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Bug Pushes Vista Out to November 8th
IntelliAdmin writes "Microsoft originally targeted October 25th for Vista's release to manufacturing, but a last-minute bug that 'took most of the Vista team by surprise' has caused an unexpected delay, said Ethan Allen, a quality assurance lead at a Seattle high-tech company that tests its products for Vista. Allen said the Vista team discovered the bug, which 'would totally crash the system, requiring a complete reinstall'. Vista now has a new RTM date of November 8th" A reader wrote in to point out this story originated with Paul Thurrott.
Crap, now I have to wait another 2 weeks to not buy it.
They discovered that the default start page in IE was http://www.linux.com/
-tgpo
Vista: The OS so bad it tried to kill itself before release.
Before everyone gets their flame on remember how many times they got verbally hammered for not testing their software first and shipping later.
Though the bug was caught this late in the game it does appear to be, although minimally, that MS is trying to do the right thing for once. Perhaps losing market share has spurred better business practices.
Likely? No. Possible? Yes.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
(Insert Ballmer chair reference here.)
That, my friends, is what you get if you rely too much on automation and don't do enough manual poking around. For those who lack context, there's a strong push in Windows to do as much testing through automation as possible. As often happens when a $1M exec bonus depends on something, the underlings got a little overzealous and either fired software test engineers or "up-converted" them to "software development engineers in test" who were then told to write automation. The effect of this is that you have bits and pieces of Vista that are tested really well and other bits and pieces that aren't tested _at all_. One needs to remember that when your automated test case finds a bug and that bug gets fixed, it's not likely to find more bugs in the same code path. This doesn't mean there are no bugs in the code. This means there aren't more bugs _in this exact code path_ that test case exercises.
Is it just me or does this sound like testing for a disease or something? "Bad news. We got your blood tests back. You have Vista."
How long has MS had to iron out Vista? Because XP was released on October 25th (hence why they wanted to ship Vista then) in 2001. They've had over 5 years, and dumped a TON of money into Vista. And it still doesn't work right.
Actually, if you've even bothered to test the latest release, you'd notice that it works really well. How much time they've had to work on the operating system is irrelevant. Plus, they admitted it was a mistake to wait this long and also said future releases would occur more frequently. Still, how much time they've had on their hands and how you feel about that has nothing to do with the final product, because the only loser here is Microsoft who don't make as much money as they'd like to if their OS:es were released more frequently.
It doesn't matter that it's uncommon...
Right. You're saying that a bug that occurs once in a million is as serious as one that occurs once in a thousand? That's just nonsense.
they're advertising this OS as the cure to everything that ails us, the most secure, stable, perfect version of Windows ever.
Well, you're right. They do say that it's the most secure and stable version. And it probably is. I don't think they've ever said it's a cure to everything, nor that it is a perfect version of it, however. What's your point here, really?
BTW, this was SUPPOSED to be the final product. But there were flaws in it.
No, the final product is the one that's taped out and printed onto the disks. An open and free test version of Windows is hardly a beta. Why the hell are you so upset about a bug which was discovered PRIOR to the release?
When's the last time you heard of a bug in Linux forcing a reinstall?
I've never heard of one, but I've only installed official releases of Linux. And just because we haven't heard of one doesn't mean there is no such bug. And once again, I must remind you that this bug occurred prior to the release, so it's not really a big deal. After all, we're going to use the final release of Vista, right?
Full Tilt
Remember, remember the 8th of November...
The OS upgrade season and plot
I know of no reason
Why this Windows version should ever be bought
Microsoft: Buy Vista Now!
World: Why should I?
Microsoft: Uh...because it's prettier and has DRM support?
World: No thanks, I'm happy with what I have now.
Microsoft: Please?
World: No.
Microsoft: Ballmer throws a chair in the new screensaver, and we dressed Gates up in a dress for the default background.
World: Really? Sign me up!
Microsoft: Really?
World: No.
(Months pass...)
Microsoft: WTS slightly used global software monopoly.
Google: 5 dollars and Gates in a diaper apologizing to the world.
Microsoft: Sold!