Slashdot Mirror
Vista Gets Official Release Dates
SlinkySausage writes "Five years, three months and five days after Windows XP made its debut, Microsoft will usher its next-generation OS onto the stage. Microsoft has set November 30 as the release date for Vista (and Office 2007) to business customers and January 30, 2007 as the date for the official launch to consumers and The World At Large."
My question to everyone is, why is everyone so upset about how long it's taking for Windows Vista to come out?
The logic is simple. Slashdotters, and a lot news/blog sites just become artificially "upset" at everything Microsoft does. So don't be surprised.
Vista delayed? OMG we're upset!
Vista release dates announced? OMG we're upset!
Microsoft patents something? OMG we're upset!
Microsoft opens the patent of something? OMG we're upset!
Basically never mind what Microsoft does, is quickly wrapped in conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios, and frequently the logic is so weak, that the whole thing reads better as light attempts at sarcasm.
SP2 was a gigantic jump in terms of security, but it was a far cry from a "new OS" by respectable standards (Maybe by Microsoft's). The problem with Microsoft is they don't seem to take the time to make any *non-essential* improvements to their OS's once they're out the door. IE7, and perhaps WMP 10, surely must be the only things MS has ever released to improve the user experience in XP and they only exist because of Vista.
Sure, fancy new apps and UI's should be saved for new versions (like Vista), they have a business to run after all, but what about improvements to CPU scheduling or memory management?
Linux (2.6.18) performs *much* better under load than my XP x64 installation which is always swapping out when it doesn't need to (When *I* notice a performance hit when I have free RAM going to me that means the algorithm obviously isn't right for desktop use) and grinds to a massive halt under heavy CPU load. When I copy a large file from one disk to another in Windows I may as well just go make a brew because the XP shell itself becomes as slow as frozen tar. Linux remains interactive even under 100% cpu load or when moving large files around across disks.
Anyone who tells me that XP have made improvements in this area has to be joking. Sure they may have put in some tweaks here and there, but it's marginal if anything and not on par with other OS's in 2006.
IMHO Microsoft should release two versions of their "Service Pack"'s, one purely a security response roll-up *plus updates to improve to underlying architecture (kernel updates)* and the other a bundle of applications and UI/user experience enhancements like we're getting in Vista. People could pay for the latter. Then they should release these upgrades incrementally every year *on the dot* and do away with the stupid 5 year life cycle. Yes this is like Apple does it and it does it better better. As someone who's never used or bought a Mac in my life, I still think Microsoft need to take a page out of Apple's book and adopt some of their practices.
Vista will be the same old flawed release, it'll be glitchy until service pack 1 and Microsoft will never release anything other than essential security updates for it through Windows Update. The Ultimate Extras thing will be a joke because noone will use it after shelling out hundred's of dollars already.
All I'm saying is Microsoft need to wake the fuck up and realise people don't want to run Windows Update and see 60 obscure looking boring security updates and hundreds of meg to download. They want to see "Update: Improvements to the look and feel of IE7", "Update: Improvement to desktop responsiveness under load" and "Update: Improve ease of use of ripping music with WMP" and i'm sure if people saw these updates flow out of Redmond on a reliable basis they would be willing to pay for them on a yearly subscription basis if it was fairly priced.