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- radiofrequency, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16Microsoft could win by making a great operating system we like. But that's not going to happen. ;)
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10At this point? Wait til you get something really stable, even if it means another delay. No one will remember a late launch of a good product. Everyone will remember a disastrous premature launch.
- Inferny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I'm willing to wait for Vista, at least they arn't like EA (looks at BF2) for once, gives me more time to save up for a new comp that will run it well. Main reason i want vista is Dx10. Anyone else tried the vista demo's? Bit sluggish on my comp.
- nahteecirp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11All I have to say is that after waiting this long for Vista it better be darn near perfect.
- Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You haven't tested anything other than XP I take it?
- PhillyMJS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"What moron is sitting out there thinking that "I need to wait until Vista comes out to buy a computer-- oh wait, it's delayed so now I should buy a Mac". "
There are almost certainly people out there who are interested in replacing their current machines but holding out until they could buy one with Vista preinstalled so they can get the new features with a minimum of hassle.
A Vista delay gives Apple a good marketing angle: "See all that nifty stuff they've been promising will be in Vista? Well you could buy a Mac and get it all now!" Further delays by Microsoft will play right into that.
~Philly - Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11What's the rush? XP works flawlessly in every area.
Or maybe i'm just lucky.... - EXreaction, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Wait for the RC before you judge the speed of it(as in the final product). Remember that the Betas and earlier have a lot of debugging code left in them.
I can't wait for the Vista RC1. It is going to be sweet. :D - omelette, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9All these "web 2.0", eternally-beta products are conditioning us to expect betas to be usable to the point of replacing actual releases. They're not. Expect periods of unbearable sluggishness and unexplained crashes. And if you're not willing or able to submit useful reports there's no decent reason to consider a beta.
- eliasg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yeah, I went to a Microsoft luncheon where they previewed it, and even the MS guys themselves were annoyed by UAC's constant nagging.
- Narpas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7From the Linux angle, the delays are good because it's giving the spearhead distros more time to spread. There's a pretty good chance Linux will slow down its market penetration once Vista is released, but for the time being, it's growing as quick as it can, and another year is another big chunck of users.
- t928, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm one of those morons, and I'm looking to buy a laptop within the next year.
Macbook Pros definitely look appealing, and I don't want to buy a laptop running XP that will be obsolete in 6 months, and shell out another $150 for an OS. So, I could get the MBP now, or wait for Vista to come out and compare my options. - Olain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I have the July release and its stable as hell (5472.5). Most people got the public beta and think oh crap its never going to be ready (5308). I'm not even running the latest beta and i think its praticly ready to go. I have heard that some people have a 55xx build.
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Another thing... The biggest complaint is the User Account Control (UAC). Even as an administrator, I have to keep allowing permission to run specific things. It's very annoying! I know it can be disabled, but by default... people will hate it.
- bar10dr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Vista will ship with the latest version of Windows Media Player, which could further sideline the relevance of RealNetwork's competing product, RealPlayer."
hahahaha, this made me laugh.
Mention RealPlayer to anyone who has been on the Internet for more than six months and that person will throw up in disgust. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Microsoft lost all their good quality programmers years ago. The people left there are poorly led and incapable of constructing a proper operating system.
"Leadership" at Microsoft is muddled, inconsistent and ineffectual. The ultimate form of "management" there is chair-throwing!
The original concepts of Vista have now ALL been abandoned (Win FS, proper security model etc), and all you're going to get is Windows XP+ with more bloat to make it prettier and more "nag" windows to give the impression of "security".
Game Over, Microsoft - mephitix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6First off, have to say that this is a great article. It really goes into detail stepping through Vista and discussing how it'll impact various companies. Good stuff. I also have the July build (5472) and I haven't run into ANY problems yet. Dx10 is going to rock and security is definitely a lot better. The article is right about Vista taking its stance on security via bundling. It seems like MS has stepped into every possible facet of its OS including Windows Defender, personal management through "Windows Mail", the calendar, IE7, WMP, all kinds of things. It'll be interesting how this integration plays out, not just on the end-user but also in the legal realm...
- Khuffie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I had the Beta 2 build released to the public and ya, it was sluggish to the point where I considered switching back to XP. Been running Build 5472 for a couple of weeks now and I have to say, it's way smoother on my machine.
- Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I have tried OSX, Ubuntu, SUSE and all flavors of Windows from the last 10 years.
