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Microsoft Not Ditching Vista Until At Least 2011
CWmike writes "Microsoft will not dump Vista when Windows 7 launches, and plans to keep selling it to computer makers, system builders, volume licensees and consumers at retail until at least January 2011, a Microsoft spokesman said, citing long-running policy. Earlier today, a Microsoft general manager hinted that the company might ditch Vista as soon as Windows 7 ships. He also said that support for all versions of Vista will end in April 2012. Neither is true, according to the company. Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said, 'to try to stop Vista or make it unavailable, that would just draw attention... The truth is, few people will be likely to order it once Windows 7 is available.'"
Well remember MS continued to offer Millenium until 2003 even though XP launched in 2001. Offering and actually selling are two different things, I know I never heard of anyone buying Millenium after XP shipped.
They may drop the support for consumer versions and keep the business ones available. Sounds logical to me, for consumers there is very little reason to stick to Windows Vista for new systems. Those companies that did switch (the sorry sods) however will need new systems with the same OS.
I bought a pc about 2 years ago and it had Vista on it. I mostly use Linux but keep the Vista partition around so I could easily use Windows-only apps. It pisses me off that I won't get the Vista Service Pack (Windows 7) for free.
Look, I'm an Open Source advocate as well and I use Linux and OpenBSD... However lumping together Windows 2000 and Windows ME is just not fair. Windows 2000 was pretty much their best operating system ever, and Windows ME their worst. Just in case you didn't know: Windows 2000, meant for the business world and used in the business world was a big hit. It was and is still very popular in corporate environments.
Windows XP has exactly three things that make it "better" than 2000: Fast user switching, good wireless support and terminal services (only in Pro). The first and the second are good for home use, the terminal services only for business use.
Windows 2000 is used to this day in controlled secured environments.... I wouldn't call it unsuccessful in any sense of the term.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
He also said that support for all versions of Vista will end in April 2012
End of the world prophecies in 2012 - coincidence? I think not.
Obviously Microsoft will only stop pushing Vista at the behest of the four horsemen.
The first and the second are good for home use, the terminal services only for business use.
Oh, man, you have no idea. I use RDP and terminal services daily around the house. Until I found mpd and Pitchfork, it was how my music machine ran. I still use RDP to another old computer that runs my IRC and Pidgin stuff (VNC and NX ran like shit, but RDP was fine, so RDP it was).
Terminal services is a vastly underappreciated piece of awesome.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
WHY DOES AN OS have to be written for fucking morons? Why cant the advanced features be displayed by DE-FUCKING-FAULT?!?!?!
Because those are the overwhelming majority of the people who use computers. This is not a hard concept.
Its fucking time they stop making crayola fucking operating systems because i cant stand it
Clearly, Slashdot users are Microsoft's target market. Really. No, really. It isn't the legions of people who buy the first Dell they see.
See, it's so clear. It's obvious that they should change what works so successfully just because Jackie_Chan_Fan on Slashdot doesn't like it.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'm appalled Computerworld doesn't mention Microsoft's greatest success ever, Windows ME. Just how long was the extended support for that operating system? They talk about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP - just as if ME never existed! ME's many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and suspect they would treat Vista, Microsoft's second-greatest success ever, the same way.
And how about extended support for Microsoft's third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? I think we should be told.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
'Customers who purchase a PC with Windows 7 pre-installed will be allowed to downgrade to Vista," Francis said.' That's the hardest I've laughed in a while. Thanks Richard Francis!
I know it might look like it's a service pack, because for the first time since 2003, it's a release that's an improvement on their previous OS, and the only other times they've released stuff that's improved a previous OS have been service packs, which makes it very easily confused... but it's still not a service pack.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Well, to be fair, the Open Source community has produced Ubuntu 9.04, which is probably one of the best operating systems ever made.
I don't know if I'd call that fumbling exactly.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I can confirm that Windows 2000 was quite popular in corporate environments. But it had no cheap "Home" version, so GP may have gotten the impression that it was unsuccessful from not seeing much Windows 2000 use on home PCs.
