I was just reading an article on Slashdot entitled “Microsoft Should Abandon Vista?”
“An editorial written by Don Reisinger over at CNet’s News.com takes Microsoft to task for the outright failure of Vista. He suggests that Vista may be the downfall of the company as, despite years in development, Vista was delivered to market too early. His suggestion? Support those who are running it, but otherwise ditch Vista and move on. ‘Never before have I seen such an abysmal start to an operating system release. For almost a year, people have been adopting Vista and becoming incensed by how poorly it operates. Not only does it cost too much, it requires more to run than XP, there is still poor driver support … With Mac OS X hot on its tail, Vista is simply not capable of competing at an OS level with some of the best software around. If Microsoft continues down this path, it will be Vista that will bring the software giant to its knees–not Bill Gates’ departure.’”
So I’m thinking to myself… wtf? I recall the exact same things being said when Windows XP was released, and people REALLY didn’t want to move from Windows 98 to XP because of the extra features, that made your system ran like complete crap on the current 500Mhz – 800Mhz systems that were in production when it was first release, not to mention 128-512MB memory was a baseline.
Then by the time SP1 was released systems were over the 1GHz + mark (maybe closer to 2Ghz not quite sure on my memory time line here). Then XP SP2 was release, by that time we were hitting 3Ghz speeds and a GB plus of memory.. not to mention the fact that most processors now have dual cores. How do you like Windows XP now? The fact is, I believe Microsoft makes software for tomorrow… now your asking yourself? wtf does this douche bag mean? I mean that the race is on the hardware vendors now to have 16 and 32 cores on a physical die by the end of 2009. (Google it!)
My question to you is what will Vista run like by the time 4 and 8 GB’s of memory is baseline? And you have 16 processors? I bet the same, if not better than Windows XP SP2. Not to mention the possibilities with the current framework of the Vista Operating system.
Most IT people know as a rule of thumb to not bother using anew software until SP1 is released. It’s like buying a new car on its first year of production, would you want to be the first genie pig to find all the bugs? or would you rather wait until the 2nd or 3rd generation/release of the automobile when the manufacturer realizes all of it’s previous mistakes? Don’t like Vista? stick with XP until Vista SP2 is released.
October 17th
October 10, 2007 (Computerworld) — ORLANDO — For a few minutes during Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer‘s appearance at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference here, emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother’s frustration with the Vista operating system. “I’m one of those early adopters of Vista,” said Yvonne Genovese, an analyst who was interviewing Ballmer along with fellow analyst David Smith on stage at a conference forum. “My daughter comes in one day and says, ‘Hey Mom, my friend has Vista, and it has these neat little things called gadgets — I need those.’” Said Ballmer: “I love your daughter.” “You’re not going to like her mom in about two minutes,” said Genovese, while the crowd laughed. She went on to explain that she installed Vista for her daughter — and two days later went right back to using the XP operating system. “It’s safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great,” she said of XP. Genovese also argued that her experience with Vista is broadly shared: “What we’re seeing and what we’re hearing from users is a very similar thing. It’s difficult to implement. What should we be seeing that we’re not seeing?” “Let’s start with the end user. Your daughter saw a lot of value,” said Ballmer. “She’s 13,” Genovese shot back. Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system. “Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista,” he said. But, as with earlier operating system releases, “there is always a tension between the value that end users see — and frankly, that software developers see — and the value that we can deliver to IT.” One of the top requirements from IT customers was for “the most secure release of Windows you can humanly make,” said Ballmer. “We have had better security, we have had fewer vulnerabilities, fewer issues with Windows Vista in its first six months than any OS that preceded it. “I think there is a lot of value in Vista,” he said. Ballmer went on to argue that the real issue for some customers is ensuring that everything they need to support the operating system — such as device drivers — is ready before they make the transition to Vista. “When we initially shipped, fewer device drivers were ready for Vista than I would have liked, but we constantly worked with the device vendors to get new drivers available and implemented through our Windows update service,” he said. And because of the changes made to the operating system to improve security, there were some applications that vendors needed to update as well, according to Ballmer. He then listed a number of corporations that have installed Vista, including Citibank and Continental Airlines Inc. “We are in, from … a corporate and enterprise side, an early adoption cycle,” said Ballmer. Service Pack 1 is in beta “and addresses a lot of the customer feedback,” said Ballmer. Moreover, because of the “instrumentation” built into Vista, Microsoft knows what problems people are facing, what drivers are missing and what application compatibility problems they are having, he said. Ballmer also said that Vista is bigger than XP, and “for some people that’s an issue, and it’s not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well.” “Good, I’ll let you come in and install it for me,” said Genovese. How did the back-and-forth between Ballmer and Genovese play for the audience? One person at the conference, Alvin Naterpaul, a process management engineer at Baptist Health Care in Miami, said he liked the fact Genovese was “challenging him, so we are getting both sides of it.”
