No foolin', Vista might be pushed to April 2007

"Dear Santa, I was a good boy this year. For Christmas, I would like an upgrade to my operating system....oh snap, whaddya mean it might be delayed until April of 2007?"

Yes, this sad little note written in crayon just came across my desk and is supported by the Gartner research group. Based on Gartner's opinion, there's a good chance that the test to production cycle for Vista could mirror the lengthy cycle that Windows 2000 followed, meaning we could see another delay. I'm all for getting things right, but when I look at everything Vista has to offer from built-in Tablet PC functionality to enhanced Media Center capabilities, not to mention some cool new games (OK, that's only important to me I suppose), I see every reason for moving this out the door. I can understand if Microsoft wants to shed their "update" and "service pack" labels, but earning an "overpromise and underdeliver" label can't possibly be better.

-kct

Comments

[Scotty]

On my LE1600 w/1.5GB of RAM:

1. Can't activate MS Reader. When I say I can't activate it, I don't just mean I can't access my purchased content, I mean I can't even activate it to buy new content with a different passport!
2. Office 2007 locks up all the time and you can't double click DOC/XLS files to launch directly into them. Don't even get me started on Onenote 2007, I rolled back to Onenote 2003.
3. Windows Explorer windows lock up all the time when moving files to/from USB drives, or from one directory to another. I call it the right click of death.
4. Blackberry Desktop can't connect to a Blackberry (making it pretty useless.)
5. Windows Defender, Windows Defragger and something else periodically grab the hard disk for 10 to 15 minutes rendering the LE1600 useless. Wonderful in the middle of a meeting where you were taking notes and are suddenly using a paper note pad instead.
6. Sleep used to work under 5308 but ever since I did 5342 it's broken (even rolling back to 5308 didn't get it back)
7. Coming out of hibernate is like a box of chocolates, you never know if it will be quick or slow.
8. Sound doesn't work, despite repeated googling to find solutions.
9. Bluetooth doesn't work. Toshiba's INF file is apparently hosed according to Vista.
10. Finger print/TPM don't work, even after applying the admin fix you still don't get a fully working system.
11. Many websites don't work properly with IE7.
12. Numerous tiny broken things I stumble into just navigating around the system (Welcome page doesn't know its activated sometimes, never knows its a Motion Computer, sometimes the rotate button rotates the screen, sometimes it doesn't etc...)

April 2007 sounds much more likely to me based on the beta's I've gotten from MS so far. This stuff isn't a "couple weeks more" from production ready.

As badly as people need these features, MS can't ship a product in this condition.