Windows Vista delayed

@Dmad

From Windows Vista: The Versions

Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.

Of course, for XP we had:

Top 10 Reasons to Get Windows XP Home Edition

While we can think of hundreds of reasons to use Windows XP Home Edition, these are the 10 at the top of our list.

Help Protect Your PC
Automatically keep your PC up-to-date with the latest security enhancements including the Windows Security Center, Windows Firewall, and more to help protect it from viruses and worms that can spread through the Internet.

Set Up and Share Your Computer Quickly and Easily
Quickly set up and connect all the computers, printers, devices, and an Internet connection in your home with the all new Network Setup Wizard. Sharing a computer with others has never been easier; quickly access your personal files and accounts without having to close applications or restart the computer.

Easy to Use
The clean, simple design of Windows XP puts the features you use most often at your fingertips, helping you find them quickly.

Streamline and Safeguard your Web Browsing Experience
Internet Explorer 6 simplifies Web browsing tasks as well as helping keep your personal information private. It blocks most annoying pop-up ads, provides warnings regarding security issues, and helps stop downloads that could harm your PC.

Communicate and Share Memories Easily with Family and Friends
Now it’s easier than ever to communicate via text, voice, or video using Windows Messenger. In addition, you’ll find it’s easy to organize, edit, and share pictures and home movies using My Pictures and Windows Movie Maker.

Recover Easily from Problems Caused by System or Application Changes
If something goes wrong with your computer, you can easily remove and roll back any system or application changes without losing files and other valuable information.

Easily Access and Explore the Vast World of Music and Video Using Your PC
Windows Media Player for Windows XP gives you an easy-to-use place to play your DVDs, organize music, burn CDs, sync with a wide range of media players, and much more.

Quickly Connect to Wireless Networks
Windows XP provides rich, wireless network support, helping you simply and easily connect to wireless networks whether in your home, office, or out on the road.

Get Help from Someone You Trust No Matter Where They Are
Remote Assistance lets you allow someone else running Windows XP to remotely access and control your computer to demonstrate a process or help solve a problem.

Work with the Tools You Need to Get Things Done
Choose from the widest range of software, hardware, and services designed to work together seamlessly including support for many older applications designed for earlier versions of Windows.

Wow Im just glad Windows XP will be around a little longer, Windows XP Home was the best purchase I ever made only $30 from HP because of Microsofts Technology Guarantee (I bought a Old HP Computer with Win ME and paid the extra for the upgrade CD)… maybe this will happen again and I can get Vista for $30.

I wish Microsoft well, and hope they can release a good product, which is stable and makes computing easier for everyone. Windows XP is actually a great product, the only thing I really dislike about it is the product activation feature and thats only a pain because your only allowed to activate once.

Hopefully Microsoft will realise that people are not crooks and will be a bit more lenient with the home consumer licensing of Windows Vista like they were with Office 2003 Student and Teachers Edition, allowing 3 installs per copy.

Infact they almost need to do this to survive, or all these older PCs will end up running Linux. Im no Linux fanboy but Ive tried a few Linux live CDs and Im impressed at the progress that the open source community has made.

Microsofts first goal should be to make a stable secure product, that is what bussiness demands and why I welcome this Vista delay.

The second goal should be to stop consumers getting familiar with other any other OS. Thats why retail copies of Vista should be cheaper or allow multiple installs per copy.

In many homes these days you have more than one computer it would be nice to put vista on the old computer(s) aswell as the new top of the range vista built PC… it would increase the security, and ease of use for familys. It would be nice to be allowed to install Vista on Grandmas machine so when she calls you for help you dont have to think where was that menu hidden in Windows XP?

Ultimately Microsoft needs to make money from adverts, and extra services but since the competition is tough right now I would try to make Vista the best OS it can be and then push Vista on everyone by making it really cheap for home users.

There needs to be more ads on Xbox and MSN messenger!

@83
“Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.”

Oh, okay. Now I get it!!! I see the differences now between Vista and XP. It will be “more satisfying” Whatever the hell that means.

