Personally I could care less if Vista comes out at all. I've tried it, and while its ok, its definitely bloated.

I'm more satisfied sticking with WindowsXP, than paying some outrageous price for some software that isn't much different and requires much more system resources.

while its ok, its definitely bloated.

lol, all you could have tried is Beta 2, and you're complaining it's bloated?

Ummm... surprise?

With all the debug code included with it, you have to expect bloat. You also have to expect that the final version won't be as bloated. ...hopefully.

I must say, despite my long-standing frustration with Vista's development cycle, I would much rather wait until Microsoft can finish fine-tuning Vista for performance and stability. After using Vista's Media Center, I'd gladly wait the extra couple months or so and have a final product that works like a charm rather than have Vista NOW and deal with all sorts of problems to be fixed via patches and updates.

Whine if they release ontime buggy, whine if they delay it. Fact is you will wait until MS is ready and not before. At least it gives the EU more time to milk XP before they bend MS over again for another rape'in with Vista.

Someone tell me how this is different than the last sotry?

http://www.betanews.com/..._Delay_Vista/1152635235

...and again with the biased headlines.

Gates never said it.

Why not just say 'Office and Vista likely to be delayed. It wouldn't be any more or less accurate than the last two headlines.

Let's hear it for journalistic integrity!

HUZZAH!

Don't get me wrong nate, I appreciate the articles, but teh slant taken on the headlines is just plain bizarre to me. Why work to create a flase headline when you could simply title it: 'Gates discusses possibility of further delays.'

Trust me, it'd still get the same amount of amusing commentary. ;)

Quite frankly I'm surprised BetaNews didn't change the headline to: Gates: I pooped myself.

I guess the takeway is all you need is an 'i' to spell "bias" from "BetaNews."

i thought it was kinda funny.
sort of a weather reporter farce, can't rely on the weather, can't rely on MS.

:-p

"Gates: I pooped myself"

that would have been much funnier
:-)

i'm just glad to see BN has a sense of humour.

Sounds like more of a 3rd grade sense of humor...

I find it hilarious that gates gives such a figure when they have changed the date 9+ times, easily, in the past 7 years. He might as well say it'll ship on the moon, the statement would be less absurd.

PLEASE DELAY VISTA! (to make it truely ready for primetime!)

Please delay vista so MS can put in the promised features like WinFS, user security, remotedisk, and proper driver support. (not to mention that horrible interface)

User security is there, remote disk I dont know what you are talking about, driver support is there (3rd party vendors need to update, not microsoft's place to do this). WinFS is gone, long gone, so please accept it.

It is better to have a proper operating system than one that is broken and annoys customers. So a delay is very, very good. It is what true responsible release policy looks like. Think how long it took to get Mac OS X out...

Man you're asking for it with such a ridiculously biased post like that.

Based on your logic, no one should use Windows ever!

Mac OS X has been out since 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

Well, you should do your homework better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Macintosh

It took me by surprise what you say here, cos I knew that the "Apple" appeared some years before the "Amiga", and the "Amiga" appeared in 1985.

And, what kind of nonsense is this: "Mac OS X has been out since 1986" ??????????????????

Can't you even COUNT to TEN ?????????

NextStep, oh well...
watch this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep

A mainframe desktop environment.

Mac OS X took ages, announced in 1998 and released 2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X

Most users are fine with XP. It is good enough. Most users do not care that much about operating systems.

Getting Started with Cocoa Programming:

The default main() simply calls NSApplicationMain(), which in turn loads the user interface objects from a nib file. Nib files are created with Interface Builder. (Trivia: "NIB" stands for "NeXT Interface Builder"; "NS" stands for "NeXTSTEP.")

And the best bad joke of the week goes to you!

Apple has been changing processor architecture twice over the last decade. Not to mention major changes in the OS architecture. Just because they can't make up their mind and decided to revert back to their original design, doesn't mean that "Mac OS X has been out since 1986."

