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Upgrades Operating Systems Software Windows

Vista Could Ship Earlier Than Expected 159

Posted by Hemos from the not-bloody-likely dept.
UltimaGuy writes "With speculation of a ship date for Windows Vista ranging in the second part of 2006, word has surprisingly surfaced that it can be expected much earlier. BusinessWeek has received a copy of the internal blog of Chris Jones, who is a top Windows executive. The blog states that the code for Windows Vista will be completed by August 31, giving Microsoft the opportunity to place Vista on PCs for the 2006 Christmas season."
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Vista Could Ship Earlier Than Expected More

Vista Could Ship Earlier Than Expected

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  • Yea sure..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rimcrazy ( 146022 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:46AM (#14127838)
    Just in time for Santa, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy..............
    • Yep, and let's face it, an Operating System is not the first gift you'd think of giving, nor would there be much Vista-based software available. Can't imagine why they think getting it out in time for Christmas is in any way important!

      • Re:Yea sure..... (Score:5, Funny)

        by oztiks ( 921504 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @08:14AM (#14127992)

        Yep, and let's face it, an Operating System is not the first gift you'd think of giving, nor would there be much Vista-based software available. Can't imagine why they think getting it out in time for Christmas is in any way important!

        You know after reading your post i had a sudden flash of this evil grinch like santa wearing thick glasses, having a bowl haircut (real 70's like) and the windows emblem printed on the side of his bag of goodies. Going from house to house replacing peoples linux distribution pressies with copies of vista.

        Now imagine being that poor let down 10yr old child screaming in dismay ... MUM!!! I TOLD YOU I DIDNT WANT THIS PROPEITRY SOFTWARE TRASH!!!

        And yes i know the hole in this plot, if your giving copies of linux to people for xmas you must be a real cheapskate.

        • if your giving copies of linux to people for xmas you must be a real cheapskate.

          Could be worse. Here in the UK (and doubtless elsewhere) eBay are running a big ad campaign to get people to buy their Xmas presents from eBay.

          Am I the only one wondering how cheap you'd have to be to get your friends and family second-hand presents? Maybe I just don't fall into the eBay demographic.

      • Re:Yea sure..... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Headcase88 ( 828620 )
        "Can't imagine why they think getting it out in time for Christmas is in any way important!"

        Kids ask Mom for a computer for Christmas, Mom buys one, packaged with Vista.

      • Re:Yea sure..... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LehiNephi ( 695428 )
        an Operating System is not the first gift you'd think of giving

        Exactly. I mean, who is going to be standing in line at 2 am on Black Friday for version 1.0 of an OS that is almost certainly going to be buggy and full of holes? You might as well do the same to get your oil changed. The additional functionality just isn't there. This isn't Windows 95--it's just a pretty face slapped on top of the same functionality.

        Besides the purely-utilitarian nature of an OS, the current set of commercially-availabl

        • well, maybe (Score:3, Interesting)

          by zogger ( 617870 )
          The vendors will OEM it, and if this past Black Friday shopping frenzy is an indication, people will be lining up to get it, *because* of the hardware deals that will be wrapped around it.
          With that said, all new major releases of windows since at least 95 have had brisk sales by disk at release time, that lasts a month or so (whatever) then slows down. I would imagine this will be similar.

          It also depends on pricing, MS can afford to drop prices and still make a lot of profit. As the software costs approach

        • Exactly. I mean, who is going to be standing in line at 2 am on Black Friday for version 1.0 of an OS that is almost certainly going to be buggy and full of holes? You might as well do the same to get your oil changed. The additional functionality just isn't there. This isn't Windows 95--it's just a pretty face slapped on top of the same functionality.

          Because, through the modern convenience of marketing, it will not be portrayed as a 1.0 version.

