Microsoft May Delay Windows Vista Again

UltimaGuy writes to mention a Reuters report, stating that Vista may be delayed again, this time by up to three months. From the article: " The research note, released to clients [by the Gartner Group] on Monday, said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release for volume license customers and January launch for retail consumers. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company disagreed with the Gartner report and it was still on track to meet its launch dates."

Comments

Well ...

[vodkamattvt]

I certainly didnt see this coming!

Suggested new Name

[Vyvyan Basterd]

MS/Hurd

Re:Suggested new Name

[Eudial]

How about "Windows Forever"? Sounds more poetic.

Re:Suggested new Name

[EnsilZah]

Well, since the first letter in the acronym doesn't have any meaning anyway, i think MS/Turd would be more apropriate.

Re:Suggested new Name

[rbochan]

At this rate, Debian Etch will go Stable first.

Vista Slogan

[frosty_tsm]

"We won't be releasing it any time soon, but please enjoy the view."

What's the hold-up?

[RLiegh]

Haven't they finished taking out everything that makes it different from XP yet?!??!?

When did MS hire ex

[t0qer]

Duke Nukem 3D project managers?

Brilliant!

[Theaetetus]

Now if MS actually can meet its launch date, the industry media will praise them, rather than saying, "uh, wasn't this supposed to be released three years ago? And where's all the good features, like Nomad and WinFS?"

Re:Brilliant!

[Daltorak]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista ... read the whole thing (yes, it's long and wordy), and then explain to me how Monad and WinFS are collectively better than the hundreds of improvements listed there. Be sure you understand what Vista *is*, as opposed to what it *isn't*.

a distant view

[SimonInOz]

vista (vs't) pronunciation
n.

1. A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening, as between rows of buildings or trees.

Hmm ... "distant" ...

Fixing non-problems

[reldruH]

If this is actually the case, I think Microsoft deserves what's coming to them. The only reason they still have so much market share is because of inertia, but if they can't actually ship a product (even at the already delayed date) they deserve the mass defections that hopefully will be coming. They've dropped a ton of features, they can't ship on time, even Joe six pack will at some point realize that this isn't the company that should be in control of his computer. Like it or not, people aren't going to switch to Linux or OSS because it might be better or because open source is a better sofware development model. They're going to switch because they're having a problem. Nobody's going to go out of their way to fix a problem they don't have. Luckily for us, MS is doing a great job creating those problems.

Re:Fixing non-problems

[powerlord]

The biggest problem MS has been creating by delaying LongHo... I mean Vista isn't just in dropped features.

Its also in licensing. When MS switched to their new licensing model they promised all their big customers that it would pay since MS SQL server would be out soon, along with a new version of Windows, so it made sense to go for the licensing.

After the delay MS SQL 2005 experianced, and this, I'll be real surprised if people are willing to believe them again.

It sounds almost like a Nigerian 419 scam:
Yeah ... just pay us this big stack of cash and you're entitled to all the versions and updates we produce in the next two years.

[3 years go by] ... Oh ... were you expecting something?

Re:Fixing non-problems

[pla]

if they can't actually ship a product (even at the already delayed date) they deserve the mass defections that hopefully will be coming.

"Mass defections"?

People (not talking about Geeks, here) upgrade their OS when they upgrade their PC. Not before, and not after.

They don't buy a Mac because Vista takes too long to come out. They don't install Linux because Vista takes too long to come out. They don't install "make XP look like Vista" themes because Vista takes too long to come out.

They run what they buy. When it crashes, or spyware makes it unuseable... Do they reinstall XP? Hell No! They buy a new PC.


If their new PC comes with XP, they will run XP. If their new PC comes with Vista, they will run Vista. Their new PC won't run anything else, because Walmart doesn't sell PCs loaded with anything else in-store (Linspire boxes via their web store matter about as much as Macs do).


It doesn't take much more analysis than that, sadly. You want to know why Microsoft won't sweat this delay? Because it won't affect either their sales or their market penetration by even 1%.


