No, but most companies manage it in months rather than years.
Aren't they YEARS behind schedule on that?
Again no, the stategy is to release a new OS every five years. That's in response to customer complaints that the release cycle was too fast. A 2006 release for Vista is in line with that since XP released in 2001. Either way, you'd complain.
Really? I seem to remember a major push by Microsoft in 1991 to get folks to sign up for a program called "software assurance", designed as a way to amortize the costs of future software and OS upgrades, which was based largely on the premise of a 3 year replacement cycle.
The prime feature of this program is the elimination of software upgrades, in favor of something Microsoft calls "Software Assurance." Under Software Assurance, you can pay about twice as much as the normal cost of a license, to buy the right to install any upgrades for the next two to three calendar years.
From a July 23,2002 article linked here.
So, I guess when they are 3 years behind schedule, they just claim that it was a 5 year schedul all along?
Since I don't own any Microsoft products, you can consider my "complaining" to be a public service for all the poor bastards who've been suckered into them because they don't know any better.
Again no, the stategy is to release a new OS every five years.
Factually, provably incorrect. Longhorn was scheduled for a 2005 release at the latest, but XP SP2 took too many resources, and the scope of Longhorn proved to be too much so they had to rip out some features (including WinFS and MSH) just to make a 2005 beta and late 2006 release. Microsoft was saying in 2004 that the release of Longhorn would be delayed to 1H 2006, and they're going to miss that.
I'm actually happy about this. One major problem with proprietary software is the desire to rush it out the door too soon in order to meet financial expectations. Microsoft actually sucked it up and said they wouldn't release it until it's ready. Admirable, really.