          It will be sold as "the newest, most stable version" of their

      • Can't imagine why they think getting it out in time for Christmas is in any way important!
        I am sorry to disagree. I run windows at home (please don't flame me for that) and although I had planned to buy a new computer, it doesn't make sense in my mind to buy one until Vista comes out. Think about it- if you were buying the kids a computer for Christmas, and knew that Vista was coming out in February, you wouldn't buy the machine for Christmas, you would wait until Feb....
        This is a serious post, but I am
    • Isn't this just a well thought out (well, at least in the minds of marketing/management) ruse to deceive us as to the real release date? They move the release date forward, so that they can still meet their expectations of releasing it behind schedule, and at the end of the day still release it when it was going to be released in th first place?
    • I could ship it now:

      * XP + SP3 + new skin = Vista

      I will now demand my six-figure project manager salary, as I've clearly earned it.

  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0110011001110101 ( 881374 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:47AM (#14127840) Journal
    a top Realm employee has revealed that the first copy of DukeNukem Forever will be posted with Vista...

  • always a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dresgarcia ( 251585 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:47AM (#14127841)
    SO they take the product that has had tons of problems and MOVE UP the release date? Wow. . . I hope its perfect. No that a few months will make a difference at this point. . .

    • SO they take the product that has had tons of problems and MOVE UP the release date? Wow. . . I hope its perfect. No that a few months will make a difference at this point. . .

      Well they have to be able to find a way to top the xbox 360 release

    • In what sense is releasing a product due in the latter part of 2006 in time for Christmas 2006 (maybe having it ready in October, which is STILL the latter part of 2006) actually moving up the release date? It seems to me like they're just shipping it on time. What am I missing?
    • Oh come on!

      Since when has Microsoft ever released a product with bugs that was shipped too early?

      I mean whats next? The Xbox360 was shipped too early and suffers from random lockups? Please..

  • Brilliant... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-uk@[ ]world.com ['ntl' in gap]> on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:47AM (#14127843) Homepage
    So.. this super hyped version of the next generation of Windows has gradually had all of its most attractive features stripped out of it just for the sake of getting it out of the door quickly. So this means that its going to be yet another interim OS, and the NEXT version of Windows is going to be the one that you really want.

    We're just going to be left with a shadow of the OS we were all hoping for - and purely so that Microsoft can say that they have an OS that looks just as pretty as MacOS X. Other than that, there have been absolutely no stand out or interesting additions that I can see.
    • Remind you of a previous time Microsoft did this?

      To those historically blind, this is Microsoft's second time of taking a practically complete operating system, promising a million features, cutting 999,990 of them, and shipping those remaining features half assed and crippled. Of course the Operating System I'm talking about is Memphis; Microsoft Windows 97... 98.

      Of course, people will still buy it, it'll still ship with computers, and Microsoft will still make money off of Vista, but the fact will r
      • Hmm.. Most people consider Windows 98 to be the best 9x release. Many people did not want to upgrade to ME, and fewer wanted to stay with 95.
        • Disagree. Most clueful people consider windows 2000 to be the best windows, and windows 98 to be the second best. Most idiots think XP is the best version - that's not what makes them idiots, though. Actually I've come around to the XP camp, I like 2000 but XP has many things that make it better and the only thing it's worse about is memory consumption.
          • You misread what I said. read it again.

            By the way, you can reduce the memory consumption of XP to pretty much exactly what 2000 has by disabling unnecessary services.
            • Eh, XP still uses more memory than 2k if you turn off, well, just about everything. Sorry about misreading your former post, though. Who cares what the best version of windows 9x is? That's like looking for the best model of yugo.
          • He specifically said best 9x version of windows.

            This would preclude 2000 and xp from the conversation.

    • Re:Brilliant... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @11:29AM (#14129696) Homepage Journal

      The significant point here is that Microsoft is now beginning to position Vista as vaporware. MS has a long tradition of announcing that they will start selling product Real Soon Now to mess up the heads of IT strategists who are thinking about moving their company away from MS products. This works because it activates all the PHBs and any effort to talk rationally about moving the company to Linux (or OS/2 back in the day, or D.R. DOS back at the dawn of time) is going to be met with a lot of thought-avoidance resistance since it becomes so easy to say "I don't want you to waste any time on looking at a possible Linux migration until we see what MS has to offer".

