Ballmer: Vista is a "work in progress"

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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