That's never stopped them before.

Wow....so they included some throwbacks in the programming interface to an old, outdated OS.

What was your point again?

The drivers are a huge problem. Tried Vista b2 and guess what? My Radeon x1300 produced nothing but black triangles on-screen unless I ran in safe mode. Tried the lastest Vista drivers from both ATI and Windows Update with same result. But its irrelevant - as soon as I discovered they'd removed the 'up one level' button from folder navigation, I reformatted (and no, its NOT the same as a 'back' button). I know you want to control our access to our own files, M$, but thats beyond absurd.

I don't have the beta installed anymore, either, but doesn't pressing Backspace still work? (And is it an option you can add to the toolbar? I guess not if you're complaining.)

I found that it was too slow on my 2.4 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM, plus there wasn't really anything super-exciting that I had to have. I like the old Windows Explorer better (though I could probably get used to this one), I'm not a fan of the "standard" (i.e., the "your graphics card doesn't meet our ridiculously high standards") theme, which I know they've changed and that I could have used Classic anyway, but ... that, topped off with the general slowness, user interface inconsistency (how many styles of menus do we have now?), and other randomness was enough to make me go back to XP. Hopefully it will get better with time, though ... although I'm not expecting much. :)

(And before anyone complains about how it's beta and you shouldn't install it on your primary system and whatnot, I didn't [I rarely use anything but my iMac], and I know what to expect from betas ... except those from Google. :P)

To attain 'up one folder' functionality:

Instead of opening 'Computer' or 'Documents', hit 'Winkey-E'. This will open up an explorer window with folder view.

That said, the unwillingness of one to learn new (better?) ways to intereact with an OS, does not a Bad OS make.

And....

How does coming up with easier, less confusing ways to navigate equate to,

I know you want to control our access to our own files, M$, but thats beyond absurd.

Kinda makes you sound like another one of those tin-hatters.

Omg, wth! No up button!? This is as bad as XP by default not enabling Winkey+R!

I will stick with Windows 2000 until MS gets a clue on what features I want in an OS, and then I will upgrade to ReactOS or Linux.

Ehhhh.... I have to agree with psycros.

The up-folder button is useful. The point of a UI is to be able to adapt to different users' preferences. Not displaying the button by default I can understand, but dropping it completely? Hmmm....

...then I will upgrade to ReactOS...

lol

Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out.

So one should *never* dr0op an old way of doing things in favor of a new way?

Now *that* would be some interesting bloat.

"Don't like explorer?

That's okay, we bundled Winfile.exe with the system as well. Sure, it adds a few megs, but, hey...a few folks afraid of change might whine about it." ;)

Not to make to fine a point of it, but it's the same with 16-bit support. It's caused no end of problems / needless bloat. They should have dropped it completely with XP.

Yeah, a button isn't to much to worry about, and you never know, it may show up in the release candidate, but when trying to float a new interface / way of interacting with the user, leaving the 'old ways' around is simply counter-productive.

Hey! Notepad works Just Fine™ on it. :p

*grins*

ReactOS... Yeah, it'll be 100% compatible with XP around the time they release the successor to the successor of Vienna. ;)

I didn't realize the up-folder button was the "old way" or that the tree-view folder list was so new...

One button in a UI is entirely different from 16-bit support.

It all comes down to user preferences; nothing more. [I think] Windows has done a pretty good job of adapting to user preferences thus far. I'm just wondering why they would trash a button - any button - that would give the user more options in how they use the OS. Like I said: that's the point of a UI.

It seems like there's always been 234,987,987 ways to do the same thing in Windows. Maybe they're trying to cut down on that to avoid confusion?

As an aside....

They DO have 'up one folder' functionality. Had to get home and load up Vista to verify.

It's in the title-bar. You get a list along the lines of:

> Computer > Games (F:) > NFS > Data

To go up one level, simply (in the case above) click NFS.

Done. So yer all whining about nothing. ;) It's there. It just ain't an arrow no more, it's a map of folders below it.

