There’s been a lot of press on a Gartner Research report that predicts Windows Vista will be delayed three months.
Frankly, it reads like the typical no-evidence linkbait that has been getting worse the last few months, but at least some good discussion is coming out of it.
Paul Thurott points out that Gartner’s main point, that Vista’s Beta 2-till-RTM period is more likely to be as long as Windows 2000’s, doesn’t work because 2000 had a major overhaul/shakeup. Vista had a pretty huge shakeup two years ago; another is almost completely impossible. More importantly, he says that Beta 2 should hit in 19 days, on May 22.
Aside from my internal Microsoft sources, my own experience covering Microsoft suggests that Gartner is off-base. According to Gartner, the reason for the delay is that Microsoft will soon ship Vista Beta 2, and it will need 9-12 months after Beta 2 to complete product. Windows XP, Gartner notes, took five months between Beta 2 and its final release, but Vista is more complex than XP. Gartner says that Vista is more comparable to Windows 2000, from a complexity standpoint, and Windows 2000 took 16 months between Beta 2 and the final version.
The comparison is ludicrous. When Microsoft shipped Windows 2000 Beta 2 in 1998, Windows 2000 was still called Windows NT 5.0, and the product was horribly off-track: Within months, the company assigned Brian Valentine to take over Windows 200 development, and he helped guide the project to its completion a year later. Windows Vista today is much further along than was Windows NT 5.0/2000 Beta 2. And it is much closer to the shipping version of the product than the Gartner report suggests.
(via Windows Vista Info)
Scoble and Memeorandum have more.
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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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