Did not like SUSE. Ubuntu and OSX don't offer apps I need for work(and play). XP is the do-all OS. With a little common sense you can effortlessly avoid malware and enjoy a truly stable and reliable system. - TheZorch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4shethinkmefunny wrote:
"Also, MS tries very hard to maintain backward compatibility, which is no small feat considering that their API's change every couple of years - you can't tell me that doesn't introduce a whole lot of problems that, say, Apple doesn't have to deal with nearly as much - i think backward compatibility, while necessary for MS's continued dominance in the mid 90's, is really holding them back now.
just a thought ;-)"
No, from what I have learned about DX10 it will be backward compatible only as far as DX8 and it will do OpenGL NOT with native drivers but with an OpenGL wrapper (aka EMULATION). This posses a major problem in the Home PC market. There are a lot of games people still like playing that are pre-DX8. These are Starcraft, Diablo, Sim City, Civilization, Command & Conquer, and many more. If what I have learned "is" indeed true (I have yet to find anything documented to disprove what I've heard) then Microsoft has a potential disaster on their hands.
I will say it again, the Home PC market is mostly driven by the PC Gaming market. Anyone who says otherwise is living in a fantasy land. Why do you think AMD bought ATI? - blargsoup, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6XP is the most fully versatile realease. I am really pleased with it, and service package two blows me the hell away!
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I used Vista b5502 and it is getting better and faster (Athlon 64 3200+ 754 CPU with 512 MB of RAM and some crappy ATI Radeon 9600 AIW card), but it still has lots of problems. I even had blue screens related to USB! That's not good.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9As horrible as it sounds, I think that Vista does in fact need to be delayed again. Their current beta just has too many unaddressed issues and there is no way it will be covered by the end of 2006.
Holiday season of 2007? - MrKite, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Why would that even be a decision? You're running a beta and thinking about switching back? Saying that your system was sluggish during a beta "test" is not surprising. Relying on an OS in beta is not realistic. If you're concerned about you operating system's performance to get your work in play done, you shouldn't be beta testing the OS in the first place.
- polyfrolic, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Well it is interesting how a light hearted joke can bring out insults and digg downs from Windows users. I really have nothing more to say.
- TheZorch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3shethinkmefunny I'm sorry to tell you this but PC Gamers aren't a minority. If they were ther wouldn't be niche companies like Alienware and WidowPC who specialize in gaming PCs, and there wouldn't be things like ATI Raideon and Nvidia Geforce cards. Its likely that if there was no PC Gaming industry at all we'd still be using early Pentium 133/166 systems. The whole reason why Direct X, MMX, SSE, and other technologies were developed was because of PC Gaming and Multimedia. I've been in IT for 10 years and I've watched the trends and its very clear to me what drives the Home PC market without a single doubt.
Now, you said that Vista gets rid of 16-bit app support. This is very very bad. Many XP applications and games that might have worked under Vista can't be installed because their installers are 16-bit apps. An average of 75% to 80% of existing application installation programs are 16-bit instead of 32-bit. This will limit the number of compatible games and software that can be migrated from XP to Vista to a small number. - macslut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Mention RealPlayer to anyone who has been on the Internet for more than six months and that person will throw up in disgust. "
How is that even possible? I think you meant to say:
"Mention RealPlayer to anyone who was on the Internet six years ago and that person will throw up in disgust." - VaKo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Chicago anyone? That was fun...
- timberfish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think Microsoft's new "get it right" strategy will pay off. That is IF they actually do get it right after all this time. Let's face it, past releases of Windows and Office have not exactly been the epitome of quality. I'm glad they're spending so much time on Vista. They just need to stop setting dates "at all" and let it release when it's ready.
- Olain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@mictester you sir must have a ***** computer. I'm running a previous build and i'm using all kinds of usb devices with no problem at all. And why do you say there not trying ot fix the issues YOUR having. Are you working at microsoft and watching what they program? If not shut your can about what they are and what there not working on.
- Escamillo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1mictester, you have no credibility. All of your "Game Over, Microsoft" posts have so much disinformation that it's quite transparent that you're just making things up. You've not run build 55xx of Vista, so stop claiming such.
- Jacob, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4No people were complaining about it takeing so long last year now people just say ***** it they won't release it officially for another year anyway so who gives a rats ass. Then if they are smart they install linux.
- InsaneHomer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22 years ago we (my company) upgraded to XP across the board for 50+ machines, we could've gone the software assurance route and paid over the odds for it, with the option to then upgrade to Vista for free under that 2 year deal. With all the delays with Vista that would have been a complete and total waste of money, I don't know if MS have added 6 months to any of these contracts to accommodate these delays? They should, since we looked at the MS road map and thought, yeah Vista will be out so it might be a good idea, in the end we bought HP kit with OEM licenses and saved a fortune. I think we dodge a bullet there and we have no plans to be upgrading to Vista for at least 18 months.
As for the article, the Forbes site is a bit annoying to read an article that is less that 1/3 the width of the real estate on the entire page and then still have ads plugged in between paragraphs. It hurts my eyes. - TheZorch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Vista has a lot going against it. The current Beta releases have major flaws and bugs. Special "features" in Vista would make it harder for third party security, antivirus, and antispyware companies to develop for the OS. I can smell more EU antitrust action over this one from a mile away.
