Analysts Split Over Vista Launch Date 165
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."
Oh, get real (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obsession (Score:4, Insightful)
"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."
Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obsession (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is unreasonable? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Oh for Christ's sake (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Re:Here come the "I am not upgrading to Vista" Pos (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
REASONABLY? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
How to procure Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
I have to sew a small seed here.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I realize that we are bound to Windows for the long term. Previous plans to switch to competitive (preferably OSS) software have always concluded that the initial bump is too high and too wide to overcome without dedicating considerable resources throughout the company. We wouldn't see a positive return for a long time, although eventually there will be a (relatively speaking) small one. In other words, the hassle is a tangent that is not in line with the goals of the company, and the payoff is minor enough that the effort is not considered to be worthwhile. Inevitable poor analogy: I have to mow a large lawn with a crappy little lawn mower. My time is valuable to me, and a new lawn mower would save time and over the long term pay off. However, a nice lawnmower is so immediately expensive that I really don't want to afford it now, and can't afford the effort of saving for it. The end goal is that the lawn look nice, which will occur whether it takes me an hour with a nice mower or four hours with a crappy mower. Thus I'll just continue mowing the lawn with my crappy lawn mower and not worry about it.
Ok, so I've taken the long road to get to my point: you're in a Windows shop, as am I. Neither of us will be upgrading to Vista, but it is inevitable that we will begin running Vista on new machines. It is inevitable that we will eventually have a majority of our machines running Vista. I don't know about you, but I've been installing the release candidates to get an idea of what I'll be seeing in the future. (and trying to optomistic about the obvious flaws in these beta releases..."what do you mean you can't find a driver for my CDROM drive? It's a CDROM drive, just fucking read it!")
It's also interesting to me to think back on my initial impressions of past MS operating systems. The only one that I actually *liked* and *upgraded to* was Windows 2000. A Windows OS that was hardware, software, and support friendly in terms of business use. When I first experienced Windows XP I hated it. I hated it for years. However, now I would much rather support our majority of XP machines than our minority of Win2K machines. Is XP a better operating system? Well, now that I've gotten over the realization that it isn't the best thing since sliced bread, I can say "yeah, it's a bit better."
Nowadays I don't pay much attention to hype and analyst bullshit, other than for personal amusement. I look at the features that I'll eventually be supporting and try to plan on how they'll affect me both negatively and positively.
Re:Here come the "I am not upgrading to Vista" Pos (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
Each time I've considered Linux for home use, I've decided that right now not only is Linux not worth the trouble of switching, but that Windows actually does the job that I want of it better. The only looking to the future I do is to assume that future Windows will also be better than future Linux. I'll make the switch when linux, right now, is better than Windows, right now.
One company I worked for (a small compnay) did actually switch to Linux. It wasn't a calculated business decision, but rather a mission by the CTO, based on a seeming "religious" preference for FOSS, backed by management who thought they might get something for nothing. Watching from the sidelines, it seemed to take a ridiculous amount of time, and produced nothing of value, other than potential future payoff, if and when FOSS becomes mainstream.
I agree. Window's 2000 was actually likeable, but WinXP, despite some ugliness, is a bit better. I miss the XP "Start" menu when I use 2000.