But even in that environment, some people happily pirated and used it. Of course, the same people also have no qualms about pirating XP, and by now hardware vendors often don't bother with Windows 2000 drivers anymore. Which makes the Windows XP Corporate Edition more desirable these days, as it is activation free like Windows 2000 and still has good driver support ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Erm... Microsoft's like, a business, an entity, that can have policy, direction, a road map, and can make decisions. "Linux" isn't... so... your post makes no sense. If your argument is really "people shouldn't disagree and should all just use the same system" then... that would be Windows. The whole point is that it isn't that.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
We should troll Microsoft by starting a 'Save Vista' campaign. Imagine the warm glow Steve and Bill would share on hearing it. It's almost too cruel. Almost.
Wait let me get this straight?
You take a very low bandwidth, plain text protocol and then you use it over Remote Desktop which sends images flying around the network?
You flipping idiot. :P
Nuclear weapons don't kill people, people do.
I'm pretty sure if you hang around nuclear weapons enough, you could very well get killed with no other humans being involved...
I'm certainly going against Slashdot groupthink here, so I'll undoubtedly be modded "-1 Troll", but Windows Vista is really not as bad as people think. The key thing to keep in mind is to make sure your system has enough resources to run it, because it is demanding. Don't try and put it on your P4 with only 512 MB RAM with integrated graphics. You'll regret it. I also wouldn't recommend upgrading to it from Windows XP -- it doesn't offer anything of significant value over XP that makes it worth rushing out to upgrade for. But if you're buying a new system, and it happens to have Vista AND at least 2 GB RAM with a decent graphics card, I wouldn't worry about it.
Why the hell cant you get it right microsoft? WHY?
Because obviously they hadn't had the luxury of your well-reasoned, thoroughly detailed, and above all, well-worded criticism. 'S obvious innit?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Unmourned. Unwept. Perpetually left unloved because your ugly older sister XP always came across with the full release and a happy ending while you were still whining that you wanted another 2G of RAM to show the boy how pretty you were.
I'm sorry I could never be the user you wanted, Vista. I tried. I really, really tried. I even had Millennium on my system for a while, so I know I'm not a completely unreasonable task manager. You wanted too much from me. You wanted to be my Trophy OS...pretty...never doing a real job...pretty...profligate with my hard-earned RAM...pretty. It wasn't enough. I'm so very, very sorry. Your sister XP gave me that dirty smile, and threw my RAM back in my face and performed like a trapeze artist. I was lost, dear Vista. She did everything I wanted, and she never said no, and she just kept going and going and going.
I don't care too much that you're prettier...much prettier. In fact, I'll never tell her, but sometimes when she's happily multi-tasking away, I close my eyes and pretend she's you.
But there's something about her that makes her a magnet. Something you'll never understand. Even when she's making my old CPUnit, do things I thought it could never, ever manage, she doesn't just swallow. She gargles.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I recall being able to buy win 3.11 (or at least it was available, new, on the shelf at gamestop) when win98 was out. No reason to kill the product if customers are willing to pay for it (XP SP3 excluded of course). Somebody has to help make the Vista sales figures look better and not immediately axing it will do that.
moox. for a new generation.
Yes, it is awesome... I agree... I routinely login from my Linux machine to a Windows machine offering RDP. However, is it enabled in Windows XP Home? It is a great system, but do home users use it? The closest I've seem was "Remote Assistance", which is in Home.... Alas, I only had the experience of this over a 56K modem, and that was far from fun.
I control my Linux machines over ssh with the command line and that works fine over a 56K modem... Just saying...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I've been considering buying a new computer lately. But now that I hear Win7 is coming in about 6 months or so, that pretty much ensures I won't be buying anything with Vista on it.
I don't really care to use windows myself, but it's handy to have some exposure to whatever OS the majority of people use. If I'm going to pay the windows tax, I'd like to try to get something that has a better chance at success, and is more likely to get long term support.
The problem here is that the successful Linux app is ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app.
There is no compelling reason to migrate.