And as for the much-discussed "business" buyers - Working in a job where I would play a very significant role in the decision to "Switch", I can say that Microsoft has nothing to worry about (except that almost no one wants to upgrade to Vista, much less to an entirely different OS). If Vista doesn't ship until 2094, very little would make me happier. Vista will break working programs in exchange for virtually no new features. Why on Earth would anyone want it? We'll eventually upgrade only because Microsoft will leave us no choice - Keep in mind that a lot of fortune-500s (dare I say "the majority of them"?) still run NT4 servers and Win98 desktops, and you'll get the general idea.

Re:Some "Analysis"

[truthsearch]

More people will be talking about getting a new computer if there's a new version of Windows on it. More talk == more gift sales. It's a proven statistic that a major Windows release date affects holidy purchases (I just don't have the old data handy at the moment). Of course there are plenty of other factors, like any new game consoles that are out.

Re:Some "Analysis"

[kie]

not to worry, at this rate it WILL be perfectly timed for the holiday period...
xmas 2007.

Re:This is getting old

[TheNetAvenger]

Maybe the reason for the insane specs is because by the time it gets out it will run on old, outdated computers

Insane specs? The Specs for Vista are the same as last release of OSX. Actually less when you consider Vista will run on 800mhz machines with 512mb of RAM quite well. (Yes we test it on this configuration.)

So what are insane specs to you?
512MB of RAM for 'optimal' performance? Ok, $40
DirectX 9.0 Card for 'high end glass' (PS in Hardware)? Ok, GeforceFX 5200 $50

Also as a side note, if you are running Vista on legacy hardware. Like a PII 400Mhz with 128mb of RAM, there are several high end monitoring services that turn off, and can be turned off to run at the same performance as WinXP, which is still faster than Win9X and even Win2k on the same hardware.

Trying to truly find your point here, what do you consider 'insane' specs? Am I missing something?

Wow...

[GmAz]

For everyone here that is dogging Vista, you sure are pissed when it gets delayed even more. I would figure that you would be loving the fact that Microsoft is pushing it farther and farther back. It sure seems like you guys can't wait for it to be here. I say when it gets here, it gets here.

Re:Wow...

[revscat]

Know why I hate Microsoft? It's really simple. It's because they make crap products that are successful. It goes against the principles of the marketplace, and about what is supposed to make it work. But because Microsoft has gamed the system via exclusive distribution agreements and other legal agreements, their products have succeeded nonetheless.

Now, while I am by no means a capitalist, I nevertheless hold the notion of "quality wins" to be rather important to a healthy market. When crap products like Windows, IE, WMP, Visual Studio, etc. dominate the market, it leads to inefficiencies and hinders growth. Resources that would otherwise be dedicated to advancing the human race are instead focused upon keeping shit working.

I mean, look at Vista. Instead of being able to move forward Microsoft is by all reports merely trying to ship something that will hold together. The list of dropped features for Vista is long and well documented, yet despite this constant drumbeat they nonetheless keep having problems getting the thing out the door.

Meanwhile, Apple has been able to ship something like 4 versions of their OS in the duration. And with far fewer resources, I might add.

Now, I don't know about you but that tells me that the fundamentals of those operating systems are vastly different in quality. And based upon the history of both organizations, I think it would be foolish to either expect either Vista to be high quality or Leopard to be poor.

Cue MS trolls

[WhiteWolf666]

"It's not THAT late."

"Still better than Linux"

"It's only because MS is so far ahead already; they feel no need to rush their product out the door."

"This time they'll get the security issues right."

"Damned if they do, damned if they don't. You Linux advocates complain no matter what; admit that this way they'll avoid the bugs!"

"It's Windows! It's the biggest project anywhere! 3 million lines of code! And it's Vista, the biggest upgrade yet! What's a few months between friends? Vista is WAY bigger than any Linux distribution!"