Vista will be lacking many of the features that were promised such as WinFS, and lets not forget the fact that like XP it must again be activated and thus will have all of the same quirks and screw ups that XP has right now ... and then some.
Worst of all is Direct X 10. Its a totally different Direct X API than previous versions. Its not 100% backward compatible with all versions of Direct X and it does OpenGL in "emulation". In order to keep an iron fist grip on the home PC market, Microsoft "cannot" screw this up. If any game, and I mean any game, made in the past 10 years fails to run on Windows XP there will be a huge user backlash. A lot of 3D graphics applications use OpenGL instead of DirectX and their performance could suffer as a result of Direct X 10. There'a an old addage, "the bigger they are the harder they fall". Never imagine once in your wildest imaginations that Microsoft is invulnerable. They are very fragile right now, especially after spreading themselves so thin into so many different markets ... of which they have no business being in (ie; Windows LIVE). Vista is the OS that will either ensure Microsoft's continued future or spell its doom. Likely that won't die off, but they won't be quite so relevent anymore when the dust clears. - Lynn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@mictester
I do not believe you have been running the latest build. Build 5505 is rock solid. - Kyderdog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I heard that Vista is going to be renamed once again....
XP-ME.. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I bought a Macbook Pro in April and am seriously considering a Mac Pro for my next desktop.
I've been building my gaming PCs for seven years, really enjoy doing so, but will jump ship if Trangaming's Cider turns out to work as well as they hope. OS X is reliable, elegant, a joy to use and has almost no frustration factor compared to Windows. - Narpas, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Hey, when you finish that movie, can I see it? I wanna see how Blarg sucks, too!
- estvir, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10If Microsoft puts it out now, you'll all complain about parts being unfinished and so on.
If Microsoft puts it out when it's finished (The current plan), you'll all complain about it taking so long.
They can't win [with you guys], oh well. :)
Also, is it just me or are the 'reasons' for a [possible] delay really weak and vague ?
1. First, given the kinks that still need ironing out, the current schedule looks too tight.
Based on what, bug reports, reviews from tech sites.. what ?!
2. After pushing the launch of Windows Vista to late 2006 for corporate customers and early 2007 for consumers, Microsoft insisted that quality, not timing, would dictate the product's release schedule. The company's loyalty to that guiding principle is soon going to be put to the test.
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Assessments and opinions of Vista Beta 2 suggest that a third beta is required before release candidate 1 comes out, which is the last major step before commercial launch. That implies another Vista delay. As unappealing as that no doubt sounds to the company, "getting it right" is the route most testers would prefer Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) take; the alternative is to launch on schedule and follow up weeks later with waves of patches.
We're way beyond how Microsoft botched this matter of release dates from the start. What's important now is how it chooses to exit this process. There are a few reasons why we believe that the chances of another Vista delay are rising.
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First, given the kinks that still need ironing out, the current schedule looks too tight. Second, when it comes to credibility, the company has more riding on quality than timing.
Okay.. * long pause * ..wait, was that it? That's your reason? .. Slow news day?
3. Third, the currently scheduled consumer launch already misses the 2006 holiday season, so Microsoft wouldn't be forsaking a big buying period with another delay.
Finally! A valid point. /claps
4. Finally, an avalanche of patches and fixes soon after the release would reverberate farther and wider throughout the market than a postponement of the initial release, delaying and even canceling planned upgrades.
So, a [hypothetical] problem AFTER it's launched could possibly delay the LAUNCH? Umm, am I the only one who thinks this is stupid, though there is a valid part, that being if there were a lot of patches as soon as it was launched it MAY turn off some people buying it, though, how many home users would be aware/care about these? I bet less than I could count on 2 hands.
5. Another delay would cause some fallout for Microsoft in the stock market.
I'm not aware about what would happen with MSFT in the stock market so I'll just smile and nod in agreement. :)
So, aside from those silly parts it was a good article from Forbes.. though the last part about them deciding that security was confined to small apps like Windows Defender was a bit depressing, I hope they can hire someone who knows whe he/she is talking about to cover parts like that in their stories. :)
- Long post, sorry. :x - shethinkmefunny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2DirectX is a small component of Windows - from what i hear, Vista is finally doing away with win16 support, but XP still has support for 16 bit apps, and up through 2000, it still supported 16-bit OS/2 apps (i actually have a crummy little rubic's cube program written for OS/2 1.2 PM on my Win2k box that runs great).
I am glad to hear that DX10 is different though - i've heard tell DX is a pain in the rectum to write for.
