Windows Vista Release Date
Doug
Caverly
Staff Writer
Published: 2006-07-12
Microsoft is arguably king of the delayed product launch. From older versions of Windows to the latest Office and Vista releases, things often come out much later than was first scheduled. But Steve Ballmer has assured the world there will never again be as much of a wait as there was (and is) between Windows XP and Vista.
Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, made this
comment at a conference. "I think it's probably important for me to tell
our partners that, rest assured, we will never have a gap between
Windows releases as long as the one between XP and Windows Vista,"
Ballmer said, as reported by
USA Today. "Count on it. I can go through the history of how we got
through here, but just count on it. We will never have this kind of gap
again."
Vista's release was most recently
pushed back into January, which means Microsoft will miss the
holiday season. A lot of vendors were upset to lose those Christmas
sales, and many software and hardware manufacturers were also
displeased. Bill Gates has spoken up in defense of the delay.
"We got to get this absolutely right," Gates said. "If the feedback from
the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to
delay it." According to USA Today, the Microsoft chairman thought "there
was an 80% chance that Vista would be ready in January."
XP was released on October 25, 2001. Therefore, assuming Vista is
released in January (or soon thereafter), Ballmer's promise means we'd
see the next version of Windows before midyear of 2012. And so, for
whatever that's worth, there it is.
