Vista Gets Official Release Dates 394
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."
I've been running it for years! (Score:4, Funny)
J/K, I'm not gay.
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Soryy windows people.
535? (Score:5, Funny)
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dup? (Score:2)
Do we care? (Score:2)
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Even better is the fact that Vista doesn't even recover from a bad video driver installation properly - it's back to windows 95 days - even Linux recovers better from crapped out video driver installs, and this is saying a LOT
Of course, most of the problem is ATI's drivers themselves, but microsoft's insistence on
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Christmas Shopping! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Christmas Shopping! (Score:5, Funny)
No jury in the world would convict a cat (Score:2)
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Since you didn't seem to read the summary quite well, allow me to summarize the summary:
:`-(
30 November 06 = release date for business customers
30 January 07 = release date for everyone else
So no clicking "Accept" together for you and your family.
Sorry
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Sucks to be a computer vendor (Score:2)
But: "buyers of Vista-ready Toshiba notebooks preloaded with XP Professional or XP Tablet Edition -- which is just about all of 'em -- will qualify for an upgrade to Vista Business for a meagre $27 'shipping and handling' cost. The uber-OS itself, over five years in the baking, is free."
And here's the best explanation I've found regarding how Corporate/Retail keys will work. Note that I didn't say the explanation was simple.
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Toshiba pride themselves in being a "genuine" Windows provider (I work for Toshiba). Although, quite a few laptops have a second partition on the hard drive which is a media player. Basically instead of booting to Windows it boots to this small OS that just plays DVDs so you don't have to wait for Windows to load . . . and guess what OS that might be? Yeah . . . Linux. And, for a very, very, very brief moment, you can see the words "Loading bzImage...".
For Real This Time? (Score:2)
Why is the delay such a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I can see, Windows XP, with patches, a firewall and Firefox seems to be working fine. I don't feel the need to upgrade as soon as Vista comes out.
They're late on the deadline they originally set for themselves. But I don't see anyone else losing any sleep over it.
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Five years between operating system releases is a very long time in the computer industry. Look at how OS X improved in five years (from OS X 10.0 to OS X 10.4, with OS X 10.5 coming out sometime in the spring). Look at how KDE and GNOME have improved over 5 years. Look at some other 5-year periods of time in the computing industry. From 1991 to 1996, we went from DOS and Windows 3.0 to Windows 95 and Windows NT, and that is just on the MS side of things.
Five years without any changes other than securi
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Windows XP Service Pack 2 is practically a new operating system. This patch replaced everything with new binaries. The decision not to call it a new operating system was Jim Allchin's. He talks about it in an interview with Mary Jo Foley here http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=65/ [zdnet.com].
I guess they didn't add anything different to the look and feel though. It's always a pain when you've been working on a huge backend, but when the boss has a look the GUI guys get all the credit for adding cornflower blue butto
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If that's true, then as a shareholder, I think his dumb ass should be fired.
Compared to Google and Apple, Microsoft looks like a drunk trying to remember how to get the key in the ignition over the past five years - and yes, I think that means they're about to make a really stupid mistake by releasing Vista as is.
I don't see business using it for at least a year. Consumer
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I guess that's what SP2 turned into.
Re:Why is the delay such a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If people are suggesting that these sets of applications are operating systems it is time for me to move to another forum.
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That is exactly my point. The Linux kernel hasn't changed too greatly in the past 5 years, but the desktop environments for Linux (and BSD) have improved greatly. Linux is harder to judge since there are so many separate components, so I focused on the desktops, since that is the most fair comparison to OS X and Windows.
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And, I'm sorry for you that you are so willing to spout without having any clue of what you speak. You could not possibly say this with a straight face if you had actually USED OSX.
IMHO, OSX didn't really come into its own until about 10.3. The difference between 10.2 and 10.3 is rather startling - the performanc
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Sorry - it one particular area is KDE superior to Windows XP?