      The vaporware stage of Microsoft product development is concerned with projecting mirages of paradise into the marketplace, in an effort to cause potential buyers to wait until MS actually has product to put out there. It is the kind of FUD that MS marketdroids are particularly good at generating. It is the kind of thing that PHBs soak up like sponges, because it gives them such great sounding excuses for avoiding actually having to think about IT problems or making management decisions that might put a ding in their careers.

    • this super hyped version of the next generation of Windows has gradually had all of its most attractive features stripped out of it just for the sake of getting it out of the door quickly.

      No, for the sake of just getting it out the door.

  • Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Silvrmane ( 773720 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:48AM (#14127845) Homepage
    August 31, 2006. Christmas Season 2006. All of these things put it in the second half of 2006. How is this "much sooner" than the second half of 2006?

  • Oh, please. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:49AM (#14127854)
    Yeah, that's some accomplishment, beating some artifical ship date by a few months... when it's years late and has been gutted of its most-touted features so it could see daylight in this decade.

    NOT!

  • doesn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheWart ( 700842 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:49AM (#14127856)
    Am I missing something obvious, or is "Christmas 2006" actually later than "Second half 2006."

    At the very least they seem to be too close together to say it is shipping "much" earlier.

    • Re:doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bluey ( 27101 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @08:23AM (#14128057)
      Unless you celebrate Christmas very late, it's actually in the second half of 2006. The summary is a complete butchering of what the article actually says, which is something along the lines of:

      Microsoft's mum about when Vista will be available, other than "second half of 2006".
      Analysts decide this most likely means it will be released on "Christmas 2006".
      A MS Executive blog saying "code complete will be August 31, 2006" is leaked to a news organization.
      Analysts decide this most likely means it will be released on "October 2006" which is earlier than they previously guessed.

      No real news here other than analysts making as many different guesses as possible to hedge their bets.
    • The article tries to point out that Aug. 31 isn't the actual ship date. It's the RTM date (release to manufacturing). In the past, new Windows versions have shown up on OEM systems about six weeks, or even sooner, after RTM. Retail versions generally show up on actual store shelves a couple of weeks after that.
  • Or else you might have to have some string on hand for -

    Oh, wait. Wrong Microsoft product. My bad.

  • They've done it before (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DenmaFat ( 704308 ) <denmafat@gmail.com> on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:54AM (#14127877)
    Back when MS was shipping a new OS version every 18 months or so, I think they delivered a product earlier than originally planned at least once. It might have been Windows 98.

    Getting Vista installed on the fall OEM systems is probably their number 1 goal (quality and features be damned). They can always start taking out the really buggy stuff during the summer.
    • Back when MS was shipping a new OS version every 18 months or so, I think they delivered a product earlier than originally planned at least once. It might have been Windows 98.

      No, they didn't. Windows 98 was supposed to be Windows 97, and it was supposed to have been spades better than Windows 95, but (not to anyone's surprise), it was a highly overhyped, half-finished piece of junk that lead Microsoft to need to release a "Second Edition" later just to fix all of the holes in the operating system.

      It
    • No matter how I look at it, 95 -> 98 doesn't come close to 18 months. And you're claiming they released early?

  • Interesting coincidence.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28, 2005 @07:58AM (#14127892)
    All of the previous comments were submitted by members who joined Slashdot, apparently, within a few minutes or days at most of each other.

    Check out the members' numbers: if this were poker, it would be a straight-flush.
    1.(#14127838)
    2.(#14127840)
    3.(#14127841)
    4. (#14127843)
    5.(#14127845)
    6.(#14127850)

    And all were posted within two minutes or so of each other. What are the odds?

    And one or all of him, apparently, has moderator points, and is modding himself up.

