Windows 7 to Ship in January of 2010?
Posted by ThePaladin on July 7th, 2008
Greetings citizens of the realm!
The Paladin brings you news out of Redmond, Washington regarding Windows 7, the supposed successor to Windows Vista.
According to an article on Network World’s website (access original article by clicking here), Microsoft Vice President Bill Vehgte included this assertion in a letter sent to Microsoft customers not long ago.
The Paladin found this article to be very interesting reading.
According to Mr. Vehgte, the reason Windows 7 will be released at that time is that the consumers have apparently communicated to Microsoft that we want a “more regular, predictable Windows release schedule.”
The Paladin has more than one comment to make about this…
First of all, the Paladin suspects that the targeted January 2010 release of Windows 7 may have more to do with consumer’s generally cold reception to Vista itself. Since Vista sales have been disappointing for Microsoft by their own admission, and since the only reason Vista sales are going to pick up is that Microsoft has stopped shipping copies of Windows XP (a perfectly good operating system), the Paladin just finds it hard to believe that it is the consumer’s desire for a predictable release schedule that is driving this “rush” to get a new operating system out the door.
Windows XP may arguably be the best operating system Microsoft has ever turned out with respect to reliability (now that it has been out for so long with endless patches and service packs) as well as the amount of computing resources required to run it (often called an operating system’s “footprint”). To drop that operating system right now makes no sense, especially given the “not ready for prime time” status that Vista has had to battle. Add to this the need to upgrade significantly the hardware of just about any computer that wants to run Vista, and the dropping of Windows XP as a product at this time can only make sense in the light of Microsoft wanting to drive sales of Vista.
Of course, in a free and competitive operating system market, Microsoft would NEVER be able to get away with such a move without losing significant market share to competitors. However, given that they have a monopoly on the O/S market, they can get away with such tactics…but only for a little while longer. In fact, the Paladin will not be surprised to see more and more people begin to look at alternative operating systems (the Paladin has started running the free Linux operating system on one of his computers in his home and is quite pleased with it. In addition, the Mac operating system, which is now based on Linux, looks to be quite good as well).
Second, the Paladin cannot remember the last time Microsoft hit a scheduled release date anywhere NEAR the predicted date…at least not with an operating system that was even marginally useful. Now in their defense, Microsoft has a monumental task to release an operating system that runs on so many different computer configurations. But even with this under consideration, the Paladin will be pleasantly surprised if Microsoft really can release a usable Windows 7 in that time frame.
So to sum things up, the Paladin does not buy Mr. Vehgte’s assertion as to why Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 in January of 2010 (*if* they release it then). The Paladin still has a good enough memory to recall a little operating system called Windows ME that Microsoft does their best to never mention.
The Paladin wonders if Vista will go the way of Windows ME sometime soon…