Windows Vista Slips to January - Is this Good, Bad, or Indifferent?
With the Announcement of Windows Vista’s release slipping to January 2007, there is a lot of mixed emotion out there regarding this announcement. After an internal meeting in February where Steve Ballmer was one of the speakers and talked about Vista’s schedule and didn’t seem too pleased with its progress, we were all concerned with a possible slip. At the same time, we’d rather see the product slip and have a better product at release verses releasing a product just to say we released it and suffer the consequence afterwards.
We heard the news today during the Named OEM CEO Summit this afternoon just as the news was hitting the wire and I was surprised by some of the responses from the OEM Executives. Several of them mentioned a level of relieve of the slip because it meant that vendors would have more time to make improvements in graphics cards and it would be easier to get the Intel 945 chip sets in place for the new systems.
Since the launch will follow the holiday season, it means systems will ship with Windows XP for one more season or the other option of possibly shipping some systems with pre release code (not a recommended solution, but will inevitably happen in some instances).
What does this mean for System Builders, OEMs, and MNA’s? Keep focusing on those new Dual Core Systems and work keep your eye on the Office 2007 Launch which is still on track and will now be a separate launch from Windows Vista.
If you are looking for details on the announcement, its available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass
Let me know your thoughts on the new release date.