"I will say it again, the Home PC market is mostly driven by the PC Gaming market. Anyone who says otherwise is living in a fantasy land. Why do you think AMD bought ATI?"
gamers are like the Christian Right - they're a very vocal minority (but gamers aren't as stupid ;-)
heh at least someone read my post :-) - Escamillo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How come whenever anyone says, "All of Vista's features have been stripped", the only example they can list is WinFS? What other features have been removed? I heard native P2P support was stripped, but who cares? Anything else?
- yathosho, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i couldn't say of myself, that i embrace vista, but i think this was a good read
- shethinkmefunny, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1my dear M(r/s) TheZorch
niche companies like Alienware and WidowPC are just that - niche companies.
by your logic, racing enthusiasts dominate the automotive industry, which is why there are niche vendors like Maserati, Ferrari and Lotus.
Games have helped fuel the PC industry to an extent, but they are not the definitive factor in hardware improvement - capitalism and marketing are - if all we still had were Pentium 133/166 machines, the bottom would have fallen out of the PC industry over a decade ago. You must give consumers a reason to buy new products - for PC's that means faster, more efficient hardware, more memory and storage, and forced obsolescence. PC Gaming is a by-product of the industry. look at how far PC's evolved from the mid 70's to the early 90's, when gaming was mostly left to game consoles - comparatively speaking, the leaps in technology they made then were just as, if not more profound than the progress in the last 15 - 20 years - compare the Altair with win3.1 or Mac System 7, and then compare that with XP / OS X.
DirectX was indeed developed for games, but technologies like MMX weren't just for games - they helped with graphic and video manipulation, and other multimedia tasks - games just represent the most demanding aspect of multimedia. If gamers were the majority, major OEM's would offer mostly high-performance, gaming oriented systems, with budget PC's as a secondary venture, instead of the other way around.
I'm not saying MS has definitely removed 16-bit support, but that's what i have heard - i would imagine they are fully aware of the consequences of this. While i am no software engineer, i would imagine in such a case, they would offer a version of Install Shield or Windows Installer that supplants it's own installer in for the 16-bit program, and translates the installation script so that the program can be installed - merely an educated guess, but that's what *I* would do. Of course, there's the distinct possibility that Vista still supports 16-bit apps. - ejdmoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The games you mentioned don't render on the graphics card in any meaningful way. They don't use DirectX, to my knowlege. They just use GDI, which isn't going anywhere any time soon.
- Narpas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2If it takes a long time, but it's really a good system, we'll stop complaining when it comes out.
If it's got some real issues that should have been addressed, we'll stop complaining when another edition of Windows is released.
They've got to pick. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4The builds released shortly after beta 2 are MUCH better, though. Just because Beta 2 was, indeed, quite horrible doesn't mean a lot if a build released one week after was quite good. Does it? They could've waited one week, released one of the great newer builds as Beta 2 and they would've had much better publicity.
- sq377, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6yea it was great except that opengl was borked, maybe it was just my system, but i couldn't get any opengl to work. I do alot of 3d work, and if i can't have opengl in vista, I'll completely switch to linux.
- shethinkmefunny, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2i for one could care less if M$ postpones Vista through 2008 or beyond - as long as they make it work well. By Windows standards, XP is pretty good - it's *relatively* stable, and fairly easy to use. I would prefer if M$ didn't rush Vista, and took the time to write a *good* operating system. Perhaps if people stopped getting all puffed up every time they announced a delay, they'd take more time to write a better program...
I'd be curious to see what M$ could churn out if consumers resoundingly sent the message "take your time" to them - maybe that rewrite of windows that has yet to happen would actually come to fruition?
I'm not a big Microsoft fan - in fact, i think they're a lot like Ford - they make products that are "good enough" for the average consumer, but upon any in-depth inspection, you notice all the weird little idiosyncrasies in the product (go take a Taurus for a spin, and you'll know what i mean).
consider this - is it possible that consumers' impatience and stupidity exacerbate MS's mediocrity? MS owns somewhere around 95% of the market, and thus has to cater to the lowest common denominator - Apple and the Linux community are really in a different league on a number of levels, but specifically in that they have the advantage of generally more intelligent users that know what they want from a machine.
Also, MS tries very hard to maintain backward compatibility, which is no small feat considering that their API's change every couple of years - you can't tell me that doesn't introduce a whole lot of problems that, say, Apple doesn't have to deal with nearly as much - i think backward compatibility, while necessary for MS's continued dominance in the mid 90's, is really holding them back now.
just a thought ;-) - Donza, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Sure Vista needs to be finished before releasing and I'm completely OK with that but the question is what is MS doing wrong. XP was released 5 years ago. That's FIVE years! It's like decade in technology world. They have had plenty of time to develop next version and test their technologies which are going to be implemented to next version. Development of Longhorn/Vista has left sad and amateurish taste to my mouth.
- jeriqo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1You haven't tried anything else, right?
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