That was just a test, right? I bet you knew that one...

lol thanks...

I *knew* it didn't make any sense.

I live to serve...

It shows.

Wow -- there used to be more intelligent commentary. Now it's the peanut gallery. The guy says they're going to get it right. Imagine the cost every day they're late. That's newsworthy in itself, and a shame that commenters are so blatantly biased.

Nice job, peanut gallery.

thanks for adding the intelligent commentary.
where would BN be without you.

Nice job, peanut.

Uhhh...

And you did better? :p

YOU SAID PEANUT

HEH

Doesn't matter if Vista is delayed. The market is not ready for it anyway. Most business needs are allready filled by win2k or winXP. As it stands today, with a Vista stripped from almost all new features that was promised to make it the best OS in the world ever, who would like to upgrade?

its not a matter of needs. this is a money maker for Microsoft.

by their own policy they will cease to support XP SP2 24 months after the release of Vista.

This means that regardless of features and/or businesses desire for Vista, they will HAVE to upgrade at some point if they want to stay on a supported OS.

This "forced to upgrade" approach is a great revenue generator. Especially now with all the virus, hackers, malware, spyware, etc. that's out there, microsoft can use this fear to support the need to upgrade.

And I'm sure there is plenty of money going into Vista to ensure it is darn hard to pirate a copy.

What does Windows XP have that can protect you from spyware and viruses?

According to Gartner Vista will only have 10% market share 24 months after its release.

Most home users are not going to pay for an upgrade anyway. They will continue to use whatever OS that came with the computer. Business users will stay on whatever system they have as long as possible.

So, yes, you are right soner or later people will have to upgrade. Will they upgrade to Vista is another matter. Novells new Desktop beats Vista to a pulp on speed, usability, interoperability and features. It will hit the market before Vista with or without new Microsoft delays.

In the last four years, Linux have developed from something that only geeks could use, to something that can rival MacOS in usability. At that pace, if Novell is the better desktop now, imagine what it will be in two years when most Microsoft users will have to upgrade to stay supported.

Today the problem with Linux is the availability of softare, but much can happen in two years. The trend now seam to be that more and more software works independent of OS, e.g. just lately the Linux world have got Google stuff like Picasa and Google Earth. Skype have a new beta for Linux, XaraLX is starting to look good. The situation for Linux desktop software is more and more starting to look like how it was on the Linux server side five years ago.

Another option would be to move to MacOS-X, if you need to upgrade your hardware anyway, why not upgrade to something that is well designed and looks good that runs a very usable OS, that just like Linux will offer better usability.

So, Microsoft seam to be between a rock and a hard place right now, delays or no delays.

Where did you get the idea that MS will cease the support for XP in 24 months? If I remembered correct, MS cease support for Win98 late last year, and that's an OS for 2 generations ago, or 7 years if you prefer. When was the last time Apple releases any update for it's OS other than OS X?

Nothing, but people that uses XP or win2k, have allready invested in third party products that do that, so that will not be a reason to upgrade to Vista for most people.

This I agreed, XP and 2k are both very stable. I have them both at work, and they haven't crash once. It will take business a long long time to adapt, probably longer than adapting XP. This is an example of their failure cause by their own success.

Until they're 1-year subscriptions are up, anyway.

"In the last four years, Linux have developed from something that only geeks could use, to something that can rival MacOS in usability."

This is simply not true - and you know it.

Stop spreading these kind of fairy tales. Only three days ago, I wasted two DVD blanks and had to throw them into the bin, because neither "SUSE 10.1" nor "Fedora Core 5" did show me more than 1, resp. 3 screens - before they froze my machine.

Do you call that "usability", when you're not even able to install an OS ?! Come on, don't be silly.

This same machine of mine runs flawless with Windows.

So - NO, LINUX IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST COMPARABLE WITH WINDOWS OR MAC OS. NOT WHEN IT COMES TO "usability".

