According to Paul Thurrot, Microsft is planning on releasing Vista to manufacturing on August 9th, 2006, with broad market availbility on November 15th of that year. Beta 2, RC0 and RC1 will be released, respectivily, December 7th (2005), April 19th (2006) and June 28th (2006). All this also applies to Vista Server, with the exception that Server’s RTM is scheduled for Januray 10th, 2007. WinFS is supposed to be released in Q3 2007. All these release dates are ahead of schedule.
really? Several years ago I never thought they planned to release Longhorn in 2006
December 7, 2006 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by geek forces of the Empire of Redmond.
Not really trolling (not too much, anyway…)
But really, has MS ever respected a release schedule?
If I remember correctly Windows95 was out almost in 96…
Yes. Off the top of my head, Office 2003 came out in 2003.
If I remember correctly Windows95 was out almost in 96…
Almost? We’re not talking about horseshoes and hand grenades. It did come in ’95
From Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, hardly a biased source (well not anti-MS) :
“The result picturing isn’t a pretty one. After tallying up all the numbers, we found that, on average, Microsoft ships its desktop OSes 10 months late while its server OSes are just over a year late. The track record for major, mold-breaking OSes, however, is much worse. Windows 95, for example, was 14 months late, while NT Server 4.0 was 21 months late—nearly two years.”
( http://www.mcpmag.com/features/article.asp?EditorialsID=465 )
But hey who knows maybe they pull it off this time. I just don’t notice a lot of enthousiasm for Vista anymore though.
But it was asked if MS has EVER shipped a product on time.
Also, what is “enthousiasm”?
But it was asked if MS has EVER shipped a product on time.
Semantics, anyway you’re example was wrong. Check out the article I linked : http://mcpmag.com/images/0305red_F2MSMath_P&D2.jpg . Office 2003 shipped 4 months late.
Enthusiasm means that this release of windows is getting the most luke-warm response ever.
Correction for the article: Ahead of the latest schedule. We all know Longhorn was originally do for 2004-2005 release.
As always with MS, it’s late, and with far less features than were originally promised.
Go figure…
Well, honestly such dates arn’t much to get hung up on. Be glad MS gives you some idea of when. If they just didn’t say, then they would always be on time like Apple. Apple doesn’t give a date till about 1 month before launch for the OS, and never for products. Just the mention of having intel macs by June of 06 is probably the biggest clue in the companies history.
I wish more companies did as apple, then the endless babble over things being late will end. Just let people know when something done and put it on the shelf. Don’t even tell people what you are doing. Don’t be a Duke Nukem. If they had never announced it, and then in say 2010, it just came out with no notice, people would be so happy, but know, they had to talk about it.
You are partially right: having a date is better than nothing.
But release dates of MS products have been pushed forward mutiple times in the past; what makes you think this time will be different? If anything, the history of Longhorn says that it’s *highly likely* that another dalay will be announced some 6-9 months from now.
And there is another side to the release schedule problem: companies that bought the “Software Insurance” licens did so knowing (from past experiences) that MS normally did put out a new version every 3 years. The SI licence says you pay for 3 years no matter what, but you also receive all the new versions.
Guess what: since the start of the SI campaign there was practically no new product (except maybe Win2003, that is win2k with the xp interface, so not really appealing).
The fact that you are calling 2003 2000 with the XP interface shows what kind of crap your head is filled with.
Are you really so stupid?
I hate to be rude, but this kind of pathetic attempt deserves much worse.
Here is an idea, why don’t you actually use 2003 before telling us all what it is.
Actually, I am working with 30+ machines at the moment, and they are 99% Win2k because we use a proprietary application stack that runs only on that.
The others are Win2k3, and yes, to me it’s simply win2k with XP interface.
Enumerate the oh-so-big differences, please…
XP interface? Theme service is disabled by default.
Differences? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/overview/tech…
Yeah. No differences. Ok.
It’s funny how people think that if MS doesn’t change everything interface wise, there are no changes. Sorry buddy, but there is a reason most windows releases seem very similar to previous ones: consistency. But a lot goes on behind the scenes. Open your eyes.
Oh, I almost forgot the best new feature of win2k3: the new Terminal Services license scheme that cuts off all the previous licenses, most of all the embedded ones, keeping customers that bought clients specifically to avoid TS-CALS away from it like the plague!
Silly me… thanks for pointing it out!
…and after all this racket can someone please explain to me why it matters if release dates slip?
I mean, it obviously means they are putting more work into it than planned, isn’t that a good thing? Some people really do see a thing to moan about in everything…
It matters to Software Insurance payers: they get nothing in return for their money.
It matters for developers of alternative solutions: they’ll have more time to improve their products 🙂
Assurance
…and after all this racket can someone please explain to me why it matters if release dates slip?
I mean, it obviously means they are putting more work into it than planned, isn’t that a good thing? Some people really do see a thing to moan about in everything…
It could be indicative of bad planning or a badly managed project under severe time-stress to release a product. Even worse it could mean that there were a lot of last-minute issues that had to be resolved. “More work than planned” usually means something went wrong.
All of this could be forgiven for an internal project, but other people depend on MS release schedule to plan their own upgrades.
I find Unofficial Download page of Windows Vista Beta 1 here: http://windows.czweb.org/show_article.php?id_article=28“>windows