I agree with Ballmer: Let's wait for Windows 7
Speaking Thursday at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference in Orlando, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told those in attendance that if people want to wait for Windows 7 and leave Windows Vista to the suckers, that's perfectly fine with him.
"If people want to wait [for Windows 7] they really can," he said. "But I'd definitely deploy Vista.
"Our next release of Windows will be compatible with Vista. The key is let's get on with it. We'll be ready when you want to deploy Windows 7," he added later.
Well, Steve, I can't help but agree with you on this one. Why not wait for Windows 7? All I've heard from the Microsoft camp over the past six months is how wonderful Windows 7 will be and that although its issues are being fixed, Windows Vista just won't be able to stand up to the capabilities its follow-up will offer.
Heck, I'm sure many people and companies would have liked to deploy Windows Vista, but after hearing you, Bill Gates, and the rest of the Windows team discussing Windows 7, you've made our decision simple: let's just wait for Microsoft's new operating system and forgo Vista.
I don't know about you, but all I've heard from Microsoft lately is that Windows 7 will the savior that we've all been waiting for. After discussing Vista's many compatibility and usability issues, Ballmer said at the Gartner event yesterday that Windows 7 would not only be a major release because of all the work Microsoft needs to put in to improve it over Vista, it'll be much better than Vista.
"It's not minor because it's a lot more work than a minor release. It's a major release," he said. "Windows 7 will be Vista, but a lot better."
I'm sure PC vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others will be happy to hear that. Those companies currently allow consumers that don't want to use Vista to use the pre-installed Windows XP Professional on machines instead. Why? Because vendors realize that their customers simply aren't happy with Vista and would rather work with an operating system that with the help of Service Pack 3, packs an even more appealing set of features that Vista running Service Pack 1.
Speaking of vendors, Ballmer, at the D6 conference earlier this year, said Microsoft would work closer with vendors with the release of Windows 7 and ensure that its hardware partners were releasing products that would compete on the same level with Apple.
"There's a lot in Windows 7, and our goal is to produce fantastic PCs with our hardware partners" Ballmer told Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at D6.
And considering the fact that Windows 7 should be available sometime in the beginning of 2010 -- a whopping year and a half from now -- what would justify any buying decision on the part of a company or individual that would see them deploy Windows Vista instead of waiting for Windows 7?
For some odd reason, Microsoft is intentionally working against Vista and making it abundantly clear to anyone who will listen that the future of Windows is in Windows 7, not Windows Vista. And although Windows Vista may be an attractive alternative to those looking to buy a new computer, shouldn't they take Microsoft at face value and realize that spending money on a new computer now is a waste of money if Windows 7 will be so fantastic?
I don't understand this move on any level. Microsoft has always pimped its operating systems as much as possible to squeeze every last penny out of consumers and businesses. But as we get closer to Windows 7's release, it's becoming clear that it has abandoned that strategy with Vista and is instead trying to make its current operating system look like a bridge between XP and Windows 7, even though Vista is considered a major release.
Business are loath to switch and vendors are more than happy to offer XP. Ballmer says Windows 7 will be better than Vista and Bill Gates can't stop talking about how wonderful the company's next operating system will be. Microsoft puts Windows 7's release date somewhere towards the beginning of 2010 and says that it's OK if people want to wait for Windows 7 instead of opting for Windows Vista. Meanwhile, economic conditions continue to worsen and people aren't as willing to spend money on expensive systems.
The evidence seems overwhelming: Microsoft wants us to wait for Windows 7 and forget about Windows Vista.
I guess we should do what it wants us to do. After all, it knows better than us, right?
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Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
I have been rolling out some new Dell Optiplex 755 systems for the past 4 weeks at a Government Agency and the procurement includes both Windows Vista Business and XP Professional media. The systems are preloaded with XP because we are just not ready for Vista, some of the custom applications need to be updated. But Vista is definitely on their agenda, but it will take some time before they start rolling it out and it will most likely be incremental.