I've used Linux (and of course desktop platforms such as KDE and Gnome) for over 9 years - and whilst I could wholeheartedly say that it has come on leaps and bounds in that time, i'd still maintain that the Window Managers still have some way to go before they feel completely integrated into the system, and as usable as Windows is.
Perhaps i'm just more used to Win
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Honestly, from a developer's point of view, the recent trend was a blessing. Aside for a few hiccups, we didn't have much to worrie about. For internal apps, even IE6's stagnating was kind of a blessing, to some extent: less time spent testing new ve
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My question to everyone is, why is everyone so upset about how long it's taking for Windows Vista to come out?
Easy. M$'s marketers have spent many millions of dollars for years trying to raise expectations and a "need" for Vista. No surprise that some people start complaining when those expectations are delayed and/or unfulfilled.
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Vista: Billions of marketing words and no delivered product.
Re:Why is the delay such a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Like most companies don't push out all the new microsoft stuff but this will cause us to start upgrading abunch of new server and software (aka toys) just because microsoft is now starting to remove support for older stuff.
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Some people here are "upset" because this makes MS look bad, so they're all over it as they are with anything that gives them a chance to throw FUD and laugh; some are upset because they're genuinely looking forward to some of the new features; some are upset because of the flood of pointless "hahaha Vista sux0rz! M$ l0053rz!!!" stories poste
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Because it is a big deal, IMHO. (Score:5, Informative)
A better question would be why some people (excluding mac & linux users
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"Indigo" was not cancelled. It's the code name for what became Windows Communication Foundation [microsoft.com], which is alive and well.
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Stagnation denotes a longer period of inactivity. The last time Windows saw a major release, the September 11th attacks hadn't even happened yet. Five years is an incredibly long time to give customers nothing, and they paid for it with ancient technologies (for comparison, Apple had a next-generation, vector-based graphics API on the market in 2001, hardware compositing
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There was the vector-based Aero Diamond tier that was to be included in Ultimate that never showed up. Vista's using plain old bitmaps for its interface and scaling through differently sized layers for its resolution independence.
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Good God. I didn't realize they were that far behind.
Scaling bitmaps. There's technology leadership for you. Maybe the OS team should talk to the DirectX team once in a while.
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Breaking news (Score:5, Funny)
Someone start a pool (Score:2, Funny)
Can't Wait for Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
So imagine MacWorld just before this January 30 Vista release. Jobs has already shown he's not too afraid to take a stab at Redmond. We all expect some surprise Leopard features that speak for themselves, but expect some intentional jabs as well. Maybe even a TV commercial campaign to steal thunder from the TV campaign Microsoft is sure to launch (because they always do).
Personally, I predict the real show-stopper will be a surprise price reduction from Apple. Seriously, if they knocked Leopard *down* to $99 or something, Microsoft would be looking really bad.
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Yes, just imagine all the Mac owners who were waiting for Vista. Now they'll have to make do with OS X running on their Apple-branded computers.
How exactly is this going to affect Microsoft exactly? You really think the average Wintel user takes notice of Apple OS pricing?
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Although I'm not expecting it, I wouldn't be surprised. I wasn't expecting the first Intel Macs to be available as early as they were.
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Wouldn't be the first time Apple shipped ahead of schedule to embarass their competitors.
And given the strides OS X has been making, I wouldn't be very surprised to see old Nanook Jobs rub the yellow snow of a leapfrog release in Ballmer's face.
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I don't know about y'all, but I am dog tired of trying to read about technology, only to have my news and analysis cluttered with daily speculation of what might be up Apple's sleeves. I guess it's fun to speculate, but this is getting downright Pavlovian. Apple doesn't have
oh my (Score:3, Funny)
Did I miss an Apple/Linux article? (Score:2)
The Leopard/Ubuntu update must be coming along a lot faster than expected. I can't wait to delve into all those nifty features Vista has promised over the last few years! That kick ass WinFS addition will surely make my life easier.
indeed.