And I need Vista Basic to.. just do the basics. I had no idea users weren’t doing that yet. But it will be “more reliable”. More reliable than what? XP? Great! From a Joe Average user perspective this is very compelling

“The company says that the delay is due to continuing efforts to improve the security of the operating system.” [PC Pro News]

So, never released then, eh ?

Some quick background: First computer was a Mac 128k, switched from the Mac to PC around Windows 95, now just jumped back in with Mac OS X Tiger and a intel Core Duo iMac (along with keeping a Dell desktop and laptop.)

All that said can someone more knowledgable about software development answer some basic questions for me?

1. Windows Vista is clearly a critical release for MS. It does beg the question that for the listed feature set (basically large scale security improvements with graphics and search enhancements to catch up to Mac OS X) how this release has taken so long to be developed? 2003 was supposed to be the launch date, then 2004, then 2006, now 2007… how is it possible for this less than huge list (at least in my mind) of improvements take this long?

2. Does *anyone* think MS will have the courage (or some would say the stupidity since it would likely break old software and endanger there huge marketshare) to someday do a real ground up re-write of the Windows OS? Vista STILL is sitting on the NT kernel which STILL shares a bit with MS-DOS. Everyone knows that part of Mac OS X being so solid was a total restart based on UNIX and NextStep. I do admit a company with 2% marketshare has more of a luxury to do such things but I do think the ground up re-write of the OS is directly what allows Apple to lead the way in OS technology and continue delivering meaningful OS updates on a 12-18 month basis?

I still think Vista while improved will not fully catch up to Mac OS X in a purely technology level (which is disappointing since OS X has existed since 2001) and Mac OS 10.5 will be out late this year, early next year and won’t be standing still.

PS: Not promoting Macs here… just wondering what it will REALLY take for MS to truly catchup to the modern Mac OS and even hopefully pass it.

#87:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
old article, from june 2004, and looong, but still valid

excerpt:
“The cornerstone of Microsoft’s monopoly power and incredibly profitable Windows and Office franchises, which account for virtually all of Microsoft’s income and covers up a huge array of unprofitable or marginally profitable product lines, the Windows API is no longer of much interest to developers. The goose that lays the golden eggs is not quite dead, but it does have a terminal disease, one that nobody noticed yet.”

The delay isn’t good for getting early adopters excited — the early adopters who do IT, particularly, who are thinking about hardware budgets, wondering when/if they’ll need to tell bookkeeping that they’ll have to shell out extra $$ in Quarter x of 2007 for upgrades. My buddy at a smaller sized company, (where hardware costs are a significant % of operations), gets to have that conversation with his boss, and he’s not looking forward to it.

What’s worse, is that the feature set subtractions are driving that uncertainty: I can’t keep track of which highly promised features Vista is actually going to have, and which ones got subtracted.

If the only thing Vista delivered was a new kernel to wrap XP’s interface around, that actually sandboxed explorer and user accounts properly, that would be awesome. But that would, be what, the new innovation for IE 7 plus Service Pack 3?

as always: late

D – here’s my thoughts on your questions. Very good ones too!

(1) Vista has taken unexpectedly long. I think all people, inside and outside MS, will agree on that.

I believe the product was NEVER announced to be released in 2003. As for the 2004 version, after the (alpha) bits they released at the PDC in October 2003, they reversed course on their “three pillars” afterwards to the point of pretty much going back to the drawing board on the featureset.

They really didn’t make this public until 2005, when they also made it clear that they would drop whatever features they had to in order to definitely make a 2006 release.

Which brings us up to this week. What happened? I’m betting very few know. My guess is that the management shakeup is a good indication of the state of things.

(2) Being a Mac guy myself, I’ll take your questions as sincere and not just religious posturing. If one reads them (your words) objectively, they’ll see how accurate you describe – and answer – your own question.

Microsoft simply cannot dump their existing customer base. They do not have that luxury. Their market would not tolerate it.