Linux is just something for people who like to boast their egos with the knowledge of countless cryptic command line switches and of sophisticated trees of OS structures. Oh yes, not to forget that smell of some kind of "against the stream" swimming "rebel". And I'm not speaking of administrators working on Linux machines for a living... - I don't like many things about the ways and politics of MS, but you cannot possibly compare Linux and Windows in the way you do.

Full stop.

Renewing that subscription is a lot less expensive, than to pay licensing fees and man hours on upgrading XP, not to mention testing and verifying that your old apps work and perhaps upgrading them.

From a business perspective Vista is dead, at least until Microsoft forces people to upgrade. The problem is people doesn't like to feel forced, and in the long run their customers might start look for other options.

Say what?

Microsoft won't have to force anyone. Most people will move to Vista eventually just as they have with XP. I *highly* doubt there will be any problem getting people to buy Vista. I may be wrong, but only time will tell.

Then people shall 'upgrade' to SP3, which is due out shortley after Vista.
Which will then have longer support still.
Support for Win2000 is still ongoing, and that was released 6 years ago.
WinXP SP1 is ending soon, but SP2 support will be ongoing for as long as there is no SP3.
Vista deployment doesn't come into it yet as there is a newer service pack to be released first.

lol

...so because 2 Linux distros didn't like your old PC, ALL Linux OSes are crap?

That's like condemning all of Windows because of ME (which, admittedly, I've been tempted to do on several occasions).

Sorry about your bad Linux experience. I understand that you are disappointed as you not even could install the thing. However, this is an exception. In most cases a Linux install is far simpler than a windows install.

Just like you told me about your shortcomings installing Linux, I could tell you how one of my old thinkpad 600X laptops that fails to install win2k on a new empty HD. This doen't make windows useless, just like your isolated experience doesn't tell much about the usability Linux in general.

In general, it takes a lot longer to install Windows than Linux and the result is more functional, e.g. most Linux distros comes with an office suit while in windows that is an extra licence to pay, an extra license key to enter, The same goes for databases, mail applications, and much more.

The advantage windows have is that it comes preinstalled. Without that advantage windows would go nowhere. Most windows users would certainly not be able to install it.

As Linux improves we will see preinstalled Linux boxes as well. HP, for one, have allready done that for some markets. Even if you don't see Linux as an option on e.g. Dells web pages, my guess is that if you are going to buy e.g. 1000 boxes for a large organization they will put whatever OS you want on it.

The same thing should be possible in a smaller scale if you buy some whitebox solution in your local computer store and support will not be a problem either. There are many companies that provides that.

As for cryptical commands, they really can be tricky on modern distros as the terminal applicaton usually is hidden away somewhere deep down in some seldom used menu. On the other hand that doesn't matter much as you normally can control your OS through the GUI.

Your description of cryptical commands would have been true 5 years ago, but not now. So, if you want to use modern Linux to boast your ego, you would have serious problems.

As you evidently haven't seen what modern Linux can look like, have a look at these Novell videos and you will get an idea of what ist like:

http://www.novell.com/video/desktop/

It depends on what you mean by a problem. Last year when full support was dropped for win2k, it was still the most commonly used OS in business at least here in Sweden.

I wouldn't call that a very good result from Microsofts point of view. You also have to realize that many people who installed win2k did that as an upgrade from win95 or win98. Compared to them win2k was a major update, that offered real advantages such as significantly better uptime and security. Vista doesn't offer many such advantages over XP.

So far, not even Microsoft salespeople will tell me how much my profit will have increased in the first quarterly report after installing Vista, as a result of installing it. The IT business landscape have changed since the IT-bubble, and got a lot saner. Now days you must show some resonable ROI to get sale in IT, just like you do for any other type of equipment.

Another thing, the reason people moved to XP was that there was no other alternatives. Today there are.

Death to windows, the 4evah crapz0rs!

;)

Vista doesn't offer many such advantages over XP.

