“Research group Gartner predicts that Vista will be delayed by at least another three months, mostly because of the operating system’s complexity. Microsoft refutes Gartner’s claim.”

Hmmm…that puts Vista delivery between January 2007 and April 2007. Microsoft says January 2007. Ok, Olan, what is the big deal? Well Windows Vista was supposed to be released in 2002!

Which leads to the following questions:

1. What’s wrong and why is it taking so long?
2. Will I want to be one of the first to have Vista when it is released?

To answer the first question about Windows Vista may be a little slippery but let’s answer it by taking a look at Windows Vista’s history:

June 2001: Microsoft begins talking publicly about an operating system it calls Longhorn. Microsoft says it expects Longhorn to ship in late 2002 or early 2003, as an interim step to a more comprehensive operating system overhaul called Blackcomb (which is now called Vienna, and will be the next release of Windows after Vista).

April 2002: Microsoft executive Jim Allchin says at the WinHEC conference that Longhorn won’t ship until the second half of 2004.

June 2003: Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft’s server platform division, says at TechEd 2003 that Longhorn will ship sometime in 2005. Analysts don’t buy it and say 2006 is a safer bet.

October 2003: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says that Longhorn does not have a firm release date and adds, “Longhorn could be 2005 or 2006.”

March 2004: Gates says Microsoft will ship an alpha of Longhorn to developers and partners later in 2004. He almost says Longhorn will ship in 2006, but backs off, saying, “Longhorn is not a date-driven release.” Analysts aren’t convinced. “I’m dubious about 2006,” says Joe Wilcox, an analyst with JupiterResearch.

August 2004: Microsoft announces that it is pulling the WinFS file system from Longhorn so it can hit a newly declared release date of the “second half of 2006.”

July 2005: Microsoft announces that Windows Vista will be the new operating system’s real name. It promises to ship the first beta by August 3, and beats the date by a week. It still says the target ship date is the “second half of 2006.”

March 2006: Allchin announces that Vista won’t be available to consumers until January 2007.

Ok…the above shows that evidently the product development is so complicated that a stable product has not been able to be released.

Question #2: I don’t think you will want to be one of the first to get this product. If history serves us well, the first version of Windows Vista will cause some major pain.

I have been around the IT landscape for quite some time and I have seen several versions of DOS, the first minor version of Windows 3, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Millenium, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server.

I can tell you from first hand experience that implementing the first version can shutdown the shop! When I upgraded to XP, so many applications stopped working because of driver problems, I was barely able to function. I couldn’t even perform a backup of my system!

If you are going to just use the first version of Windows Vista in a testing environment then you should be fine. But I would suggest holding off on a wholesale upgrade of your computer that you do business with.

Next time we will look at the plethora of versions of Windows Vista.

Olan
BHO Technologists

P.S. If you need to plan, organize and get the most out of your day and you looking for some day planner software. Try Data Calendar which is my appointment calendar software