Sunday, April 09, 2006

More on Windows Vista

I'm a great fan of Robert Cringley's column and this weeks raises a very good point about Vista's slippage. He blames Dell. According to Cringely, Dell require six months to test a platform prior to release which they wouldn't have had with a Christmas release.

Previous articles have claimed HP were worried about Dell beating them to market. HP's channel based distribution can't get product out as fast as Dell's direct model. It sounds feasible that both the big boys were worried about Microsoft's timetable.

This is actually good news for Vista. Had MS rushed this to market, we'd have seen Vista shipping at best on second tier PC's. At worst, a lot of those PCs would have been badly tested and put together giving the new Windows distribution a bad name.

It also means more time for us to digest the new features. New operating systems are always a traumatic period for computer techs. Although nowhere near as stressful as when the customer comes to pay the bill.