I stopped reading right there. Do some more research on Vista, or better yet, try out the beta. Then come back to us. Thanks.

nice.

Are you suggesting 3rd party vendors of anti-spyware/malware are going to stop supporting XP after a year? Not a snowball's chance in Hades! XP will be supported by these vendors for years to come.

They won't have much of a choice if it comes preloaded on new machines.

And the biggest features are beefed up security and the new UI; as far as I can tell, they're still there.

"by their own policy they will cease to support XP SP2 24 months after the release of Vista."

That doesn't sound right. Where did you read that?

"According to Gartner Vista will only have 10% market share 24 months after its release."

Gartner says a lot of things. .. :-)
But it doesn't reallty matter; MS makes most money from system purchases which will come with Vista preinstalled.

"In the last four years, Linux have developed from something that only geeks could use, to something that can rival MacOS in usability"

Each year, I try "the easiest distro du jour' and each year, I'm disappointed.

"At that pace, if Novell is the better desktop now, imagine what it will be in two years when most Microsoft users will have to upgrade to stay supported."

According to the w3c stats, 74% of the machines on the net are running XP. Now taking into consideration that support for Windows98 was supported up until a few days ago, and an XP service pack is still on the cards, I have no idea where you get the idea that MS will end support for XP.
If folk have been using Windows98 for all these years, then they're certainly not going to jump to Linux, just because MS doesn't support it.

This is just another one of those reasons that folk dream up have while praying for the 'big switch'.

Most of the Win98 users I've talked to had assumed that MS ended support years ago!

Most users will stay with what they are familiar with, or what comes on their new machine. That means Windows whatever. If WIndows was as bad as folk wish it were, then let's face it; we would have dumped it long ago. The problem for Linux is .. Windows isn't that bad. I haven't had a crash on Windows box, ever. I've never had a virus, or "had my computer brought to a halt my malware". And if the figures from MS' Malware Removal widget are to be believed, 98% of Windows users don't seem to have a problem either.

What the Linux community still seems to have a difficulty understanding, is that Joe Public wants a computer to do a job or play a game; he certainly does not feel the need to wear his OS choice like a badge of honour. He doesn't care at all about the OS, he cares about tasks and applications.

Screaming "Windows is crap" in forums full of Windows/Linux geeks, isn't really going to change much in the outside world; whether Vista ships or not.

I think the problem is the same year in, year out. Rather than focussing on what's good about Linux, you folk just try to convince people that Windows is junk. Since this is obviously not the case, then I don't see this as a particularly good long term plan.

No. I am not.

Never said I was.

Taken in context (to the comment above it) it simply means that once it comes time to pay for a re-up, folks will very likely be more inclined to consider an OS upgrade where such measures are simply not necessary.

It was also a joke. Perhaps I should have put a ;) on the end of it for ya.

Think about it. I'm not saying the conclusion you propose is just, but it is definately a limiting factor to the adoption of Linux, considering even current versions on current pcs can work or not work depending on the distro/PC.

It sucks, but it's true. Linux is spread too thin. Too many Distro's muddying the waters.

I had a feeling you weren't being overly serious about it :)

Concidering allot of businesses still use 2000, I cant see them jumping too quick to any OS unless they are investing in powerfull hardware and see the vista security model to be a significant reason to justify the cost of the machine to run it at pace.

Home users will be the biggest uptake of the OS initially with high spec computers being sold to uninformed punters with a big discount provided to OEM's to drive the market.

2000 still is the OS of choice for business, with XP being a very close second.

Not really- There really are just two Linux distros that counts, and they would be Red Hat and Novell.

Not that all the others are technically bad, far from it, many of them are excellent, but those two are the only ones that have the business stability to be a viable option in the corporate world.

As for being spread too thin, Microsoft have the opposite problem. Who in their right mind would rely on only one vender for mission critical supplies. Sure, Micosoft will be there tomorrow, but if they manage to keep you locked in to their line of products, they will be able to dictate the price, in a way that you may find less favorable.

