Comments on: I agree with Ballmer: Let's wait for Windows 7

Don Reisinger agrees with Ballmer: let's wait for Windows 7 instead of buying Windows Vista.

[Mr. Dee]

You are very clueless person when it comes to IT.

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.

[Hunnter2k3]

I despise the new interface in every way possible, it wastes space too.
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.

[goodspeed8701]

Hey stupido... Why dont you stick with windows 95, if You are realy a classic kind of person. Vista is the best os windows has created and I dont have any issues with it. IE7 or IE8 rocks too. if you hate M$ why dont you use something else.

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

[aztec92154]

@goodspeed8701

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.

[GreginChicagoland]

I think Microsoft is caught between trying to market Vista now, and creating buzz for Windows 7. Corporate roll-out of Vista is inevitable because newer PC's are coming out more and more with specs that can support it and prioprietary business software is slowly getting compatible.

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.

[Vegaman_Dan]

I'm disappointed in Don's comments. I had thought he was more in tune with the industry than his journal would indicate. Companies typically promote their next great thing. This is standard behavior in the industry. Apple does it. Dell does it. Google does it. You don't hear them running around promoting an existing product that is in production- you promote the next thing down the line.

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.

[ITcomposer]

To respond to hunter's comments comments:

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.

[gabeheim]

IE on virtual memory?

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.

[Imalittleteapot]

ITcomposer. No, don't turn off Aero. From what I remember GDI isn't hardware accelerated on Vista, but with a composition manager like Aero it doesn't matter. Turn it off and you'll probably get tracers everytime you drag a Window, but not in XP where GDI is HA. Of course, I could be wrong, but from what I've heard and from what I've seen when turning Aero off is XP has the drivers to handle the old GUI, but Vista doesn't. So, you're not saving anything by turning off Aero. Sometimes the GUI will be even less responsive to you than if you had just left it on so Vista can use your video card.

In my opinion turning off Aero is more like a compatibility mode than it is for actually saving hardware resources.

[jgoto]

Whether you buy Vista, Windows 7 or XP, They're all sales to Microsoft.

[jdzions]

The reasons most new-PC customers are unhappy with Vista are twofold: (1) Manufacturers delivered shoddy drivers, and they delivered them late; (2) Manufacturers deliver Vista systems with huge amounts of Crapware (and badly-implemented crapware at that) larded into the boot image.

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."

[Dalkorian]

ROFLMAO - enjoy your slavery. I'd rather the computer just worked to begin with. When you have to "trick" your customers into liking your product by calling it "Mojave" and having it pre-set up on a supercomputer just to make it run, you've seriously missed the boat.

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.

[Imalittleteapot]

Look I'm not saying Vista is absolute crap, but so what if a bunch of people that can't even put a new video card into their system without your help think Vista is pretty? I think Vista is pretty too, and I use on my home system. But really, does that mean a business owner should give a crap? You should see the custom stuff I actually use at work to get my job done. It's not pretty at all but why replace it? Well, that's what the boss thinks and that's why Vista isn't going over well in some businesses. It has nothing to do with how pretty it looks at home.

[darklife41]

As a system builder who builds every system without crapware, I've never had a customer for home use nor business use ask for Vista. And since I've used it on my own machines since the beta was available, I'm in no hurry to push Vista. We don't have a problem with drivers anymore either.

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.

[irperez]

Uh, can we say sarcasm...

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.

[Dalkorian]

Nice, now go tell your owner that you've done his bidding. Maybe he'll actually pay you this time!

[goodspeed8701]

People think that apple is better cause they try to make their osx work with old macs. Come to think of it, if apple has thesame market share M$ has they would want you to buy a new mac to go with their new os. Because they have a little share of the market and so they want to make sure people dont buy new mac to update their os cos they will never do that.

[rimesparse]

Anyone who thinks that XP, "with the help of Service Pack 3, packs an even more appealing set of features that (sic) Vista running Service Pack 1," is crazy. (I was on XP for years and have now been on Vista since May 2007.) As some other comments have noted, that's only people's PERCEPTION who haven't actually used Vista. Perception is reality in many fields...does it have to be true in the tech sector, too? I hope not. But apparently even in the tech sector sometimes people don't distinguish the difference.

[Dalkorian]

Keep telling yourself it's a perception problem, maybe you'll convince yourself.

[Mr. Dee]

@Hunnter2k3:

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.

[Dalkorian]

You must be practicing for a career in selling winblows to the dumbest slaves on the planet. Nice work!

[Philstera]

Another crap article from CNET

[ppgreat]

If I remember correctly, this is exactly the same speech that Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer gave about Vista.

"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?

[Dalkorian]

:-)

At least someone else has been paying attention.

[runswithscissorsXX]

so much animosity towards the author of this article...it's shocking. and not a single one of you pointed out the numerous typos and grammatical errors. but that's another comment...

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.)

[runswithscissorsXX]

- and another thing!

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.

[john55440]

More silly anti-Vista hysteria.

Business was slow to upgrade to WindowsXP, and are slow to upgrade to Vista.

Vista-preinstalled continues to dominate new computer sales to consumers.

[darklife41]

Vista preinstalled systems dominate sales because Vista preinstalls are much more widely available.

[jabberwolf]

Another idiot colum writer that simply knows only propaganda and doesnt do his research.

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 ?!?!

[billmosby]

One question I have to ask is whether anybody believes that Windows 7 will be anywhere near on time. What are the chances?

[mikebrown66]

When Apple first released OS X in 2001, a lot of drivers and software didn't work. Apple warned developers before hand if you were not following the rules and using the legitimate calls and such while programing, you risk your software not running in future releases. There were a few of these with the latest release 10.5 (Leopard) as well, but very few in comparison to the first release of OS X. In terms of backwards compatibility with vintage software (Classic OS), that has come to an end with Leopard. It doesn't support the Classic OS anymore at all, and Intel based Macs can't run ANY Classic OS software without some form of after-market emmulation. Everything changes, backwards compatibility stops sooner or later, and until Microsoft realizes that the software developers need to up their game and maintain compatibility, Vista and future releases will always appear to not function properly.

[vanderloo]

ppgreat said what was important. Microsoft is forever working on the 'great OS' that will fix issues and make computing better. It's all nonsense. Vista has hardly been out for five minutes, they haven't sufficiently addressed any of its issues and now they're working on another giant piece of bloatware and happy to make money from mugs who buy Vista or machines preloaded with this substandard OS.

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.

[darklife41]

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.

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.