Vista delayed

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-03-21 08:05pm

Reuters wrote:SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday it plans to delay the consumer launch of its much-anticipated Windows Vista until after this year's holiday shopping season, sending its shares down nearly 3 percent.

The world's largest software maker pushed back the consumer version of Vista until January 2007 from an earlier target for the second half of 2006 and pledged to ship the next version of its operating system to business customers in November.

Vista is the first major overhaul of Windows since Microsoft rolled out Windows XP nearly five years ago.

Microsoft had originally been expected to release Windows Longhorn, now Vista, in 2005. The company scaled back its ambitions and pushed it out to 2006 before this latest delay.

"We could have just gone ahead, but I didn't think it was the right thing to do," said Jim Allchin, co-president of the company's Platforms & Services Division. "We're setting stringent quality bars on what we do."

Windows Vista is the headliner for a series of upcoming and recently released new products at the software giant, including its Xbox 360 next-generation game console and an upgrade to its popular Office business software.

Microsoft said it delayed Vista to improve overall quality, particularly in security, and that PC makers didn't want the operating system introduced in the middle of holiday sales, because a new version would create instability in the market.

The delay also pertains to Vista loaded on new PCs.

Investors, concerned about the impact of a Vista delay on PC sales, pushed down shares of chip maker Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and large PC manufacturers Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Dell Inc. (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in after-hours trade.

Microsoft's Allchin dismissed those concerns and said he did not expect any change in consumer buying habit especially if PC manufacturers and retailers offer the option to upgrade to Windows Vista when the new product hits store shelves.

Windows, which is found in about 90 percent of all computer desktops, is Microsoft's biggest cash cow.

Microsoft said it plans to conduct a broad consumer "beta", or test, of Windows Vista in the coming quarter.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is planning six core offerings of the Vista operating system, targeting how people use computers instead of PC hardware specifications.

Three will be aimed at consumers, two at business users, and a stripped-down version for emerging markets. Unlike the current Windows XP, there will be no versions designed specifically for advanced 64-bit computing, multimedia computers or Tablet PCs.

Shares of Microsoft fell 2.7 percent to $26.98 on the Inet electronic brokerage. In regular Nasdaq trade, the stock fell 15 cents, or less than 1 percent, to close at $27.74.

(Additional reporting by Duncan Martell and Eric Auchard in San Francisco)

Microsoft's been really active, this week, in the news. They're also designing a handheld game platform that also plays music and movies (ie. PSP/Gameboy/iPod wannabe), and they're increasing shipments of 360's, but this is the biggest news.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2006-03-21 08:39pm

I wonder what this means for the video card manufacturers. D3D10 is Vista only. Would they do another refresh of the current generation of cards or would they release their D3D10 cards as schedueled?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-03-21 08:44pm

Hamel wrote:I wonder what this means for the video card manufacturers. D3D10 is Vista only. Would they do another refresh of the current generation of cards or would they release their D3D10 cards as schedueled?

Video cards are sufficiently difficult to supply that they'll probably use a short delay only to build inventory. If the delay extends for a very long time, then they'll probably get to work on second generation cards (or, equivalently, on refining their manufacturing processes), while continuing production on the previous cards.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2006-03-21 09:46pm

Hamel wrote:I wonder what this means for the video card manufacturers. D3D10 is Vista only. Would they do another refresh of the current generation of cards or would they release their D3D10 cards as schedueled?

Remember the Radeon 9700? It came out a full eight months before DirectX 9.0.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-03-21 10:04pm

MS have been working on this thing for the longest time, the period of time between releases of a major OS by them have never gotten this large before. I'm sure another year or so won't affect anyone's perception now.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2006-03-22 12:48am

Every cloud has a silver lining. Microsoft is placing Steve Sinofsky in charge of Windows. Sinofsky previously managed Office, and Office is, in my opinion, Microsoft's absolute best product (if you compare Office to any other productivity suite out there, no one can compete with it in terms of range of applications, depth of features, interface quality, et cetera, on a cross-range basis, although admittedly Publisher and Frontpage are subpar). Hopefully Sinofsky will be able to shake up the Windows group. This business of waiting six years for a new OS when in the past Microsoft whipped them out every three years is nonsense, at any rate.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-03-22 12:52am

Bah, great, now I'll have to wait even longer until I should get a new computer...

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2006-03-22 12:54am

RThurmont wrote:Every cloud has a silver lining. Microsoft is placing Steve Sinofsky in charge of Windows. Sinofsky previously managed Office, and Office is, in my opinion, Microsoft's absolute best product (if you compare Office to any other productivity suite out there, no one can compete with it in terms of range of applications, depth of features, interface quality, et cetera, on a cross-range basis, although admittedly Publisher and Frontpage are subpar). Hopefully Sinofsky will be able to shake up the Windows group. This business of waiting six years for a new OS when in the past Microsoft whipped them out every three years is nonsense, at any rate.

You want more ferquent OS changes?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-03-22 06:46pm

Keevan_Colton wrote:You want more ferquent OS changes?

Both MacOS X and various Linux distributions have released major updates in less time.

RThurmont wrote:Every cloud has a silver lining. Microsoft is placing Steve Sinofsky in charge of Windows. Sinofsky previously managed Office, and Office is, in my opinion, Microsoft's absolute best product (if you compare Office to any other productivity suite out there, no one can compete with it in terms of range of applications, depth of features, interface quality, et cetera, on a cross-range basis, although admittedly Publisher and Frontpage are subpar). Hopefully Sinofsky will be able to shake up the Windows group. This business of waiting six years for a new OS when in the past Microsoft whipped them out every three years is nonsense, at any rate.

Well, Office is good but it is expensive and has stagnated in the Office 97-2003 era. Office 2007 looks to be a radical change on the UI layer, but I have mixed thoughts on it.

Long development from Microsoft is not new, however, and Vista's development was more or less restarted in 2004.