Waiting on Windows 7 to skip Vista does not make sense especially for businesses, since the same kernel will be used which means, any incompatibilities today moving from XP to Vista will also be there when trying to move from XP to 7. The strategy for most enterprise roll outs is to use a proven and tested product, which Vista will be by 2010, by then the second Service Pack should also be out. I don't see a mass deployment of Windows 7, its the same case for most versions of Windows in the past.
We need to also understand how businesses procure licenses and software from Microsoft. That's through Software Assurance and Enterprise Agreement. Which means Vista is on their schedule, not Microsoft. We are talking about an OS that Microsoft plans to support until 2016.
I said the same with XPs interface (not as much as i hate the Vista interface), i prefer the classic one, but then someone is going to ask me why i didn't just stick with the previous Windows.
And to answer that question: because it is terrible.
I... i just really can't use it, it severely annoys me with everything it does, there is nothing i like about it other than the new My Computer look.
IE7+ is god awful, the new Explorer is a joke, who designed it?? A group of 10 year olds?
Aero is a waste of resources, electricity, and in time, money.
I really hope they don't screw up with Win7, it actually sounds fantastic.
Most people thinks mac osx is not selling cos its too expensive. But if that was the case why is linux not selling since its a free os. Or why is mac osx maket share is more than the free linux based pc. If You hate M$ use something else as the rest of the word is ok with it
Awww, little Timmy has gotten a hold of a computer and started ranting. He's even calling people names like "stupido". Well, at least now he doesn't have to poke the adults in the arm so that he can get a word in edgewise.
I think it would be a larger leap for a company to go from XP to 7 internally than to slowly migrate to vista. And XP will start to show it's age more as we go from 2009-2010.
Also shows Steve Ballmer can't seem to garner the same reaction as Steve Jobs when he addresses a crowd.
Wait on Vista? if you want to wait, that's up to you. But there is no technical reason to do so. It's purely an image issue and once again, I would have thought Don understood the situation a bit more clearly and is less prone to the FUD being spread by Apple and uninformed indviduals.
Don- are you a sheep who is afraid of being capable of independant enough to make your own decisions or do you let others think for you? Your comments suggest the wooly option.
Vista Service pack 1 fixed most of the issues VISTA RTM had for starters. Myself, I've been using VISTA since day one, on machines from single cores to quads, and what do i think? you my friend must have a five year old machine, while true vista has a lot of eye candy, it can all be turned off, and there are features that xp doesn't have like
- Bitlokcer encryption
- New network stack
- Internet explorer 7 running on virtual memory
- Better security
- Media center now is included
- Tablet PC
- Hardware failture mitigation
- 64 Bit o/s
- Revised backup feature
- Windows Mobile SYNC center (much better than activesync)
and if you plan on saying that all these features are avaliable in xp you're right, and yet wrong at the same time, Media center and tablet pc are separate editions, and so is the 64 Bit version which by the way shares little with the 32 bit version than the interface. Lets not forget that INTERNET EXPLORER 6.0 was a piece of garbage, hence why its was updated for SP2, hint hint, XP SP2 was a total O/S rewrite, even ballmer admit it this, so is XP better? in my humble opinion NO. For those who say they intercace is fogly easy, turn all the eye candy off, and put on the classic interface, and quit your whining memory is cheap nowadays. If your machine is 2 years and older, bring it up to 2gb of ram
- Turn the sidebar off
- Turn off Aero
and you should be fine, i have vista on a PENTIUM M 740 w/ 2gb of ram running just fine.
I'm not quite sure what you mean, windows has used virtual memory since the i386 extensions were supported, as well as swap memory. That's been a feature of OS's since the 70's at least, and late 80's or 90's for microsoft.
Were you referring to kernel space? (the upper 2 gig's of the virtual address space on 32 bit, not sure about 64 bit). MS used to have some core UI functions implemented in the kernel (to hell with security, full rendering speed ahead!!) which was a really really bad design decision for security.