    Perhaps there is a way to prevent Slashdot giving multiple accounts to jerkoffs.
  • More like the 2007 "capex corporate planning season" than the The 2006 "christmas shopping season"
  • Anyone want to take bets on how many articles will be posted within the first week of it's release about how buggy, unstable, and insecure the OS is?

    We already know MS has stripped damn near every one of the planned interesting features from it (for a later release, of course).
  • It costs them way more to manufacture vista than it sells for so you better buy a couple copies right away.
  • Sure, if they keep throuwing out features, they might be able to get it out in time.

    Who wants to buy a half baked OS that will need serious updates to be able to use it they way MS promissed? And even then, you'll have to wayt ages before you can get no less then a part of the promissed mayhem...
    • Porbably all the average consumers who bought XP and thought it was the latest and greatest thing from Microsoft. You have to understand that only a small percentage of knowledgeable computer users are gonna realize Vista is a stripped out pos, everyone else and their mother will go to Best Buy and see it as the newest OS by MS and they will buy it (in hopes of fixing the XP security problems, which I doubt it will). That's who will buy it, just my .02 though.

  • New Products on Christmas are a MUST. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _eb0la_reston_ ( 930919 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @08:11AM (#14127965) Homepage
    *Every* consumer-products company MUST have something NEW ready for Christmas (aka. peak sales period).

    If M$ *cannot* deliver Vista by September 1st, hardware vendors won't be able to ship their PCs with Vista on Christmas. In this case, I bet they will postpone their shipping date to late-January / mid-February 2006.

    As soon Vista is released, PCs with XP pre-installed will be sold at discount. M$ can't "punish" their customers (OEM, not end users) on their peak sales period:

    $peak_sales = $christmas ;
        big_profit ($christmas) unless ( ( $peak_sales == $discount ) || failed_business_model ) ;
    • I really doubt that Windows is a "consumer product" in that sense - ie: selling a lot more at Christmas.

      For starters, a large chunk of Windows sales are from the business sector, and they certainly won't be rushing to get new PCs for Christmas.

      As for home users, I don't think that they'll buy so many more PCs at Christmas either. A PC is rather an expensive Christmas gift - some people may get one, but for most it's likely to be an Xbox. And for all the people who buy PCs for their own use (rather than as g

    • Re:New Products on Christmas are a MUST. (Score:5, Funny)

      by medgooroo ( 884060 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @10:50AM (#14129347)
      If M$ *cannot* deliver Vista by September 1st, hardware vendors won't be able to ship their PCs with Vista on Christmas. In this case, I bet they will postpone their shipping date to late-January / mid-February 2006.
      I was sure you were going to say "I bet they will postpone christmas to late-January / mid-February 2006.
  • Sorry but it seems Business Week is still caught up on Dos. The correct link without the extra 'l' is http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov 2005/tc20051118_179356.htm [businessweek.com]
  • So... you're saying that it will be earlier than expected (2nd half of 2006), by shipping sometime before Christmas 2006? Doesn't this mean "not late," rather than "early?"

    I suppose that for M$, the two may be about the same. It may be even a newsworthy event... maybe...
    • So... you're saying that it will be earlier than expected (2nd half of 2006), by shipping sometime before Christmas 2006? Doesn't this mean "not late," rather than "early?"

      No, see, because they make it in the second half of '06 by 5 days. When they meant second half, they meant New Year's Eve.

  • MS invented a Time Machine?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by One Blue Ninja ( 801126 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @08:12AM (#14127984) Homepage
    Vista was "expected" about, what - 4 years ago [theregister.co.uk]? "Earlier than expected", my ass!
    • No, by that time, everyone expected Longhorn.
      • No, by that time, everyone expected Longhorn.
        Call me crazy, but I sure couldn't go to any of MY clients and say, "You know that project I was supposed to have done for you 4 years ago? Well, I've finally settled on a name for it. So it's not late anymore!"