"Microsoft has to be enterprise ready. Linux is for dweebs and nerds. Of course Windows has a longer release cycle; that's 'cause its better"

"It's not fair; if MS didn't have to deal with all these vindictive, nerdy hackers, Windows wouldn't take so long to develop. Imagine if Apple or Linux had to deal with these black hat hackers."

"We're MS. The Volume Goes to 11 Here."

Did I miss any?

Re:Cue MS trolls

[sharkey]

"Vista ain't done, 'til Boot Camp don't run."

Who cares?

[g0at]

No, really, who cares? Are there people clamoring to get their hands on this new OS ASAP (WTF BBQ) and who will be extremely put out if it is not available until later on in the future? My question for these people is: what will this new OS do for you that isn't true right now?

And as a side note, I am really bloody tired of reading stories about things that "analysts" think. "Joe Analyst issues a note to Judy Analyst, under the table, in the back of the classroom. Investors giggled to themselves and rubbed their index fingers together..."

-b

Re:Some "Analysis"

[MouseR]

A lot of big company IT departments make major OS/hardware/infrastructure updates/changes during that period to minimize downtime. They benefit from most employees being on vacation/leave during the same period.

Also, lots of machines with pre-installed OSes are sold during that period, as gifts. Same goes for box upgrades.

And here's a suggested screenshot

[Spy der Mann]

Vista Screenshot

Re:And here's a suggested screenshot

[moosesocks]

Slashdot.... the only place where it is necessary to use the Coral cache to display a blank GIF so that the host server doesn't go down in flames....

Trainwreck!

[MCSEBear]

Is there anyone left who does not think that Windows Vista is a big long drawn out trainwreck. A project that has to be delayed over and over and over and over. Compare this to the development of the OS they copy. Apple has shipped product over and over.

If you can't manage to ship one of the two products you make all your money on, what does that say about the management of Microsoft?

More imporantly

[WindBourne]

This is gartner reporting; This is the same group that in 1999 reported that Linux/OSS would penetrate into the server market at most 1% and into the web server market at only 5% by 2004 (5 years). Sadly, Linux was already beating those numbers at that time.

Generally, Gartner ( and IDC and a few others ) are some of the worse are guessing what the future holds. In fact, I would suggest that their incompetence is so bad, that I would guess that they get at most 25% correct; which means, that most companies would be better off betting against them.

Rush job?

[fortunato]

Personally I don't understand why anyone would even consider touching this before its been out for at least a few months if not a year. It's quite apparent they are trying to rush this thing out the door. I'll be highly surprised if it isn't one huge bug infested mess. I certainly wouldn't want to depend on it for anything.

This just in!

[Slithe]

Microsoft announced, in a (very) recent press release, some of the exciting technlologies in Windows Vista. Apparently, the aging NT kernel has been scrapped, and the new Windows kernel will use a combination of the GNU/Hurd and the L4 microkernel to power its next-gen operating system. While desktop users might not care about what is under the hood, they will be amazed at the next-gen Windows desktop, which uses the E17 shell. Gamers of the world will rejoice, because Microsoft has replaced the venerable MS Solitaire card game with Duke Nukem: Forever. In a possible attempt to squash threats from the World Wide Web (again), Microsoft has leveraged Udanax infrastructure to provide 'transclusion' technologies. This will surely be the greatest Windows Operating System ever, if not the greatest Operating System ever!

Re:Some "Analysis"

[Ohreally_factor]

Maybe he's referring to people holding off on buying a Mac until Vista is released.

Give it up...

[tymbow]

I'm a bit of a Microsoft fanboy but personally I think they should just give up on Vista. It's a trainwreck of a project and I can see another Windows ME in the making. I can't see many compelling reasons to deploy this in an existing environment. It's (for the most part) just a Windows XP clone with a few new features with a pretty UI and steep hardware requirements.

Microsoft should take all the half decent features out of Vista, back port them to Windows XP and call it Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Windows XP R2 then site down and have a good long think before they try this again.

