Windows Vista Released To Manufacturing

Many readers wrote in to make sure we know that Microsoft execs have signed off on the code and Windows Vista has been and released to manufacturing. As APC put it, "It's good to go — or as good as it is going to be until the first round of patching begins." CNN has a good roundup of Vista's long development history.

Norton Antivirus?

[bogaboga]

Have Symantec solved their issues with Microsoft? If not, be prepared for an even louder rant from Symantec. Adobe should also watch out. For me, I doubt I will touch this Vista thingie anytime soon. Windows 2K and Xandros are still doing OK for me.

Time to milk the cash cow

[GomezAdams]

And by SP2 all the older Office apps will be crippled forcing an upgrade to the Vista Office suite. Just think of the billions of dollars taken out of the world wide economy that could have been spent on REAL business improvements.

Anybody Else Tired of Hearing This:

[Luscious868]

From TFA:

Ultimately, we never could have achieved this milestone without you, the enthusiast community, who have played a key role in making this the highest-quality, most secure, most reliable and most usable version of Windows the world has ever seen.

Really? If each new release of Windows is marketed as the highest-quality, most secure, most reliable and most usable version of Windows then why has each new release of Windows had more security patches released than the previous version?

Just look at the amount of holes that have been plugged since XP SP2 was released. The heck with waiting for Vista SP1, I'm telling my clients to steer clear of Vista all together until Microsoft stops releasing patches to new vulnerabilities found in XP.

The tagging

[Rik Sweeney]

Seriously, the tagging is rapidly dissolving into childish rubbish (even by Slashdot's standards). I'm fed up of seeing every story getting tagged with "itsatrap". Can it be removed or can the lameness filter be extended to the tags?

I predict....

[Trelane]

Stunning profits as soon as it's pre-installed on millions of PCs worldwide.

Re:Last version of Windows

[Tim C]

it takes more time for a release

Really? What was the gap between Win95 and Win98? Between Win98 and Win2k? Between Win2k and XP? Let me give you a clue [microsoft.com].

I'm not debating that Vista has taken a metric shit-load of time to drag itself to RTM (we didn't use to call Longhorn Longwait for no reason), but your assertion that each release takes longer than the last is demonstrably false.

there is really very little motivation for the average user to upgrade from XP to Vista

There's very little motivation (beyond not wanting to feel that their computer is old and out of date) for the average user to upgrade from any given OS to any other. Most people do not upgrade their OS, they upgrade their PC and use whatever OS comes with it. They upgrade their PC as and when they feel that their current one is too old and slow for their needs; that varies from person to person. Even some gamers are still using Win 98 (see Valve's survey [steampowered.com], scroll down to/search for "Windows Version"), and gamers are the group most likely to upgrade their OS.

Is anyone else convinced that this will be the last version of Windows as we know it?

I'm not convinced that it will be, but I concede that it might be. Don't expect Windows to go anywhere any time soon though, it's far too popular (as much as we might hate it) and makes MS far too much money for that to happen.