Okay then. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently told a group of Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) that Vista is “a work in progress” and then asked, “Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles.”
Here’s an excerpt from Ballmer’s speech, according to Ted Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
Windows Vista: A work in progress. [Laughter, applause.] A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting. We can’t ever let that happen again. We had some things that we can’t just set the dial back, but I think people wish we could. Vista is bigger than XP. It’s going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn’t get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we’re driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve.
And yet, we did take some important big steps forward with Vista. So, I know I can get a lot of feedback from this crowd. The No. 1 point of feedback always for MVPs is on Windows. I know I can get a lot of feedback. I bet if I look I can get a little bit of good feedback. I’m sure I can get a lot of constructive feedback. And believe me, top of mind for me, for Ray [Ozzie], for the senior team here, is making sure that we continue to drive forward and take the good work that we did in Vista, take the chance for improvement and progress and drive forward.
In the meantime, we have some customers — a lot of customers — using Vista. A lot of customers. And we have a lot of customers that are choosing to stay with Windows XP. And as long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive and we will listen and we will hear that. I got a piece of mail from a customer the other day that talked about not being able to get XP anymore. We responded, XP is still available. And I know we’re going to continue to get feedback from people on how long XP should be available. We’ve got some opinions on that, we’ve expressed our views. .. I’m always interested in hearing from you on these and other issues. So the desktop business, it’s our heart, it’s our soul, we continue to drive forward from this foundation.
So you’ll notice that he didn’t say that Microsoft will be extending the availability of XP past the June 30th cutoff date, but he did acknowledge that he knows that people still want to be able to get XP. It also appears that this whole Windows 7 thing might be a reality as far as its launch date is concerned, given Ballmer’s “We can’t ever let that happen again” line referring to Vista’s five-year release cycle.
At any rate, I guess it’s nice to see some honest, candid comments from Ballmer about Vista — however horrifying they may be to paying consumers. Perhaps Microsoft’s just going to accelerate the development of Windows 7 instead of spending a lot of time on Vista. It may turn out to get swept under the rug like Windows ME (ME lasted less than two years). The big question for Microsoft will be whether or not to extend the life of XP out to the release of Windows 7 or to pull it from the shelves at the end of June after making sure that the current “work in progress” gets finished finally.
Who cares! I went out and bought an Apple computer with Mac OS X. My problems are over.
Mac has its own issues… Fact is if people spent on a Vista machine what they spend on an apple there would be no issues… You cant run vista smoothly on a 500$ machine… but you cnat buy a Mac for 500$ either… so where is the issue.. You get what you pay for..
If you spent as much on a Vista box as you would on a Mac, you’d still get a hobbled, slow, buggy machine. Recent benchmarks have pretty much showed that you’d have to spend a significant amount *more* on a Vista box than on a Mac to get equivalent performance (you would need: Faster CPU, at least double the RAM, and a faster hard drive…)
Vista is a dud. “Work in Progress” is spin; in the real world, it’s called a Beta…
Its a peice of work alright.
Ballmer:
Its time to resign. Seriously buddy, you gave it your best shot…but its just not working out. Its not you, its us. We just can’t take you seriously anymore.
Yours,
Windows Users.
BEST. COMMENT. EVAH!
When Ballmer says “kiss the stone”, it reminds me of the Blarney Stone… and we all know what blarney is. Vista is a dog. Microsoft needs to extend XP until Windows 7 is released, and pretty much forget about Vista. They blew it big-time.
And they need to figure out whose computers these are, where their money comes from. Sucking up to Hollywood isn’t going to endear them to users, and now there are many alternatives that simply weren’t available before.
The Funny thing is they mention ME… But i had ME.. and honestly never had an issue with it… Hmm maybe ill install that…
“Who cares! I went out and bought an Apple computer with Mac OS X. My problems are over.”
Ya, you must not want to game at a high level. Ya Rainbow Six was cool, 8 years ago! Spend $500 on a rig and download Ubuntu HH, its much better than any Mac!
Vista Sucks, plane and simple. Microsoft failed by tring to “out Mac Apple”. This was why I liked Microsoft, IT WAS NOT CRAPPLE, I mean Apple! XP is much better than Vista, windows 7 should be the next gen of XP, not some version of Mac OS x from Microsoft.
For games, PS3 is far better…. I need my computer to actually DO stuff…
as for Ubuntu, as much as I’m a Linux fan on the Server, sorry, but it doesn’t come close to Mac OS X as a desktop OS (I’m REALLY sorry to have to say that… I’m a BIG Linux fan). It’s getting better all the time, and with time it may equal OSX, but it’s not there yet. On the other hand, Ubuntu does beat Vista hands down, and IMHO even beats XP in most respects (especially for the developer that I am…).
I had a laptop that had Vista Home Basic installed on it – a dog. I gave it away. The new owner fooled around with it for a time, then had the disk wiped clean & XP installed. Received as a gift another laptop that has Vista Home Premium on it – a little better, but not much. Next computer I get is going to be what I should have gotten in the first place: an Apple.
2 words: yall nerds!