It's about time Microsoft seriously thought about re-architecting their operating system from the ground up. If we can get Windows applications running under Linux with WINE, then surely Microsoft can get Windows applications running under some new operating system thus satisfying the backwards compatibility requirements. There are far too many issues with Windows appearing that are grounded in its architecture such as reduced privileges which is difficult to make work because Windows is not truly multi-user etc. etc. etc.

Give it up, start again and do it properly.

Re:Give it up...

[Billly Gates]

"It's about time Microsoft seriously thought about re-architecting their operating system from the ground up"

Actually that was the problem.

MS did decide to rewrite alot of it from scratch and then the performance and compatibility were not what Microsoft hoped for.

So they decided to use the XP code base and go back to square one and rewrite %60 of the code that was fresh. I knew it would be remade in 6 months! 60%?? Try a year, maybe 18 months? That is just huge.

For more info you can do a google search and slashdot covered it a month or two ago?

No wonder Elchin was fired. To me I would have just used the new code and not reverted back. Get the thing out the door!

So in other words it will use new security techniques on old code that dates back from Windows95 and NT3.1.

Re:Give it up...

[Matthias Wiesmann]

It's about time Microsoft seriously thought about re-architecting their operating system from the ground up.

I suspect that this is what they have been doing, and the reason they are late. The main issue of WINE and I suspect of any reasonably clean re-implementation of the Windows API will run into the same issues: emulating bugs and un-documented behavior. Rewriting a clean version is only half of the game, the other is to tell developers to stop using system X call and that behaviour Y will not be supported anymore. Either that, or your code needs to reproduce the undocumented behaviour which is difficult and will result in not so clean code.

Apple did clean up its API by moving from the classic Mac OS Toolbox to the Carbon API which is basically a cleaned up version of the former. The transition took time, and old programs had to run in a emulated version of the previous OS. It is also interesting that Apple chose this approach after the let's rewrite the OS from the group up, plan failed.

Following such path would be, I suspect, quite painful for Microsoft:

• The move to OS X brought Mac users a lot of new features (basically many advantages of Unix), the advantages of Vista are not so clear, especially now that many features have been cut out.
• The number of Windows applications is much larger, this means more program using strange calls, and more users and programmers complaining that their application does not run on the new OS.
• I suspect that games would be particularly affected, support for games has always been an important factor for the acceptance of Microsoft operating systems.
• Microsoft has many low-level API like DirectX that Apple did not have to worry about
• If Microsoft succeeds and most applications start to rely on a cleaned up API, this API will be much more easy to reverse-engineer by projects like WINE.

Death by Contract

[SuperKendall]

What is this, a game console? What does Microsoft care if it slips for the Holiday season?

All sorts of juicy Software Assurance Program subscriptions expire this year. Years ago, Microsoft managed to sucker companies into paying a large lump sum for all the Windows updates over the next six years - including Vista!

If companies get nothing at all for the duration of the contract, I think you'll see a lot of lawsuits and I know you'll see a lot of dropped "assurance" subscriptions.

Microsoft is delivering vista to companies even if it has to come in a box with crayon on the disc in place of a label.

Now you also know why the consumer release is later, because this release is just to meet obligations and in no way will be ready for primetime for you or I.

The most appropriate comment would appear to be...

[metroplex]

Hasta la vista!

Sorry, sorry.

Re:This is getting old

[TheNetAvenger]

don't know what you think the Mac OS X specs are, but my wife is running Tiger (OS X 10.4.x) on a 5 year old 400MHz G4 laptop quite happily. 'Will run on 800MHz' sounds a bit stiff. Although it is relegated to a music server, I also have a 400MHz G3 laptop happily running Tiger with 512MB RAM.


What happened to the argument that G4mhz didn't equal Intel mhz?

We are running Vista on 400mhz systems with 128mb of RAM. (Systems slower than a G4 400mhz. PERIOD.

As for RAM, the more the better no matter what OS. Vista will run on lower than the 512mb of RAM MS recommends. Apple recommends 256mb for the current version of OSX, but the next version Apple has stated will also recommend 512mb of RAM. Even in your post you note you are running OSX on a G3, but state you are using 512mb of RAM.

