Microsoft Hoping for Vista in January

WebHostingGuy writes "Bill Gates said Tuesday there was an 80 percent chance the company's next-generation operating system, Vista, would be ready in January. He is also hopeful that the next version of Office will ship in December. The holdup, he says, is due to constant revisions due to beta tester feedback." From the article: "'We've got to get this absolutely right,' Gates said. 'If the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to delay it.' He said Microsoft was investing $8 billion to $9 billion in developing Vista and the company's next version of Office, its key cash-generator. He said the company's software partners, in developing and adapting their own products for the two launches, would invest 20 times as much as Microsoft."

Re:Vista or Mac ?

[PitaBred]

How's the Kool-aid taste?
Hell, I've got even neater features on Linux now, such as the fact that I can start a processor-intensive application running and my machine doesn't become completely unusable (mmm, efficient thread switching...). Let's see you try that under Windows or OSX.

Re:180 billion to reimplement for vista?

[nizo]

Nice; keep in mind that if a country had $180 billion GDP, it would rank in the top 50 countries in the world.

Re:couple of observations

[NemosomeN]

Well, there are always going to be incompatibilities with a new major version. And it's not so much that they are leaving the heavy lifting to others, it's just that all those little things that don't work the same need to be fixed in various software programs. Thousands of software programs. That cost is divided amongst all developers. Then the deployment of those changes. And marketing. Etc. These are not Microsoft's responsibility.

That said, I've used Vista Beta 2. It's Alpha quality, at best. (Of course, "Beta" has become somewhat of a buzzword. Often what should be a "Release" is labelled "Beta" to give it a "Cutting edge" feeling.)

MS Early Adopter program

[AgentPhunk]

MS recognized this fact. They have an "early adopter" program for corporations, which my company is participating in. Basically, the corporation, with X number of total desktops, agrees to have some number of them (for us its 1000) upgraded to Vista within Y months of the Vista release date (for us I think its 3 months.) For that, MS commits Z number of hands-on, on-site engineering support, to help with software issues, compatability, builds, etc (Vista has a somewhat cool PXE boot process for bare-metal installs; no more Ghost images.) I forget what our Z is; I'm only tangentially involved in the process. My point is that MS is playing both fields; they give corp's resources to figure out build issues, which gets the corps running Vista more quickly (which lets MS make bigger claims about # of deployed desktops) and in turn, I'm sure, any software related issues get pushed back to the software corps for further investigation. And, all that being said, most of us are still wondering why we're MS's guinea-pig/bitch for an OS that /really/ doesn't get us that much. (The only thing I'm looking forward to is native 802.1x supplicant support so I can do Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC). BTW, their version, called NAP, sucks wind. Secure DHCP and private IPSec tunnels to the server. ptttttphtp!)

Re:Will there be

[ben there...]

Yeah, 800 MHz [microsoft.com]. That's one insane machine!

Fools

[BWhaler]

Boy, do I feel badly for the sucker CIO's who bought into Microsoft's annual payment program so they could receive free upgrades when releases. Promises were made about releases of Windows and Office within 2, "no more than 3 years." "And if you don't sign-up, you'll have to pay full retail." Full retail is looking like a bargain right now vs. paying MS 25% of the cost each and every year, for ever. I am sure those CIO's, especially those from larger organizations, have demanded their money back.

Re:Doesn't matter

[laffer1]

For gaming. Windows XP has better support for games than 2000 did. Some software runs on XP that also ran on 98, but not 2000. That is the reason. Windows 2000 Pro was targeted to business, but they also picked up a few geeks like me. I preferred the stability of NT4 and 2k to Windows 95/98. I actually prefer the new start menu layout over the old one. It did take time to get used to it.

I wish you would give Microsoft a break. We always complain about their lack of quality. If Bill Gates is actually telling us the truth, I'd enjoy a tested system over an untested one. Even if you don't plan to run vista, I bet your employer or family might. You'll still have to touch it, deal with it and if you're a linux developer compete with it.

Re:Hope...

[westlake]

Unless it's a bloated bugfest like Windows ME and people refuse to upgrade

In the spring of 2003 XP had 30% of the market. Three years later, XP has 75% of the market. Users upgrade, they do not migrate to the alternative OS. OS Platform Statistics [w3schools.com]

"Bloat" is strictly a Geek obession. Vista Premium should run just fine on your midline Dell.

I bet you

[Aqws]

I gaurentee you that in January 2007, Windows Vista will not be released. I am going to go as far as to say thay it will not even be released in the first half of 2007. I am going to quote this post during that time.

Re:Credible odds?

[10Ghz]

"The point is, would specifying a stable kernel ABI *stop* it from changing "FOR THE BETTER" ? Everyone else manages to do it, why can't Linux ?"

Because stable ABI for binary-drivers is not in the best interest of Linux? Linux-developers want the drivers to become part of the kernel, where they can be properly troubleshot. If they provide a stable ABI, companies will just use binary-drivers, and no-one (except the manufacturer) has any means of troubleshooting the problems the drver might be causing. The biggest reason for instabilities and crashes in Windows is the drivers. If linux had a stable ABI, we would have that problem in Linux as well.

Read what Greg Kroah-Hartman has to say about it: Link [kroah.com]. this [kroah.com] also touches on the subject.