The geek's obsession with activation can be really puzzling to others. ;-)
We geeks have a strong aversion against giving up control of our toys
That includes wanting to reinstall the OS when we feel like it, without asking someone for permission. And the typical geek does this more frequently than every 8 years.
C - the footgun of programming languages
>>>It pisses me off that I won't get the Vista Service Pack (Windows 7) for free.
What a stupid comment. I bought Win98 and nobody gave me a free upgrade to XP (Windows 5). Later I bought to an XP-PC and nobody offered me a free upgrade to Vista (Windows 6). Why do you think you're entitled to get a free upgrade to a totally new OS (Win7), if Microsoft never gave free upgrades for previous OSes?
Wow. Talk about "entitlement generation" - you fit the profile perfectly. Sorry but you're going to just have to pay, same as I paid for my previous OS upgrades. The real world doesn't hand-out free lunches.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Interesting.
If Microsoft does something incremental (eg. 2000 -> XP, or Vista -> 7), people complain that too little has changed, that it's basically just a "service pack" which Microsoft is charging money for.
If Microsoft does something too radical (eg. XP -> Vista), people complain that too much has changed, that they should have just touched up XP a bit, given it a visual makeover and a few core updates and that would have been enough.
Conclusion - Microsoft can't win. At least with the fussy pricks on Slashdot.
Windows 98 and XP actually worked. Vista has several unacceptable flaws that need to be fixed. Windows 7 fixes these, and adds a few new features and cosmetic changes. I don't care about getting the new dock, etc., but if MS won't make the frustrations of Vista go away, my hand-outs to MS are over. I certainly feel like I paid for several lunches over at Redmond without getting what I expected in return. Next time I'll be taking Linux to lunch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
Conclusion: You're a giant idiot.
You usually move on to a product made by a different company. MS's semi-monopoly rewards it for defective products. I can't help but wonder if some executive came up with the idea to get suckers to pay for a beta OS release, thus forcing them later to pay again for the final release. An easy way to more than double profit.
Conclusion - Microsoft can't win. At least with the fussy pricks on Slashdot.
Correct. This fussy prick won't buy ANY Microsoft OS. After all, there are alternatives.
Well, XP was like a SP for 2000, but 2000 was already good. Vista was a huge overhaul for XP, but Vista is slow, buggy, and in many respects simply annoying. Win 7... seems to be a SP for Vista. I'm not sure, I haven't tried it yet. But I think you're missing the point. The reason people complain re Vista and Win7 is because of Vista's suckage, not because something is an SP or a huge overhaul. There will always be a few people who do complain because of something new or something old, but if something really sucks, most people will complain for that specific reason.
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything.
Now answer this question: why do I give a fuck how much bandwidth it uses? The cost of bandwidth up to my cap is zero, and I don't use Bittorrent so I never even come close to the cap.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
So if Microsoft fucks up and creates a piece of shit, you call that producing something radical?
If Microsoft releases the exact same OS with a few minor changes and a different theme, you consider that a completely new OS deserving of more money?
Conclusion - we look at it as above, differently to you. You seem to accept whatever Microsoft tells you, we look at the actual product and make our own decision. So someone who actually looks at the product is fussy in your book.
And before someone says that we jump on the bandwagon, and Vista ain't that bad, I will probably kill the next person that want me to do some testing on Vista to make it more compliant.
What you say:
Wow. Talk about "entitlement generation" - you fit the profile perfectly. Sorry but you're going to just have to pay, same as I paid for my previous OS upgrades. The real world doesn't hand-out free lunches.
What your sig says:
My $7 per month dialup connection can download TORCHWOOD in just three hours! Who needs broadband internet? (wink)
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
No, it's not. A service pack fixes regressions in a current operating system.
Vista/WS08 SP2 was released to TechNet/MSDN on April 30th, and it fixes a few issues that are there.
Usually, a Microsoft service packs seldomly introduce big new features. The big exception here was Windows XP SP2, which included a lot of features. That is not the usual case, but instead was done to improve security, because the release of then-called Longhorn was delayed.
