Vista Delayed Again
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The unthinkable has happened: Microsoft has delayed Windows Vista yet again. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, announced on March 21 during a conference call that Microsoft is now planning to roll out Windows Vista in two stages. The business, volume-licensed versions of Vista will now ship in November 2006, as many expected. But the consumer, retail versions of Vista won't be ready until January 2007. Until March 21, Microsoft officials had said Vista would be ready to ship in time for the holiday 2006 selling season. The delay will likely impact PC makers who had been counting on preloading Vista on new PCs this fall. Allchin attributed the decision to delay the retail versions of Vista to quality concerns. "Product quality is the first priority. We won't compromise on that," Allchin said, reiterating his oft-repeated statement that product quality trumps all else when it comes to Windows. When asked for further details, Allchin cited performance, drivers, testing and security as areas where Microsoft and some of its partners had concerns. Microsoft is still planning to release the next test build of Vista, its "consumer Community Technology Preview" build, to an estimated 2 million testers sometime in the next quarter, Allchin said. Microsoft had been telling testers to expect that CTP build in April. Lately, however, some partners said they heard Microsoft might not make that April date. Microsoft is still on track to release the Vista code to manufacturing in 2006, however, Allchin said. "We expect some to say that this [the next CTP build] was fine and why didn't they just ship this," Allchin said. "We needed just a few more weeks," Allchin said. "Industry partners need quite a bit of time and certainty about that time." Allchin downplayed the potential impact on Microsoft partners of the delay. "Some partners will be impacted more than others," Allchin said. "To be clear, some [partners] wanted us to continue, but we wanted to think about the whole industry." Allchin said that Microsoft is not changing its Vista forecasts, and is expecting the delay in retail availability to have little, if any, impact on revenue, as the company will still be delivering the product in the fiscal 2007 timeframe. One Microsoft TAP (Technology Adoption Partner) tester, who requested anonymity, was not as forgiving about the slip. "I think that the delay is significant...Microsoft is missing a key time over the holidays in bringing Vista to the most consumers possible at launch," the partner said. Other company watchers said they were not surprised by the delay, claiming the warning signs had been apparent for some time. Microsoft's decision not to issue a December CTP of Vista, as well as its strategy to forgo a traditional Beta 2 build in favor of a series of CTPs gave some Microsoft watchers cause for concern. |
Comments (4)
In this article, it states: "The business, volume-licensed versions of Vista will now ship in November 2006, as many expected. But the consumer, retail versions of Vista won't be ready until January 2007." It also says "When asked for further details, Allchin cited performance, drivers, testing and security as areas where Microsoft and some of its partners had concerns."I've looked everywhere, but I can't find out where any reporter has asked the exceedingly obvious question: "Does this mean businesses have a lower standard of excellence when it comes to "drivers, testing and security" than do retail consumers? The second obvious question would be "what does an additional four weeks do for MS (looking at a product launch 10 months from now)? Why can't Microsoft just "motivate" it's core staff to work an additional 4-8 hours a week for the next 10 months or hire an equivalent number of folks? Giving up the Christmas shopping season is a HUGE letdown for the retail sector and the launch, momentum-wise, of Vista. This delay is already perceived by many in the industry as indicative of systemic and significant problems with the product. Four weeks is going to solve it? And there was no other way than to tack those weeks on 9 months from now? It goes beyond believable. Why is Microsoft not being asked these exceedingly obvious questions?
Posted by David Johnson | March 23, 2006 12:50 PM
What's a few more months. Dealers aren't consumers. They only want Xmas sales to be richer. I want the best vista. I could care less about purchasing in December. January has better price deals anyway. And besides, my perfectly running 2004 Dell XPS will be as good in Dec as it is now. So MS, get it right. Then I'll upgrade my hardware.
Posted by J Royce | March 23, 2006 7:50 PM
Untill someone at Microsoft actually tells the average user exactly what the "concerns" are there is no reason to believe a word they say. After all---they have yet to actually deliver something that's both on-time and bug-free out of the box.
Posted by Owen Sims | March 28, 2006 4:00 AM
Microsoft has become arrogant and over-confident. Good old Balmer thinks that there is no heat whatsoever from any possible competition. They have gotten too settled into their 95% marketshare so the programmers are taking their sweet time (5+ years and running since XP). Microsofts overconfidence has caused Microsoft to let its guard down and thats when a company usually gets slowly eaten by competitors. This is what IS beginning to happen, and will be Microsoft's eventual undoing. If they dont straighten up soon, their marketshare is going to start slipping. Look at Intel, they portrayed the same arrogance about competition from AMD and lookwhat happened... AMD jumped on the 64 bit bandwagon leaving Intel far behind in processor technology and Intels marketshare got a big chunk taken out of it by AMD. Eventually however this got Intel's attention and now Intel is aggresively pursuing 64 bit and dual-core technologies. Microsoft Windows Vista is already going to be a major resource hog, requiring a powerful computer that most people dont have right now. Now yet another delay has befallen Vista since even this article. I know I am on a Microsoft friendly site but I feel it neccessary to point out that Apple has released four new OS's to Microsoft's one (windows XP). They are now going to have out Mac OS Leopard months before Consumer Vista, and all of these OS's have had features and eye candy that Vista is trying to incorporate but with much more taxing computer requirements... Why?????? Linux has plenty of eye candy using KDE and Gnome with security that far surpasses XP and even a little better than OS X in some ways and yet runs on hardware as old as a 486 and Pentium 1. Why?????? Why is it that Microsofts OS's are always unnecessarily taxing to current generation PCs. Vista is by far going to be the biggest jump in system requirements ever seen by Windows when it doesnt even need to be! I think it all goes back to my point. Microsoft has become overconfident and sloppy. They have become this way because they think they cant be hurt by competition. No company is "untouchable" and that includes Microsoft.
Posted by Eric Blair | May 3, 2006 12:38 AM