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Preston Gralla's picture
Preston Gralla

Seeing Through Windows

Ballmer: Vista is a "work in progress"

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Rated -36
296 Votes

Steve Ballmer recently confirmed what much of the rest of the world is saying: Vista still needs work. He admitted in a speech at Microsoft's 's Most Valuable Professionals conference in Seattle that Vista remains a "work in progress."

Here's an excerpt from the speech, according to Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog for the Seattle Post Intelligence:

Windows Vista: A work in progress. [Laughter, applause.] A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases.

Ballmer also hints that Vista is more bloated than it should be:

We had some things that we can't just set the dial back, but I think people wish we could. Vista is bigger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve.

Beyond that, though, Ballmer wouldn't go. And as for what Microsoft is doing about that "work in progress," he's mum as well. But don't expect any major changes to Vista; Microsoft is pouring its resources into Windows 7.

And it seems pretty clear from his comments about Vista, that it's pushing hard to make sure Windows 7 isn't bedeviled by delays, that it won't be bloated, and that it won't suffer from the driver woes that hit Vista so hard.

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What People Are Saying

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Rated +17
239 Votes

It's ME 2.0

That's all I will say. You will see.

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Rated +29
269 Votes

I LOVE Vista!

Vista finally pushed me over the hump to give Linux a real go. A year later, I'm happily running Ubuntu on my home system AND both of my work computers (desktop and laptop). I do AD management through a virtual XP machine. Otherwise I do 75% of my work in Linux.

Thank you, Steve Ballmer!!!

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Rated +16
288 Votes

Why even care?

Who cares about Vista or Windows 7? You have the the chance to get the world's most powerful and innovative operation system, TODAY: namely, Mac OS X Leopard. Keep Windows XP for your gaming if you must, but use Leopard for everything else, and you will be happy you did.

Oh yeah, and Gralla is a Microsoft peddling, technically deficient, Ballmer puppet.

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Rated +1
239 Votes

Well, yes..

Apple did something right by using BSD as the core.

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Rated +14
252 Votes

Satire

Preston, your recent satirical piece on why Vista blows Macintosh away wasn't received well by many of the Mac persuasion.

You WERE kidding, right?

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Rated -3
267 Votes

Who cares about Mac OSX?

Sorry Apple Fanboy, but 97% of the world doesn't care about Mac OSX. The computing world runs on Windows. Get over it.

Rate this
Rated 0
270 Votes

Wrong and Wrong

Sorry bud, but many in the professional world rely solely on macs.

Don't post foolish 'facts' as the computing world runs on many platforms, and many in the computing world simply refuse to run MS on there servers, which do most of the 'running' that matters.

I think you need to 'get over' posting ridiculous comments.

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Rated +15
279 Votes

Just because the rest of the

Just because the rest of the world isn't smart enough to see a better alternative, those of us who have should be vilified by being called "fanboys"? Oh yeah, I have a MS in CS from Berkeley... what do you have?

You can't even get your stats right- Mac market share is at 8%. Go beat off to PC mag and play with office all alone in your room. Ohh Excel, Ohh Word!

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Rated +19
241 Votes

So...

"I have a MS in CS from Berkeley..."

Windows has about ~80% of the desktop market. They got that share in part by using less than ethical means. However, Apple is not innocent either...

And how does stating you have an MS in CS.. lend to your credibility on this topic? The data can be queried by any objectively-minded person.

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Rated +11
239 Votes

Funny how people think just

Funny how people think just because you have an MS in CS means you know something. It's a huge misconception in CS. CS only deals with how computers innards work software wise (mostly).

As you can see, this has nothing to do with market share, network admin, business statistics, building hot rod computers, repairing, modding, etc. Not to mention quantifying which OS is better than another from a CS standpoint is near impossible from an outside point of view. Unless you have indepth knowledge on how all OSs innards work, any claim would be near pointless to make.

It's always amusing to see people say I have an MS in CS when the situation has nothing to do with CS. It's more along the lines of computer business analyst and generally being tech savvy. Heh...