Microsoft: Vista is a compromise, a replacement is coming in 2009
By John Pospisil
Don’t get too familiar with Microsoft’s recently launched Vista operating system; its replacement, code named ”Vienna”, is already planned for 2009.
Don’t worry Vienna will be everything Vista was meant to be
Speaking at the recent RSA Conference in San Francisco, Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development of Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division, said the company didn’t have the time to make all the significant improvements it wanted to include in Vista.
The original plans for Vista included a reinvented user interface and yet another new file system. However, Microsoft was distracted by XP Service Pack 2 (XP SP2) due to all the vulnerabilities in the original version of Windows XP, and could not devote the engineering resources required to develop the new features.
“We put Longhorn on the back burner for awhile. Then when we came back to it, we realized that there were incremental things that we wanted to do, and significant improvements that we wanted to make in Vista that we couldn’t deliver in one release,” Fathi told PC World.
While there was a five year period between the launches of Vista and Windows XP, Fathi pointed out that there was two-and-a-half years between XP SP2. He thought that was a “good time frame for (a) refresh”, which means we could expect to see the next version of the operating system in 2009.
When asked what the best new features in Vienna would be, Fathi said that it was really too early to say, but it could be hypervisors or a new “user interface paradigm”.
The takeaway from this is that Microsoft wanted Vista to be more than it is (funny, they don’t mention that in the PR or advertising), and that the Vista we should have had (if not for the security flaws in Windows XP) is probably two-and-a-half years away.
You may remember that Microsoft launched a compromised, short-lived, dog of an operating system, called Windows Me, in September 2000. It was replaced by Windows XP in October 2001.
While I wouldn’t suggest that Windows Vista is in the same league as Windows Me, I do start getting that sinking feeling when I hear about intended features that didn’t make it into Vista, and its relatively short intended life cycle.
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Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!
February 11th, 2007
Dear Sirs,
would it be possible to get further news on the Vienna O/S/?
Best regards,
Joseph Chiuchiolo
February 11th, 2007
Check out the Wikipedia entry on Vienna on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_%22Vienna%22
Hope that helps.
John
February 11th, 2007
I hope there will be a vast improvement. Vista looks great, but it uses a lot of memory if you have a x32 platform. I’m looking forward to Vienna.
February 12th, 2007
I’ve never understood the flak Windows Me gets. I’ve been running it for the past six or seven years with virtually no program corruption and no more crashes than you’d expect from any Windows system. Plus it still feels fast and lean considering its age.
February 13th, 2007
I’m seeing some performance issues with Vista recently. But it is probably not accurate to compare Windows ME to Windows Vista.
Windows ME was built on the Win9x platform, while Windows Vista is built on the NT platform. Win9x was inherently less stable and less reliale, while the NT platform has been much, much more reliable.
February 16th, 2007
I think people are best off using Apple OS X. I don’t want to start up a big argument, but Apple never has to compromise their operating systems or projects. I’ve never seen anyone compare one of Apple’ OS’s to ME or some other Windows. P.S. Windows and Apple are both good.
March 9th, 2008
I think Vista is a great improvement on ME, but for my daily work and play XP is more stable for me to get things done without all the combatibility problems with connecting older devices to vista. May have another go on vista after SP2.