And opposite of that is Apple. We’re barely a year beyond Tiger and I believe nearly 40% of Macs out there run on it. Five years after OS X and nearly 95% run it. Five years after XP? Penetration is nothing like that.

Different companies, different markets… and different strategies. But yet – both are successful in their own ways!

I’ve used the second beta of VISTA and it’s GOD AWFUL. The one thing in Windows that I use the most – the file browsers – are so frigged-up and horrible that I’m going to end up being a Windows XP hold-out until I either lower myself to Vista or Son Of Vista or switch to Linux. I cannot use an operating system that offers me a cutesy, dumbed-down, mega-bloated file browser. Hec, I’d even consider Mac OS X on Intel if Apple ever grew a brain and decided to relent to the millions of people dreaming about using their OS without having to pay a fortune for their hardware.

Case in point: the new Vista file browser highlights the entire row when you select a file in details view, yet, I can still click anywhere in the highlighted area (not on the file name itself) to begin drawing a box to select more files. This is so frigged-up that it will confuse people even more: “why won’t the file drag? I’m dragging on the blue highlighted area?! What gives?”

Another case in point: most Windows do not have a visibly-discernible control-menu-box (you know, the one in the top left corner). If you click there, you still get the control-menu, but you just can’t see that one is there, unless you know to look there. This is also extremely dumb, Microsoft!

It appears that Vista may be undergoing a new round of featureset changes to go along with the management shakeup. Ouch. Talk about a morale killer.

Is it just me, or does it seem ironic to read:

“The only way to make money off of Apple is to try to appeal to the herd of brainwashed hipsters that Apple has created.”

followed by:

“People who don’t already illogically hate Microsoft…”

Tim

(Written on a Dell Inspiron 1150, at lunch from my work managing delivery of an XP-Pro/Win2k3-Server product.)

BTW, the quotes were from the same post. Clearly, 7on7 isn’t one of the “brainwashed hipsters” that Apple has created.

Tim

And now Office, is playing follow the leader, with its own delay. And yet another Microsoft reorg…but all the Office and Windows comparisons going on now are so much as meaningless, it’s a differing beast altogether.

With Kevin Johnson going on and on about ‘Ozzie’ism services’, the “online advertising industry” and buzzword heavy “align[ing] our organization” and other quasi-post-Microsoft talk. The “optimize for the industry” cop-out in the Press Release was CLASSIC. Ohmigosh. So it’s the INDUSTRY’S FAULT then? Hahahha. Comically sad, glad I got them outta my portfolio.

But being that Apple is too iron-fisted as to let HP, Sony or Dell in, and being that Linux is thousands of miles away from being mainstream desktopped, just grin, bear and wait, and suffer through all the beach-ball-bouncy happy-happy Evangelists, MVPs and Bloggers, eternally telling us the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ are of the finest silk ever made (right before some new announcement of a dropped feature-set).

Reading the Press Release…

“But the industry”, “optimize for the industry”, “Because of the way businesses test and deploy software”…

Gotta love Microsoft, their own delay, becomes the fault of industry deployment practices. “Shame on you all, you customers you, you don’t deploy our stuff right. Yes, you.”

Amazing the arrogance it takes to kick out PR like that.

George: there isn’t a second beta of Windows Vista yet, so when you say you are using it you are lying. Why should we believe anything else you are saying in your post here?

“I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.”

The problem is, MS has been continually cutting features from Vista.

So what do we end up with in a year(?)–a cruddy product that’s slipped more than one date.

But oh look shiny moving windows! And Dell is going to preload every PC no matter how much it lacks so who cares how cruddy it is right?

Jon: really? A lot of the features that I thought were gonna be cut (like Sidebar) are now back in.

From the individual user’s perspective, I imagine most of us would much rather have the date slip and have a stable product. If I wanted to beta test products I’d sign up for the beta. Instead I grumble about Microsoft’s idea that “public beta” means “gold release“.