        I can only hope that, as a /. reader, you're aware that Vista *is* Longhorn :-)

        • developing an os takes years. what's your problem. First you don't like it, then you complain it's late.
        • > I can only hope that, as a /. reader, you're aware that Vista *is* Longhorn :-)

          Not exactly. Longhorn was the codename for a very different product. It was an all singing, all dancing wonder product that would very likely have caused world peace! (Everyone would have been too busy Oohing and Ahhhing to strap bombs to themselves, etc.) Vista is the name of an actual product that might ship next year, after having most of the cool new stuff which Longhorn was rumored to have had removed and replaced w
  • the working name of Service Pack 3? :-)

  • Which Version ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by axonis ( 640949 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @08:16AM (#14128003)
    Which of the 7 different versions will ship first ?
  • They are going from code complete to commercial release in under 4 months? The final test cycle will have to be able 15 weeks. Riiiight....

  • Oh me, oh my, why'd this guy have to have the same name as I?

    I'm guessing there are a heckuva lot of other "Chris Jones"es out there who'd rather not have their acquaintances surprised by the possibility that they're suddenly Windows executives....

  • Missing icon (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ruphuz ( 817865 )
    It's strange: I have refreshed the page several times, but the foot icon does not appear...
  • oh crap. as has been statet here and there, vista in latvian means hen. you know, a grown up chicken. this exact form.

    if you are native english speaker, imagine how it would be if it was called "windows hen". or, to be more funny - "windows chicken".

    oh, maybe that is a well hidden attempt to disguis - "you see, they have a penguin, we have a chicken, we are open, too !!"

    or something like :
    http://www.chiken.de/bilder/chiken.jpg [chiken.de]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I mean, that's worse than getting a pair of socks.
  • I read that as "Vista Could Slip Earlier Than Expected". But I guess it depends on your expectations...
  • Windows Vista beta 2 recently slipped to at least March 2006:
    http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?id=3633&catid= 1 [winbeta.org]

    Beta 2 was to be released in the Nov-Dec '05 timeframe but alas, this has slipped significantly to at least March '06.

    Microsoft sources confirm that indeed the target launch date slipped almost 6 months but were tight-lipped when WinBeta.Org questioned them on a new target date. All we were told [on the record] was that it would be a few months later than previously planned.

    This was, accord

  • Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrother@optonline . n et> on Monday November 28, 2005 @09:13AM (#14128395) Journal
    I can add the date to my calendar of events to be ignored. I suspect I will continue using XP until they stop supporting it. Vista does not impress me at first blush.
  • Based on a number of mid-size projects that I have worked with, then Vista (which has 100X the scale in terms of code size) should be nearly production ready, sometime by hmmmm.... Christmas 2008? at the soonest

    Because of the closed code base, anything sooner than that is laughable just in terms of code review and 1st level beta testing.

    Methinks I will wait, or better yet work on my pet open source projects so that M$ becomes irrelevant sooner rather than later.

  • What features are left to remove? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @09:29AM (#14128508) Homepage
    Whenever Microsoft advances a delivery date, they usually remove a couple of promised features.

    I thought they'd already cancelled most of the features preannounced for Vista.

    What features are left to remove?

    "Oh, we've found that our customers are asking for the same look and feel of Windows XP so we've decided to keep the graphic design and UI the same..."

  • MS terminology... (Score:5, Informative)

    by andy55 ( 743992 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @09:42AM (#14128648) Homepage

    I worked with MS for a while, and their project managers use the milestone phrase "code complete" to mean that it's just testing and QA from there (meaning, of course, many many fixes and revs will be introduced into the code after this). So, assuming Chris Jones' comment about being Vista code being "complete" by Aug 2006 was referring to being "code complete," it doesn't say much about when Vista will ship--it just says when non-QA driven changes will no longer be able to get into the codebase past this date.

    • [P]roject managers use the milestone phrase "code complete" to mean that it's just testing and QA from there ...