LMAO!!!

Yeah, cuz *no-one* uses Ubuntu or Gentoo, right?

...or SUSE...

...or Fedora...

...or Mandriva...

...or...

Vista Beta 2 (5456) is great, and stable. Haven´t had any problems since I downloaded and installed it. I don´t care if the final release will be ready in April/2007. This beta, and the next Release Candidate will be free until July/2007.

Agreed. They can take their time since the beta's and RC's will be available for a while to test.

They should try and make Vista Final as polished as possible.

nice BN, as always misleading it's own readers.

How is this misleading?

Without proper explanation, your comment is simply asinine and useless.

If you need it explained, read the title again, then read the article again.

If you *still* need it explained, seek help.

Gates: I'd be glad to delay Vista.

He never said it, yet it's portrayed as a quote in the headline.

He also had no qualms about delaying the OS further if necessary.

I'm thinking that "Gates: Will delay OS if necessary" just didn't have the same shock value.

...just sayin'.

FYI: Exact quote freom Gates (Now with CONTEXT!!):

'If the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to delay it.'

Agreed. Nate must have too, because he changed it.

The new title is better. It's still got that "going for shock value" overtone, but hey, it's news. What news service doesn't try to catch people's attention? That would just be stupid.

Nate:
It looks like you've got a tough crowd here. I think you're doing a good job. ...for what it's worth :p

Never said he wasn't. I just don't think the bias is necessary. Especially for a story concerning Microsoft.

I does not matter to me when its released Iam running vista on 2 computers and so far no problems. The problem I have is companies who have not yet come out with a 64 bit driver for there products.Why is nobody on there backs about drivers?? At least MSFT lets you try the beta FREE

Office 2008? 2009? 2010? ...

stop teasing us if you're not going to release it.
crappy way to gain market share.
as bad as intel

From what I've seen, Office is very nearly ready. I use it daily and it's great. Vista is another story.

Agreed on the Intel thing. More blah, blah with nothing behind it.

Wow, vista is looking more and more like a sinking ship. To invest so much money on the project, and have features pulled or indefinately suspended, and STILL not be able to make a projected date for a release...

Bill is leaving because he knows the thing will be ready in 2010, he wants nothing to do with it.

A sinking ship? Not ready 'til 2010? How do you figure? It would seem, rightly so, MS just wants to get it right before releasing it a little later in 2007 than expected. Nothing wrong with that.

if it takes them till 2k10 to complete vista, which is probly somewhere in the 80s as far as percentage of development, god help em.... but it is absurd for you to seriously think it wont be ready till 2k10. Get real dood.... You cant compare where it is now to where it has been in Alpha testing. Yes, they scrapped the code and rewrote it (or at least a lot of it), but its too late for that to happen again, therefore theres no way it will take more than a year to get it out there. I, personally, beta test this on my lappy.... It doesnt perform tops, but i dont have a lappy thats tops, so i shouldnt expect it to, really... 'sides, I'll end up buying a new lappy by vista rtm (most likely 64 bit proc) as my current one doesnt have quite enough graphics mem (64mb, though it does run aero fairly well). I'm cool with a delay, it does need some more spit and polish, but for computers that would be considered "vista premium ready" quality, it runs great... If u were an official beta tester you'd probly know that.

And as for Gates leaving..... He's at his midlife and now hes gearing up to drop his fortune like a bad habit lol.. He plans on giving away 90 percent of his fortune by the end of his lifetime, to charity. If you had that much money, why the hell would you stick around writing code all day?

So what you're saying, ladies and gentlemen, is that there is something out there for everyone, which ever OS you prefer. Personally, I'm a Mac man, but I've tried Vista b2, but had to uninstall it as my laptop didn't work properly ( no drivers ) I got the impression that it was better than the god awful Win Xp, though. Better secuity, even if the warnings are overkill. I expect Microsoft to sort that out