But in the enterprise, it’s a whole different matter. When Windows slips, everything slips – hardware purchases, other major software purchases, internal development schedules, etc. The whole ecosystem slips. What does this do to a small software company? Microsoft may be in a financial position to weather a few months slippage, but everyone else isn’t.

As a solo professional, I can wait, but I understand why others are pissed.

“A lot of the features that I thought were gonna be cut (like Sidebar) are now back in.”

Seriously? The feature that made it back in is the “sidebar”?

Not WinFS. Not EFI support. Not monad shell. But wait–sidebar is back in! I better pre-order my copy of Vista ASAP then.

(I still can’t tell if your comment was just a joke or if you were being serious).

Which category does Sidebar fall in to? Better security? Better diagnostics? Less reboots on updates? Support for new kinds of hardware? Better managabiliy?

What, exactly, will Sidebar help an average user do every day that they aren’t already doing with their computer running XP? Please tell me this is not your tipping point feature add back in for Vista.

What about photoshop?

I was thinking about articles I’ve seen on Cnet and else where speculating on the fallout of another Windows delay.

They are saying that ‘if there’s one company that stands to benefit from the delay of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, it’s Apple Computer.’

That might be true in a consumer market segment outside Apple’s traditional user base. Almost all my contact with Mac fans has been in graphic design, photography, or film. The problem is Photoshop and the other Adobe tools are not likely to be available for the new intel Mac’s until second half of 2007. Forbes had an interview with Bruce Chizen Adobe’s chief executive and he is quoted as saying that CS3 won’t be out until second half 2007.

Adobe is also saying they do ‘not plan to re-release current products as Universal applications that can run natively on both Intel and PowerPC based systems. This applies to Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Studio 8, as well as individual applications such as Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2, Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, and After Effects 7.0. Instead, we are focused on delivering the next version of these products as Universal applications that will run natively on the new Intel-based Mac computers. By incorporating the effort to support Intel-based Macs into our normal development process-inwhich we coninue to evolve our features and support for creative workflows in the ways that our creative customers expect from us-we can deliver optimal value for those customers.’

One big reason, according to an Adobe engineer who posted a comment on his blog, is there is no short cut as with the switch to OS X. Switching to OS X could be done with patches rather then recompiling the code and having to do all the testing associated with that kind of effort.

From having projects with large numbers of files that open quickly, to having compact debugging information, to having stable project formats that are text-merge-able in a source control system. These are things XCode is playing catch-up on. Now, Apple is doing an amazing job at catching up rapidly, but the truth is we don’t yet have a shipping XCode in hand that handles a large application well. And switching compilers always involves more work than you would think in a codebase of this size.

So where does this leave the question of market gains given that Microsoft is saying that Vista has been delayed? Probably will give them an edge in a consumer market segment thats looking for a fresh OS look and feel as well as a ‘more secure’ environment. Is that sustainable? On the professional creative front all is not well. Desktops aren’t available till second half of this year and the G5 platform is being phazed out. The last speed bump for the G5 I’m aware of has already happened. So for the creative pro its limbo till second half 2007 unless they can tolerate Photoshop or other Adobe products runing at G4 speeds or less on the new Intel Macs.

In short I’m not so sure Apple has the edge the analysts say they do.

Jeopardizing delivery in a cause of quality, is it justifiable?.
No, absolutely not.
In a world of furious competition, in a world where Microsoft is being chased by each software company on the planet, in a world where Linux is phenomenally growing, failure to deliver is not an option.
Why does Microsoft has to jeopardize quality in the first place?.
Why the delivery date is not being met in the first place.
I think risking Microsoft bread and butter-Windows OS- by some irresponsible highly compensated executives should have only one answer: get rid of them and get Microsoft back on track.

Jamil, a Linux lover

Quality before Quantity is the golden rule.

I applaud Microsoft for not releasing the product. As a professional technologist I would rather see Microsoft test their products more thorough before releasing the product.

Besides that, no one is going to jump all over this 64bit OS that needs major hardware upgrades before deployment to the desktop. They made the right decision.