The road to Eldorado

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Eldorado, spanish for “the gilded one” is a term becoming more and more appropriate for Microsoft Windows Vista, but I’m gonna give you a different angle to look at this, based on the 2000 movie ‘the road to Eldorado’.

Five long years

Microsoft latest official launch date for Microsoft Windows Vista is December 2006 for business costumers and January 2007 for consumer editions. In short this means there’s a long and stretching period of five years between the release of Microsoft Windows XP and the release of Microsoft Windows Vista.

My guess

I’m not a gambling person. Not the kind of person that says stupid things (all the time) and not the kind of person that believes in conspiracy theories. I am however convinced Microsoft Windows Vista will not be released in December … 2006. However: this is just a gut feeling. There’s nothing to prove, only to guess, but there are some things that point in this direction and things I just can’t deny.

Why it isn’t December

I understand Microsoft officials claiming December 2006, but it’s just not feasible.Let’s look at the facts: for Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional it took a whopping twelve months to go from Beta2 to Release to Manufacturing. Microsoft Windows XP took only five months for this process. Microsoft claims the same period for Microsoft Windows Vista as they did for Microsoft Windows XP. Between the Release to Manufacturing date and the date of general availability there’s stereotypically 2 months. With Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 released May 23, 2006 we can expect a Release to Manufacturing date at the end of November 2006 and a data of general availability at the beginning of February 2006.

Why it should be December

Remember we all told our customers to wait for Microsoft Windows Vista and skip implementing Microsoft Windows XP back in 2003 and 2004? What fools we were, because these customers might get in big trouble when they just implemented new workstations based on Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. With most companies migrating every four years the end of the extended support period for Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (due December 31, 2010) might provide problems. With Microsoft Windows Vista not being available in Q1 2007 these costumers might be stuck with Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional based workstations without support from Microsoft. Of course Microsoft would probably extend support like they did with Microsoft Windows NT4, but can we count on that to happen?

Why it isn’t February

Microsoft also gets into serious problems releasing Microsoft Windows Vista in January of February. Any year. Computer sales in December are sky high by default and most hardware vendors can’t survive without it. When Microsoft releases Microsoft Windows Vista in January the computer stores will have to give discount on every PC sold, because the alternative is customers will wait for January of February. The other solution Microsoft might offer is a free upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista when you buy a PC in December, but that’s not likely to happen as well.

Then when?

My guess is Q2 2007. Why? That’s when Nvidia and ATi will be releasing their new DirectX 10 videocards (Direct X 10 only available in Microsoft Windows Vista). That’s when Novell will be releasing their new Novell client. That’s why Microsoft tells us not to worry about the minimum specifications. That's what you slipped in! That's what was on your shoe! AND THAT EXPLAINS THE ABRASION ON YOUR PALM! Damn I'm good! … erhm … OK, perhaps I got a little carried away there [;)]

 

Concluding

The tagline for the 2000 movie ‘The road to Eldorado’ surprisingly is ‘They came for the gold… they stayed for the adventure’. Perhaps that sums up the feeling I’m having about Microsoft Windows Vista. It’s not going to be the fabulous extraordinary groundbreaking operating system Microsoft wanted us to believe back in 2003 and 2004, but Hey! What an adventure!

One Response to The road to Eldorado

  1.  

    I'm glad to see you're starting to shed off that usual sense of paranoia.. only to be replaced with even more paranoia!

    I still have high expectations for Vista myself.

    (.. if only because of all the lovely migration projects that it'll get us.. 😉 )

leave your comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.