Posted on 12/01/2006 7:49:10 PM PST by Zakeet
As he took the stage to usher Windows Vista to market, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week tried to put the software's laborious birth behind him. The company's 71,000 employees -- and the entire PC industry, for that matter -- could be excused for breathing a sigh of relief, too.
"It's an exciting thing to finally be here, and that's probably all I'll say about the past," Ballmer said at the unveiling from Nasdaq's cylindrical high-tech building in New York's Times Square. Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also were introduced, and 30 more products will follow over the next year, all part of the same technology wave. "This is the biggest launch we've ever done," Ballmer said. Microsoft will spend $450 million marketing it all.
Yet for all the design missteps, overly ambitious plans, and personnel changes that led to a five-year lag between versions of Windows, questions about the future of Microsoft's software are top of mind for customers and partners. Ballmer swears to never let as much time elapse between Windows versions; the question now is how the company can keep churning out innovative products on a compressed timetable.
"Vista is the last of the Big Bang operating system releases from Microsoft," Credit Suisse research analyst Jason Maynard wrote in a report last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
Somebody 'splain to me what's "innovative" here.
Build a better mouse trap. People will buy it.
There will have to be at least one more "big bang" OS release from Microsoft: The one where they have to take out all the DRM restrictions, due to customer resistance to them.
People will buy it because Microsoft will force retailers to sell it on PC's or else.
Microsoft will put the screws to their corporate customers and eventually make it impossible for them to not upgrade.
The usual.
Why start now?
Are you kidding?
Try reading up on the new features and capabilities of Windows Vista and get back to us.
If it's everything it promises to be, this will be a great new operating system.
My next computer will either be a Mac or a computer running some variant of UNIX. … no more windows. To many options avalible.
How about painting it a shiny new color and charging three times a much? :P
Why start now?
I guess being out front and on top for a decade plus becomes a habit?
Go figure!
also ppl will request it.
can you imagine the clusterf**k of trying to buy software for a busness or home with multiple os's?
face it micro~1 beat OS2, Beos, Linux, Mac, and Unix as the OS of choice for the masses. do they steal others innovations,(yup)
everyone loves to hate Microsoft...but honestly they are a success of the highest order.
What is your point? Which OS are you promoting?
What is so innovative in Vista?
I've heard that it phones home frequently, and it maintains a vigil over the validity of the Windows install.
I haven't read of anything newly spectacular in Vista.
At least XP claimed increased stability over Win98.
My prediction?: This is going to be the last "mass release" of software.
Everything down-the-road will be download/subsciption oriented and updated by degrees.
My next computer will be a MAC! I hope Microsoft eventually goes down in flames!
But what's the real minimum hardware to run it? I'm thinking anything less than a 2.4 Mhz dual core or dual processor system with a minumum of 2 GB RAM won't be worth upgrading. It might be great for most apps, but old Win 2K boxes will still be good for surfing the web.
Geez! I wonder how it became the #1 operating system?
I've been running XP for two years now (out of necessity, not choice!) and I religiously download all required updates and do all required maintenance, and I'm still starting to have serious problems with it, including sudden reboots and inordinately long boot times, among other things.
You must have a real POS computer.
I have 2 computers.
An older Compaq with one of the first versions of XP and a newer Emachine with a newer version.
The patches have the Compaq running great and then newer version requires almost no patches and is virtually trouble free.
I absolutely love Windows..and I am willing to bet Vista will blow all previous versions out of the water.
Have you defragmented the registry? Do you run CHKDKS /F at bootup at least once a month?
Yep, and (to Jorge) my computer is top of the line with all the best hardware and drivers. Just a crappy OS.
Jorge, that's not aiming real high.
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