5 years, 3 months, 5 days... Yet still... (Score:3, Funny)
...manage to beat Duke Nukem Forever.
According to this page [duke4.net], DNF has been in (in)active development for over 8 years...
University licenses (Score:3, Interesting)
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KFG
Hardware... (Score:2)
Driver availability is the real release date (Score:2)
I played around with Vista RC1 a bit last week on a spare machine. For the most part, I was actually pretty impressed with the ease of install. Inevitably there were a couple of devices (onboard audio and USB wireless) that it didn't support. However, it seems that the driver model has changed pretty significantly from XP/2000 as these didn't work at all.
So the release date isn't
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Businesses get to be the beta testers? (Score:2)
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Awww and I was hoping.... (Score:2)
Actually, it's a bit later... (Score:2)
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OS X. It just works.
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Re:better than linux (Score:4, Funny)
I'm going to take a 6 month sabbatical to meditate on your words. There's just something deeply compelling about what you have to say that fills me with a sense of longing for a truer understanding of this wacky universe of ours.
Thank you fellow scholar. You have changed me.
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Visual Studio, Atlas/ASP.NET AJAX, and the stuff you mentionned, all seem to have followed that tre
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Please Microsoft, isn't there any way you can bend me over further and give Vista to me harder?
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I've been on it for 6 months now and having nice results,
it cohabitates peacefully, takes advantage of all my advanced HW,
and as a bonus, contains none of the 'new Vista' features.
I have no plans to (upgrade??) to Vista until forced to...
Re:aka Corporate version (Score:4, Informative)
Don't let them fool you--Vista is being released on January 30th, 2007.
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Not That Simple. (Score:3, Informative)
The days of snagging your works (or a friends works) Volume Licence Key are over.
Vista corporate licencing now has the OS pinging a Corporate Licence server which in turn keeps track of how many clients are out there, it then pings MS which greenlights whether that org is still within licencing terms or not. The actual system is a bit more in depth than that, but essentially that's how it works. If the client can't ping the licence server within 90 days, then the client goes i
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Vista.
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You're joking, right? Some of us don't have that kind of cash to throw around on an unproven DRM laden OS that has been gutted of almost every cool feature that was originally supposed to go into it.
Vista is much better than XP, by far.
Care to elaborate on this point? Other than the eye candy, and DirectX 10 (more eye candy), what reason is there to get excited about Vista? XP at this point is a very stable, relatively secure OS with a sol
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Better than XP? Having a broken bottle jabbed repeatedly into my face is better than XP, and I can get that for free! 8^)
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In my opinion Win2k is better than XP by far (especially for memory limited systems) - and server 2003 is better again. Will Vista be better than server 2003? Why will it be better?
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Now, how many times do you suppose that was posted about five years ago? And how much has Linux' marketshare really grown?
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Funny thing is I switched to linux immediately after MS Windows 95 came out. The hype that it did not live up to and the delays made a lot of things look better. Vista will obviously be better since 95 was such utter crap in many ways but I can see a similarity.
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It was said that Win98 was superb and xp would suck. Now xp's cools and vista sucks? Wait a few years and we will hear that vista "ROOLZ" and there is no need to upgrade.
Now, about those users... Say I'm an average Joe. I get a new shiny OS with lots of cools features. Had XP, now have Vista. I won't migrate.
Say I'm Klaidas. I dual boot. Had XP and Edgy, will have Vista and Feisty. Why would I delete my windows part
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I really ought to get myself a Wii...
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Something like SDL [libsdl.org]? SDL is today a mature and stable library, already used by a lot of games, both commercial (notably the Unreal series) and OSS.
In my experience, games suported both on Windows and Linux run awfully smoother on Linux, for some reason. Load times are also reduced by half.
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Also, I'm not sure how you consider Vista is a step backwards in 3D desktop rendering, when 3d and 2d interfaces have effectively been merged into one [wikipedia.org].
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