They also put activeX in more of a sandbox (activeX still needs to die, they should replace it with java or .NET extensions, like firefox). It does help security, but they still have a while before they catch up to other *nix OS's. Once they do, well, for example, Mac OS X has had some glaring security holes in user applications before, but their exploitability is so much less than windows due to the Unix model of security.
In my opinion turning off Aero is more like a compatibility mode than it is for actually saving hardware resources.
Show a user a Vista PC without all that and you can replicate the "Mojave Experiment" results for yourself.
When I fix PCs for family and friends, the first thing I do is a clean install of Vista (addresses reason 2) and then put in solid drivers, replacing components with weak driver support as needed (addressing reason 1). The response I get is uniform: "Oh, so THAT's Vista? That's pretty nice."
I just can't help but to laugh myself silly every time I hear "Mojave Experiment". It screams desperation.
I know, it's not fista's fault - it's the users. With M$ it's always the users fault and in a way they're right - the user was STUPID enough to pay money for this trashware, which is definitely their own fault!
Best advice - skip winblows entirely and take back ownership of your computer. Install a real OS like Linux and break the chains of slavery to the Bill. You'll be glad you did.
The reason we don't like Vista is that it's a resource hog full of useless bloatware.
Our systems (unless specified otherwise) include a Penryn CPU (E8400) and 2 x 1 gig of DDR2-800 RAM. Vista still clugs along compared to XP. UAC is a bad joke. Prefetch hammers hard drives. Vista, by design, uses all the memory it can just to run. (Don't believe me? Vista uses 70% of 1 gig of RAM. Install 4 gigs and Vista still uses 70%.)
Bottom line is that most people just aren't interested in Vista due to all the justifiable negative press it has received.
What people did want was the new file system that Microsoft bragged about, which was scrapped from Vista and Windows 7. People expected a more efficient and easier to use OS. Instead, they're expected to pay more for "pretty" hype.
Get off the Apple horse and think for yourself dude. You obviously don't know the industry. Companies that have custom software that is probably 10 years old will not work on new systems. Its the age old problem. Have you not forgotten Y2K? Except we were forced into doing it then, as now we can hold off if the money is not there... Vista is great! GREAT!!!! And Microsoft is getting a bad wrap for third party companies making bad drivers. I'd bet the next time Microsoft releases an OS that requires new drivers, they will make the vendors work to get their drivers right. As for yourself, why don't you listen to objective reports than Apple fanboys who think they know the industry.
Windows Vista includes the Windows Classic theme - Right click your Desktop > click Personalization > Themes > select Windows Classic > click OK > Done!
Actually, Windows Aero is a lot more convenient than XP's Luna. The title bars are slimmer, reveal more information and the interface is less distracting by allowing the user to focus on the content of the screen instead of this loud blue, silver or green theme (XP). As for Classic, I don't have a problem with it, but its drab and I love aesthetics, so its actually refreshing.
You are caught in the middle though, because if you were to choose a different OS such as Mac OS X, you are gonna be faced with even more focus on graphics and effects, in addition to useless effects like a semi-transparent Global menu bar, a non functional 3d Dock with a glass floor that shows distracting reflections of your application windows.
Regardless Windows Aero is shiny, its actually pleasing and functional, it doesn't overdo the user experience. It also has a level of customization available, such as the Color Glass option under Personalization, so you can control the degree of transparency.
If you want to control the performance of Windows Aero, you can even dig deeper by going to Start > type System Properties (press Enter), click Advanced System Settings under Task > go to the Advanced (tab) > under 'Performance' > click Settings > under the 'Visual Effects' tab uncheck the various annimation and effects option. I have done this on Vista 64-bit Enterprise and the experience is like night and day and I still retain the Glass effects. This is on system with an AMD Sempron processor 1.6 GHz, 512 MBs of RAM and an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP DirectX 9 GPU.
As for Linux as another option, have you seen the latest effects and non-functional changes to the UI in the latest versions of KDE version 4 and GNOME? They are atrocious and do not focus on offering decent effects with true functionality that will leave user pleased.
"Wait for it."
