Time to delay Vista again?

A lot is riding on the release of Windows Vista. It's been nearly five years since Windows XP debuted, and the new version still isn't soup yet. Microsoft has already scaled back its plans for the operating system significantly, following several hold-ups. Even with the big cuts, the company still missed this year's holiday season.

Under the latest plan, big businesses should have Vista by November, and the consumer delivery of Vista is set for January. But that's dependent on the operating system sticking to a tight schedule, with a near-final version needing to be ready this quarter.

There is still plenty of open speculation about whether it is really ready to take that step. Even Microsoft is hedging. Last month, Chairman Bill Gates revived doubts about the timing of the release, reportedly saying there was a 20 percent chance of another Vista delay.

Some prominent bloggers are calling on the company to reschedule the release and to send out a Beta 3 version instead. They say that Beta 2, out right now, suggests that the code isn't anywhere ready yet. While another postponement would derail partner plans, the bloggers argue that that's a lesser evil than annoying millions of Windows users.

To find out what people on the street make of it, we asked our Vista Views panel, made up of ordinary readers, this question: Do you agree that delaying Vista again and putting out a third beta is the way to go for Microsoft?

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Barb Bowman

I'd have to mostly agree, based on the builds I've seen, that Vista is a much longer distance from RC1 (release candidate 1) than it should be. Unless a lot of bugs are squashed and functionality perfected in the next few weeks, I don't see January being a realistic target.

Whether this means a third official beta or more interim builds before the official RC1 release does not matter, as long as the work is done before designating a build RC1.

Barb Bowman is a product development manager for Comcast high-speed Internet who also writes about technology for the Microsoft Windows XP Expert Zone and the Microsoft Vista community.

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Mark Casazza

I wasn't planning to be an early adopter, so I don't have my heart set on a January release. But from what I've read, Vista isn't going to provide any "must have" functionality for business users, which means that most of the early adopters are going to be consumers. And if Microsoft delivers a buggy product to the consumers, they'll spend the next several years explaining why they did so.

Since Microsoft isn't going to make the holiday season anyway, I think they'd be a lot better off if they took the extra time and delivered a 100 percent polished product.

Mark Casazza is the director of academic information for the City University of New York.

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David Price

Another round of beta testing is always needed, but seldom done. MS should do the right thing and not release the new OS until it has had serious stress testing. There will still be tons of bugs and security holes for discovery after the public release (the REAL beta test).
David Price is a senior accident analyst at one of the U.S.'s top research and development national laboratories and an award-winning nature photographer.

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Wallace Wang

We've been waiting over five years already for the successor to Windows XP, so we might as well wait a few more months for Microsoft to ship a secure, reliable operating system. The problem isn't trying to meet the January 2007 release date. The problem is that after such a long delay, Microsoft must absolutely make sure Vista works. There's nothing worse than taking five years, only to release a buggy operating system that just offers marginal improvements over Windows XP.

Rather than try to yank out more features to insure Vista ships on time, Microsoft should work on optimizing Vista. Every new release of Mac OS X from version 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 actually added new features while making my ancient G3 iBook faster at the same time. With Mac OS X, it's a no-brainer to upgrade the operating system since you speed up an old computer while getting new features at the same time.

With Windows, the opposite is true. Each succeeding version of Windows needs more hardware and still runs sluggishly. Don't even think about running Vista on a machine originally designed for Windows 98 or even one designed for Windows XP. Ultimately, no matter how long Microsoft takes to ship Vista, the fact that it won't run on existing machines already means Vista is a failure.

Wallace Wang is a freelance computer journalist and author whose books include "Microsoft Office for Dummies" and "Steal This Computer Book."

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Josh Phillips

I agree. The current builds are not leaving me very confident that Microsoft will meet its currently planned dates. I think they should just annouce the delay as early as possible and factor in some fudge room. To me, putting out a build that isn't at least as reliable as Windows XP is unacceptable, no matter how much more secure it is supposed to be.

Josh Phillips is an IT professional based in California.

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Brian Lambert

Microsoft should not release an operating system that is still rough around the edges. Vista has been delayed so much and is well overdue, but waiting a little longer to perfect it and get out most the bugs would be appreciated.

This should be Microsoft's magnum opus. There's a lot of competition surfacing in the operating system market with Ubuntu and OS X gaining some popularity. Vista should meet or exceed all the great qualities of these systems. If that means they need to put out a third beta to work out the kinks and make Vista sparkle, then so be it.

I don't want to get Vista when it comes out and have to apply a hundred patches just to fix problems that should have been resolved in development. Microsoft should work swiftly to meet their goals, but if the product needs work, they should realize they may have to sacrifice timeliness for quality.

Brian Lambert is a law student at Southern Illinois University.

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Jason Klomps

Unfortunately, I think they may be right. Based on the number of still remaining bugs and user issues, and when RC 1 is scheduled to be released later on this quarter, it is hard to say that Vista will be ready.

Honestly, I believe there should be a beta 3 prior to RC1. I feel that a month or two delay would be in the best interests of Microsoft and the public, but nothing more then that.

Jason Klomps of Tucson, Ariz., works in IT support for a call center.

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Chris Hacking

In the end, people aren't going to care too much about how long Vista takes to ship. Sure, it will live on in certain memories, and immediately after any announcement like this, there will be uproar?but it won't last too long.

What will last is the stigma of a broken OS. Almost nobody uses WinME today, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a better single-user, home system choice than Win2K. In fact, those who didn't want to upgrade to 2K stuck with 98, now over eight years old, if XP was out of their computer's capabilities.

That is the kind of stigma that Vista absolutely, unquestionably cannot afford. Release a good OS, something that can stand up to OSX in appearance, Linux in security, and beat XP in usability and compatibility, and it will be considered a golden-age product, much the way that 98 itself was. What average user cares how long it took, or how many codenames/betas/RCs?

If the current builds aren't up to stuff, give developers and testers a bit more time and make sure they do it right, then dazzle us all. Release dates are NOT more important than quality.

Chris Hacking is a computer engineering student at the University of Washington, Seattle who has worked in Web development and freelance software development.

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John Kneeland

Since they're already going to miss the crucial holiday season, they may as well delay it again. After all, when you've delayed a product for years and years, what's another few months?

John Kneeland is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is majoring in international relations and East Asian studies.