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Analysts Split Over Vista Launch Date
An anonymous reader writes "A ZDNet report details comments by analysts on the upcoming release of Microsoft's newest operating system. Vista is currently scheduled to be released to businesses next month, and to consumers in January of next year. Not everyone on the sidelines agrees that the company will make that deadline, though. Reservations seem mostly to center around legal and political issues, rather than any concrete technical problems." From the article: " A delay for Vista now would be convenient for Microsoft, Gartner analyst David Mitchell-Smith argued, because 'when people start complaining about the delay, Microsoft can reasonably say 'don't blame us' and point the finger at the EC.' ... Mitchell-Smith also noted that Microsoft wants to avoid further litigation, as it is already facing legal action by Symantec and Adobe Systems."
It's on rails. Whatever MS has when the date comes, goes.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."
Vista is nice. It certainly (IMHO) not worth an upgrade, and I'm not buying a new PC. I don't see any benefits. I see it breaking my music, or making it harder for me to play it. I see it making things less easy to configure (at the low level). It does look cool, but so what. There is no way my office is upgrading to Vista (Luckily, I make that choice). All these analysts saying this and that and the other about Vista. Why don't they do something useful instead of shooting off a bunch of useless positions.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
"For a site where no one claims to be using Microsoft products, there sure is an obsession over Vista!" I rarely talk to someone who claims that they do not use any Microsoft products, but I know of a ton of people who use Unix/Linux/BSD or MacOS if they can. The fact is that whether people choose to or not, most people here will be using (or at least evaluating) Windows Vista within 18 months of its release. Personally, I'm going to hold out as long as I can but I'm willing to bet that I'll start dealing with a company who wants a product developed that is ready to run on Windows Vista and I'll be forced to use it.
And Europe is getting a bit tired of Microsoft's attitude.
These guys in Redmond know damn well what is required to get a smooth introduction of their software in Europe, and unlike at home it can't be bought in a court or congress.
Of course Europe has it's own shortcomings, for one they should have demanded a noticeable price difference between XP and XP-N, surely the development of MS Media Player was not for free.
For another Europe should have insisted on more interoperability like full access to the specs of NTFS.
Just to name a few issues with the de-facto monopoly.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Who cares? Seriously, what is this obssession with Vista's launch date? I don't believe that the majority of people here are eagerly awaiting it, so they can rush out, buy it and install it, so why are we hanging on every single piece of non-news concerning it?
It'll launch when it launches. You'll get it (or not) when you get it. Until then, why the fascination? Anyone would think it was the Second Coming that we were waiting for...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I did. I was on Win2K when XP came out. Now I have two laptops, one with FreeBSD and another with OS X.
If I were a game developer, I wouldn't consider using DirectX 10 for a while. At launch, the Vista market share will be tiny; smaller than the Mac market share. It might even be the opportunity for OpenGL to gain some mass-market traction again; a game written using OpenGL can take advantage of all the latest GPU features (some via extensions only, but game engine developers tend to write slightly different pipelines for different cards anyway), and will run on all versions of Windows, and be much easier to port to Mac, PS3 and Wii (not to mention mobile devices, many of which support OpenGL ES these days).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Complete crap. The commission's position is that Microsoft must obey the law. That means no anti-competitive conduct. Microsoft want some presciptive agreement that they can work around instead.
It's like someone being told it's illegal to murder someone and then coming back time after time saying "well, suppose I shoot her?", "well suppose I hit her with an icepick, is that okay?", "I just want you to give me an exact list of the things I mustn't do so I can stay within the law. Food supplements are okay, right, suppose I just put some 'supplements' in her food, can you say that's okay?", "just tell me every way I mustn't kill her so I'm in the clear for anything else". Nobody is stupid enough to fall for this. It's insultingly absurd.
There is nothing remotely reasonable about Mcirosoft's behaviour on this. Instead of obeying the law they want to "negotiate" with the legal process. Seriously; they use that word themselves. Then they say they show "goodwill" by complying with parts of what they are legally REQUIRED to do. Seriously, who the fuck do they think they are?
Apologies for the tone but their conduct in this really gets to me. And no, I'm not a generic Microsoft basher, I use a lot of their software but it's about time for someone to teach them that laws apply to them too. Hopefully the EC can do that.
2 . Wait for Microsoft to make a retroactive Vista upgrade announcment in mid-November.
3a. Return software should Microsoft not do the obvious.
3b. Get at least $150 credit toward Vista
4 . Unload XP-Home to someone for $20 loss.
" A delay for Vista now would be convenient for Microsoft, Gartner analyst David Mitchell-Smith argued, because 'when people start complaining about the delay, Microsoft can reasonably say 'don't blame us' and point the finger at the EC.' ... Mitchell-Smith also noted that Microsoft wants to avoid further litigation, as it is already facing legal action by Symantec and Adobe Systems."
I really don't see how a delay is good for Microsoft, no matter who's fault it is. I mean, OK so I follow this guy's logic and Microsoft says to me 'don't blame us, blame the EC'. Of course then I go to the EC and according to them the blame is squarely on Microsoft for being at fault in the first place. So it just leads back to Microsoft anyway, which I hardly imagine could be 'convenient' for them.
Sort of like if I committed a crime and, to explain why I haven't gotten out of jail yet, I said 'don't blame me! blame the government for putting me here!'. Yeah, because it had nothing at all to do with the fact that I started it?
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
People said the SAME thing about XP here as well. 5 years later I bet almost all of you windows folks are running XP at this point.
... doesn't, AFAICT.
It's different. People running XP today were running either 2K or 95/98 before it.
If you were running 95/98/ME, it *was* a big deal; XP *is* a lot better than 95/98/ME. It solved a lot of problems that they had. Vista
If you were running 2K, you were a geek who appreciates the guts. That's great. But if you upgraded to XP, you may have noticed that its guts didn't change all that much -- not nearly as much as the window borders (which are a shade of blue so bright only Chris, Matt, and Phil like it). These people are, I imagine, much more skeptical the second time around.
Sure, Microsoft will sell a lot of licenses for Vista. But with only incremental improvements, many of them direct copies of things Mac OS and Linux already do, how many people will be rushing out to upgrade? And with a turnaround time of more than 5 years (5 year anniversary in less than 3 weeks!), will people want to stick with it? When Apple makes a hot new feature, Linux can copy it reasonably quickly. Fast response is getting more important all the time, and Microsoft is slowing down a lot. Will a Me, Too effort once or twice a decade be enough to keep them going? The threat isn't running out of money -- they've got tons -- but irrelevance.