RAM is cheap, it should not freak people out to see a 512mb recommended anymore.

Vista technically would run on a 1995 Pentium Processor, but who would want to run any OS on such an old processor, even if Vista's legacy compatibility goes back that far.

Also I'm not sure how you got OSX 'Tiger' to run a G3, unless you know of a trick I don't know of. I didn't think it would install, nor function properly without the altivec extensions.

This is kind of a silly debate. I'm not knocking OSX, it REALLY wasn't my point. I was just giving an example that Vista doesn't have that high of tech requirements, truly...

Take Care.

Tell me again, what's coming in Vista?

[dtjohnson]

Windows 95 brought TCP/IP and a web browser. Windows 98 brought USB and FAT32. Windows 2K/XP brought multi-user and NTFS. Quick, in 30 seconds or less, what is Vista is going to have that's interesting? I predict it will a draconian DRM thingy to go with some product activation scheme even more onerous that WinXP. Yeah, that's got me excited...not.

Re:Tell me again, what's coming in Vista?

[oliverthered]

Not good enough? How about this:

- New network stack with IPv6 in the core
Already in Linux and probably OSX

- New GUI / window manager in user-space (better stability / new eyecandy)

X11 is user space already and has been for years

- Priority based I/O handling (virus scanner won't slow down your system because it's hitting the disk)

I don't seem to have these problems under Linux

- User Account Control (not running as Administrator by default anymore)

Already in Linux and OSX

- New user-space audio subsystem (better stability, program-level volume control, AC3 decoding, etc.)

Already available in Linux (p.s. I hate it when application have their own volume levels, almost as much as when they change the global volume setting)

- New speech recognition / synthesis engines

Already in Linux and Windows and Mac, expect an anti-trust case.

- New SMB protocol (better performance)

Samba any one?

- Full disk encryption (BitLocker)

Already in Linux oh, and it's open so your not tied into using Linux.

- Built in search

Already available on Windows, expect an anti-trust case.

- Built in antispyware

Already available on Windows, expect an anti-trust case.

- Faster installation

How fast is the uninstall?

- New bootloader

Grub

- Deadlock detection


You missed out,
DRM and trusted paths.

Sounds like there trying to write Microsoft Gnu/Linux with DRM on the side. Given the current fealing about Microsofts bad monopolistic practices I expect they will have to ship a stripped down version of Vista without search, spyware, speech recognition and possibly even drm in a few countries and possibly even Europe.

It ... umm...

[Opportunist]

Yeah, well, it ... it ...

IT HAS A 3D USER INTERFACE!!!1!1!!!1111

Whew. 28 seconds.

Re:If anyone actually expected MS to be on time...

[Moofie]

"Because if waiting a few more months means getting what's the most up-to-date"

You're new to this whole computer buying thing, aren't you?

Re:This is getting old

[jcr]

If I hadn't seen a beta, I would claim that Vista is vaporware.

I have a beta of Apple's Copland.

-jcr

Re:This is getting old

[madgamer]

We are running Vista on 400mhz systems with 128mb of RAM. (Systems slower than a G4 400mhz. PERIOD.

that's great. so ship it.

Vista

[SeeMyNuts!]

In this case: A wide view of many things far far away.

Simple: It *DOESNT WORK*

[scsirob]

No, seriously. I'm testing it and it simply doesn't work very well for me. Not on my reasonable high-end system with reasonably standard components. It's unstable, lacks many drivers and hangs quite frequently. The system keeps prompting me for drivers for 'unknown devices' with no obvious way to turn it off. The GUI has so many changes that it's essentially a steep learning curve. Nothing is simple anymore.

The UAP 'feature' is very annoying, and dialogs fall all over eachother trying to warn you for yet another dangerous action that some piece of software is attempting to run.

My opinion: Back to the drawing board.

(System: Antec case, Asus A8N-SLI Premium, AMD64X2 3800+, 2GB Kingston RAM, ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB, 2x Maxtor 250GB SATA RAID-1, Maxtor 80GB PATA)