Or has everyone already forgotten "The 'Wow' Starts Now".
And isn't it true that Windows 7 is just going to be a version release of Vista essentially? Just like Vista was a themed-out version of XP with a lot of eye candy and a few security features turned on by default?
At least someone else has been paying attention.
what's funniest about most of your attacks against don is that you claim he's influenced by the apple people. it's funny, because you all seem to be ignoring the fact that vista makes a concerted effort to become more like a macintosh product. (semi-ironic, as apple becomes more like microsoft with each passing day, with each product they release being X% buggier than the previous version.)
for instance, jdzions pointed out something many others have -- with very specific hardware, and very specific drivers, vista runs more smoothly. perhaps we should all use a single hardware manufacturer, to make things easier for vista? isn't that the antithesis of PC's/Windows? isn't the whole notion of windows that it be compatible with any and every hardware maker? some of us appreciate those freedoms, which is why we don't buy apple, and why we uninstall vista.
similarly -- if vista works best with a limited number of hardware/driver options, why does it require such massive amounts of space? how is the bloat accounted for with so many compatibility issues? does vista really require such bloat just to animate menus a little prettier, or pop-up annoying security questions every 30 seconds? if those are the only reasons for the bloat, since compatibility is obviously not, then vista is less than useless.
finally -- i and many others who dislike vista aren't the n00bs that idzions deals with. i understand services, i understand the registry, i know how to remove bloatware, i update the latest drivers. when i purchased a laptop with vista, it was perhaps two or three steps below top-of-the-line. slimming vista to the leanest possible, it still runs 15-30% slower in *every* aspect. start-up times, refreshing folders, rendering graphics, playing games; every single aspect of computing was noticeably slower.
soon, the only difference between Mac OS* and Windows v.* will be the graphics.
(and as a final p.s. i have always loathed microsoft products, but have always run a windows machine. before vista was released, i convinced a friend to invest in microsoft, so certain was i that vista would be the ultimate os. if you traveled back in time to any point in the last 25 years and told my younger-self i would convince a friend to buy microsoft stock, i would have punched myself in the face repeatedly. maybe i'm just angry because vista was such a severe let down.)
when vista was first released, and the problems were so numerous, i recall an interview with someone who was very familiar with the earliest stages of vista. they said something to the effect of, "vista at the time was so amazing, that microsoft would have been broken apart as a monopoly for sure. so they crippled vista to make sure that didn't happen."
windows 7 will probably be the un-crippled vista.
Business was slow to upgrade to WindowsXP, and are slow to upgrade to Vista.
Vista-preinstalled continues to dominate new computer sales to consumers.
Waiting for windows 7 when an application runs well on Vista and will create more profit by less down time is well worth it.
Waiting for windows 7 makes no sense.
Where does CNET get these idiot writers, what a friend's friend ?!?!
All this pre-announcement sham does is lead fools on who actually believe the Disney-like game Microsoft plays. The facts are: they make nice looking OS's that don't perform as they should, they never address user issues properly and they never phase out the shoddy parts of the design. What's the point of bloating it with anti-spyware and a firewall no-one will use?
Vista is the last MSFT product I will use. When it becomes obsolete I am fully switching to Ubuntu which with compiz-fusion already looks 50% better than Vista.
- by darklife41 October 18, 2008 12:56 PM PDT
- I think the author got it right. Microsoft is well aware that they recently over-hyped a lemon and it's come back to bite them. As a custom computer builder, we have yet to have a customer ask for Vista. Due to all the justified negative publicity that Vista has received, and due to the fact that Windows 7 will be out before anyone is really comfortable with the change to Vista, people just aren't interested in Vista.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (41 Comments)Whether Windows 7 is all that it's been hyped by Microsoft to be remains to be seen. Not too long ago the hype was all about Vista, which has turned out to be a "pretty" according to most people.
I'll get Windows 7 ASAP, again, for testing and to support it for customers who want it. But I'm not holding my breath that it'll deliver on it's promises of the next greatest thing since sliced bread either.