Windows Vista is perfectly usable. I've been using it since the end of 2006 and the main problems were applications that have not been tested with the Beta by their vendors or devices that vendors no longer support under Windows Vista.
Yep, there were some real issues that made working not-that-fun Pre-SP1, but there were many advantages that still concluded to a full Vista deployment (for example, BitLocker, which was a very cheap way to get full disk encryption on all our laptops).
Windows 7 improves a lot of the technology added in Vista, and adds several new features, like BitLocker to Go.
Nothing wrong with that.
Besides, if you are current on Software Assurance you get 7 for free anyway.
His problem right there is 512mb of RAM. That's simply not enough for Vista. It's marginally enough for XP. Increasing RAM requirements is nothing new. When I had Windows 3.1 my computer had 2MB of RAM. I remember running Windows 95 on 16MB. Windows 98 I started at 64MB. When I finally moved to Windows 2000 I moved up to 256MB and my friends thought I was just showing off with such an insane amount. The simple fact is that Vista needs 1GB minimum to run even acceptably. 2GB would be better (my home machine has 4GB - I'm running 64-bit). Try to toss Windows XP on a machine with 128MB of RAM and see how well it'll run.
Honestly, Vista isn't THAT bad of an OS. I use it daily on my desktop, as well as on a laptop pretty frequently. It's fast - I game and edit video on it. UAC I disabled long ago, and I'm running the classic theme just as I always did with Windows XP. If you want to complain just because it's Microsoft or Windows, go ahead, but Vista, despite having some slightly heavier hardware requirements, really isn't any worse than XP.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Brand new? 512MB RAM? 3Ghz Pentium?
Your brother got ripped of, sorry. A current "brand new" machine has between 2 and 4 GB RAM, and a dualcore CPU (e.G. Core 2 Duo) with 2.5 - 3 Ghz.
What is scary is those videos are showing the head of one of the most powerful fortune 500 companies. The guy comes off as a cross between a used car salesman and a self help guru. And the microsoft shills can mark anything negative about Ballmer as flamebait ALL you want, I have enough karma I really don't give a shit.
What I DO give a shit about is a company (MSFT) that I have been supporting for nearly 15 years has been run into the ground by the piss poor management and direction of Ballmer. Ever since he took over the company has been hopping from one idea to the next like it has ADHD, while its CORE market, the business and enterprise desktop, has been all but ignored as Ballmer has chased the home users in his attempt to be as hip as Jobs. Vista is a complete and total failure, the Xbox 360 has been hemorrhaging cash, their attempts to get into search and the cloud have been disasters....hell can you name me ONE thing besides MS Office, which from what I've read has basically been left alone by Ballmer, that hasn't been a failure under Ballmer? I bet you can't. He is simply a lousy CEO.
The company has lost focus and direction, they are for some reason chasing a market that they already have a lock on (home users) while at the same time risking the market (business) that could most easily switch to another OS like OSX or Linux. I could fill this post with links of many saying the exact same thing as this, but why bother? Everytime I have dared say Ballmer is a bad CEO or that Win7 risks going down the Vista road of failure I have had the post marked up only to have it then buried under flamebait or troll for daring to say Win7 has no clothes. So mark me down ALL you want. MSFT will keep losing market share and Ballmer will keep stumbling from one failed idea to another, until finally the board gets tired of the waste and fires his dumb ass.
By completely destroying backwards compatibility and not bothering to give a transition period (As Apple did with OS9-OSX) they have screwed the one thing that has kept businesses buying their product-the fact that their old apps will continue to function. His answer of "Running XP in VPC" for Win7 is about as lame and pointless as you can get. Whereas with OS9->OSX you could still run your apps because it was close to the bare metal and simply used a translation layer, with Win7 those apps that companies depend on will have the choice of running slower than before or being broken. And mark my words, screwing up all those apps and screwing all that hardware by not supporting XP drivers WILL come back to bite them in the ass with Win7, just as it did with Vista.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.