consequence was the infamous floating-point-division defect in the Pentium.
By the way, I speak from experience -- as a grunt.
The only way I can see Microsoft being able to have Vista succeed faster than just by licenses bundled with new hardware is to cut off patches and support and upgrades from Windows XP.
After working *so* hard to get corporations to upgrade from Windows 95,98, and Windows NT to Windows XP... It's going to be a hard sell to explain that Windows XP is no longer good enough and that corporations need to not only upgrade their OS, but also need to upgrade their *HARDWARE* to take advantage of Windows Vista.
Regardless of how you define "thin client", a desktop running Windows XP fits that bill quite nicely. IE6 is good, Firefox is available, everything is going browser based. Even *if* Microsoft tried to withhold a future version of Internet Explorer from Windows XP users, there will be Firefox and Opera. If microsoft tries to require non-portable components on the client side of their web components, they're going to cut off mobile users, OSX users, Linux, etc.
How exactly can Microsoft make Vista a compelling upgrade other than releasing new game titles that will not run on Windows XP?
Certainly, they cannot cut off security updates on Windows XP at least for the next decade or so.
No DRM in the business edition? Then everybody and his brother will install Windows Vista Corporate with a Volume License Key which requires no activation, just like people did with Windows XP.
The business volume customers aren't going to roll out Vista company-wide the same day they get it. They will start installing it on their test computers, evaluating it, seeing how it runs their in-house applications, etc. Plus, they should already have a good system in place for getting patches from Microsoft; it won't bother them much if there are lots of patches for a while.
The corporate guys will serve as an extension to the beta testing. If corporate test installs find anything, Microsoft can fix it and roll the fix into Vista before the final release.
Even if Microsoft had not slipped the final date, the corporate customers would still spend several months before rolling it out. They will probably be happy to get Vista earlier rather than later, so they can start the evaluation process.
The last customers who should get the OS are the home users, who want something that will Just Work right out of the box.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Leopard will come out "right around the time Vista does". We may see a preview of it at WWDC in August, but it may well not launch until anytime between November and January. But you're right. There are a lot of MS competitors who are upgrading in 2006. Firefox 2.0 will be out long before IE7 at this rate, and KDE, and Ubuntu will also get bumps. Exicting year in computing, for everyone but Windows fans.
Pretty much every player worth noticing has been ahead of MS all along. I mean hell, GEOS did everything Windows 3.1 did and more, including scalable fonts before anyone even came up with a way to do that on windows period, and yet GEOS got clobbered - because they couldn't sell it. The problem with keeping ahead of Microsoft has never been one of technology, but mindshare, and thus market share.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe, but I think you're underestimating the ingenuity of crackers. Just because those features are "left out" of the VLK edition doesn't mean they can't be added via other means. It might even be as easy as a simple slipstream, but even if its not, it may be easier to add the missing components to a VLK edition than remove the protections from the home/ultimate editions.
Not that it really matters either way. I predict a 99% chance that illegitimate copies will be widespread before February 2007, a 90% chance within a week from release, 75% chance within 24 hours, and 50% chance before the actual release.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Err...so what version do people in the high-definition video business buy?
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.