      Yeah; I've heard that sort of logic a lot. What I like to do is produce a C program named like the next product, containing the code:

      main() {
      printf("Hello, world!\n");
      }

      I then claim that, except for adding a few features and doing all the testing and QA, it's the finished product.

      Sometimes I mention that I know of one bug in the code already, but I think I can have a f

      • main() {
        printf("Hello, world!\n");
        }

        (Trivia question for C programmers: What's the bug?)

        Well, your printf() isn't prototyped, while this is now generally an internalized function, and doesn't normally need prototyping, this is still by strict definitions required.

        Next, you don't declare a return type for main(), which should be int, most compilers default to this return type anyways, but really, one should put it there.

        Next, you don't explicitly state

        • You forgot embedding of a natural language UI string in the code.
          • If this were to be a internal tool, and not an external tool for market, then the non-localization can be overlooked.

            Also, for very simple and limited input/output programs the costs of localization might cause more harm and danger to the code than would simply doing it in English.

            All these things need to be weighed individually, and realistic and balanced choices need to be made.

            The stuff I pointed out are a matter implicit in the language that it was written, and therefore impact the entire stability of t
  • Vista could ship earlier than expected... like 2003?
  • Slashdot has a funny definition of "earlier".

    The company I work for is a Microsoft Select customer, so I have access to people inside Microsoft as well as various Microsoft beta programs. I received info directly from my Microsoft sales rep two months ago. The final RC was due ~April 2006, with a product ship date of mid summer to early fall. Now we've slipped to the 2006 Christmas season? That's an odd definition of "earlier". I call that a "delay".

    This confirms my suspicions that we'll see the first

  • Maybe MS feels they can get away with a subpar release as their customer base is getting accustomed to lower and lower quality. XBox360 issues. Developers begging MS *not* to release Visual Studio and instead fix the bus but MS released VS anyway. MS is just tweaking an OS that was gutted feature wise. Why sit on it and pretend it's something it's not? Fix what little is left to fix and go with it.

    • I'm predicting a paid public beta (ala Win 95) about the end of '06. That way MS starts bringing in money and gets it "out there". Since everybody wants the latest, it won't be long before PC sellers are offering it as an option. By doing that MS essentially releases Vista without having to take any responsibility for bugs -its a beta after all, and it takes a lot of pressure off the need to release a "final" version.

  • So.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tbannist ( 230135 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @10:14AM (#14128971)
    Code complete August 2006?
    Shipped October 2006?
    Quality assurance testing begins early 2007?
    Microsoft ends support early 2014?
    Last bug patched early 2014?

    Yup, par for the course for Windows 2005.

  • I gotta reason to stand outside for a day and a half in front of Fry's waiting for a wristband and the random number drawing for my chance to get the latest Microsoft product. My life will then be complete.

    (Dear W3C: I really, really want a sarcasm tag.)

    Just kidding, of course. This is early warning for a year's worth of swooning by Microsoft fanboys who'll be lusting over the latest bit of eye candy from their heroes. (Gawd, it's going to get unbearable.) They'll get new toys for Christmas next year

  • With speculation of a ship date for Windows Vista ranging in the second part of 2006, word has surprisingly surfaced that it can be expected much earlier. BusinessWeek has received a copy of the internal blog of Chris Jones, who is a top Windows executive. The blog states that the code for Windows Vista will be completed by August 31, giving Microsoft the opportunity to place Vista on PCs for the 2006 Christmas season.

    Last time I looked at a calendar, August 31 was in the second half of 2006. How is this n
  • remove your hacked version of OSX/Intel to try your pirated version of Vista?
  • Does this mean we'll finally get some decent drivers for x64?

    I recently bought a new computer, and installed Windows XP x64 Edition. Out of the box, so to speak, basically none of my hardware was supported. I've found drivers for most things, but I'm presently using the lousy onboard audio because I couldn't get Audigy drivers (this seems to have been since remedied), and my Lexmark printer/scanner is still a paperweight, some six months after the OS was released.

    I'd probably have better luck getting everyt

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