Microsoft Seems Eager to Divorce Vista
By Ed Oswald | Monday, May 4, 2009 at 8:17 am
Wasting no time, Microsoft appears set to stop sales of Vista as soon as Windows 7 ships. Official support from the company would be provided through April 2012, however.
This would be a change from the last OS revision, where XP was sold long after Vista’s 2006 debut.
In a somewhat cryptic statement, Microsoft General Manager Richard Francis wrote in an internal e-mail that he was “not sure” if computer makers would be able to ship Vista after Win 7’s launch, PC World reports. That doesn’t make much sense, since Microsoft is in control of the OS reaching its manufacturers.
I might be reading too much into it, but it sounds to me like Microsoft is trying to carefully word a quick exit from Vista, without actually saying its dumping the OS. Everybody knows that in terms of success, Vista was just about as popular as Windows ME (we all know how well that one went over).
Add to this the fact that XP will continue to live on in netbooks until at least 2010, and it seems to further my supposition.
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StevieB’s Shared Items - May 5, 2009 at Lost in Cyberspace Says:
May 5th, 2009 at 3:02 am[…] Microsoft Seems Eager to Divorce VistaMay 4, 2009 […]
May 4th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
later reports seem to have Microsoft moving away from this. They are now saying Jan. 2011 in a report at Computerword.com
May 4th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Win7 still won’t be UNIX; the best users can hope for is that it will claw its way back to the low bar set by XP, with regard to performance.
May 4th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
yeap, its that bad that windows vista sucked,, they want to move on as quickly as possible.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:18 am
When people we talk about how bad Vista is, or how good OS X is, I had a thought that may or may not be interesting.
Apple’s great success is control over the hardware and software. I have had a number of Windows systems (from 3.11 all the way to Vista) was a MCSE (4.0) in a previous life (I also have two Apples I love). When I got Windows on a new machine, there were not that many problems. It was when I tried to upgrade an existing machine (where I might have installed a new video card, etc) that you run into problems.
Since Apple is both a software and hardware company, there is little room for issues in upgrades. Anyone can throw together a plain Windows box, with millions of possible hardware combinations. Apple was also smart with OS X in breaking away from a lot of legacy program; my GS did not even come with the “legacy mode”.
Windows (as many have stated) tries, but seems unwilling, or unable, to make a full break with some of those older programs (hence the XP module in Windows 7).
I think Vista had a lot of problems, but I don’t find Vista nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. Having said that, there is a lot I would change (why are there 10 (ten!) version of Vista?) of how Microsoft workss (both as a software and as a company).