So Microsoft announced this morning that Windows Vista, originally slated for release around November of this year, and pushed the consumer release back to January 2007, while the enterprise releases will still take place around the end of this year. In a bombshell press release from yesterday afternoon, Microsoft claims they are “on target to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006. Microsoft is on track to complete the product this year, with business availability in November 2006 and broad consumer availability in January 2007.”
[ Microsoft :: Microsoft Updates Windows Vista Road Map ]
Bad news? Perhaps, but Vista is all but complete, so I’m not entirely sure why they’re bothering to delay broad adoption to the OS aside from giving IT professionals and businesses time to roll the operating system out, beta test the operating system among their own people, and to give software manufacturers, device driver writers, hardware manufacturers, and PC makers more of the time they’ll desperately need to make sure all of their products are compatible and up to snuff and work with Windows Vista for the consumer market.
There’s a really good discussion going on over at the Guardian UK Technology blog about the topic, and the post there is being updated with more information and analysis from elsewhere in the technology world. It looks like current reasoning behind the additional delay is that not all PC manufacturers could get on board with OEM licenses and shipping PCs with Windows Vista before the holidays.
What do you think? Will you be upgrading to Vista as soon as it comes out, or are you holding on to Windows XP for a while longer (or heaven forbid something earlier!) until you’re sure the time is right? Let us know in the comments!
[ Guardian UK Technology Blog :: Microsoft Delays Windows Vista Until 2007 ]
The venerable Microsoft Watch [ http://www.microsoft-watch.com/ ] is all over this one too, head over there for some more analysis and quotes from Microsoft officials who have commented on the delay.