Vista Sucks!

[Titus]

Microsoft is inching closer and closer to realizing that XP may be lingering around longer than they hoped. With the hazy opinions on Vista, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft cans it and pushes Windows 7 out.

Not likely... Most all of Microsoft's huge corporate clients are committed to moving to Vista. Microsoft knows that once they have it at work and are forced to use it every day, the average consumer will get used to it, stop their bitching, and buy a new PC with Vista for home. Microsoft may very well release a second release of Vista, but there is no way they would risk pissing off corporate America by shortening the lifespan of the platform to push out Win7. With corporations like mine in the middle of projects with budgets bigger than you would believe to convert 200k employees and 100s of custom apps to Vista, Vista is here for it's planned lifespan.

[Bacon]

What's Win7? Is that the new OS they're coming out with?

[tailchaser]

What's Win7? Is that the new OS they're coming out with?

Yes. Possibly earlier than originally planned if the big shops don't start picking up Vista faster... I figure BoA is probably the death knell for Vista. Whatever they adopt is usually a good indication of what no one else will. :-P

[Nexus Flux]

It's been my experience that most companies don't consider a new MS OS until after the first service pack. It's due to budgeting, hardware requirements, internal software updates for their custom apps, beuractatic red tape, testing, fear of user acceptance, etc... Vista's SP1 is due out in Q1 08 so I think more and more companies will probably be using it by Q3 08.

[Radio-Active]

My company just upgraded half of its pc's to XP from NT. Just 3 years ago, IBM upgraded my PC from a 333Mhz to a P4. I still have my 3 year old PC with Windows 2000.

[Nexus Flux]

Yes, this is quite common. One compny I worked at didn't realise there were still NT boxes on the newtork despite me pointing it out on numerous occasions. Then one day the company got hit with a virus and realized the PBX and fax systems were running on NT. The phones were out for 3 days. This happened last year.

[Nexus Flux]

Going back to Titus' comment on the OS lifecycle, here is an excerpt form MS' page.

Products Released |General Availability Date| Mainstream Support Retired| Extended Support Retired
Windows XP Professional| 12/31/2001| 4/14/2009| 4/8/2014

Linke

This basically means that after 4/14/2009 there will be no SP's, or updates. And after 4/8/2014 extended support contracts will end for corporate customers.