Vista slipshod, Sun gridlock (and honesty is ... a policy)

Welcome to today's IT Blogwatch, in which Vista slips again and Sun locks into its grid. Not to mention the honest boss...

Microsoft Vista won't ship to consumers until 2007, as reported by Elizabeth Montalbano: "Microsoft still plans to release to manufacturing all of Vista's six core editions at the same time in November, Allchin said. But PCs with the consumer versions pre-installed will not be for sale until January ... Vista development has slipped by 'a few weeks' because of quality issues ... Microsoft had originally targeted late November -- the start of the holiday shopping season -- for the broad shipment of Vista-based PCs. Some PC makers and retailers told Microsoft officials that they still could gear up to start selling machines with the new operating system during December ... In after hours trading, Microsoft shares were down 64 cents from $27.74 at market close to $27.10."

» The news spun up the usually-taciturn Frank Hayes: "Which one will make it out the door at Microsoft first -- Vista or Jim Allchin? ... we all should have been thinking how unlikely it was that Microsoft would meet a drumhead-tight, nothing-can-go-wrong schedule to get its most complicated software-development project ever completed on time. But amazingly, most of us (me too) thought it would happen. We bought a lot of rah-rah about how Microsoft's overhauled development process would make software delivery more predictable ... November, huh? Right ... Show of hands, please: Who still believes that absolutely nothing will go wrong in Vista development during the next eight months? All those with your hands raised, get out of the IT business. You're too optimistic for anyone's good."

» Leave it to the anonymous Microsoft blogger Mini-Microsoft to call it how he sees it: "Fire the leadership now! ... I was upset at missing the back-to-school market. Now we're missing the holiday sales market. All of those laptops and PCs are going to have XP on it. What percentage will upgrade to Vista? Well, I guess that's the little dream that I need to give up on. Vista's deployment is going to come from people buying CPUs with the OS pre-installed ... People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where's the freakin' accountability?"

» On MSDN's Channel 9 forums, Cider muses, "What sort of utter cretin launches a new product in JANUARY?  What a joke. Its ridiculous to say you have to delay for 4 weeks now.  Its fricking March.  If things are running behind, you DO NOT give up and say to your staff, "oh well, delay", you say "you have 8 months to find 4 weeks, or I will lay off the lot of you". Boy oh boy, does Microsoft just needs a 'Neutron' Jack Welch character to go in there and get rid of about a quarter of the engineers..."

» Scoble (R.) at least has the decency to be embarrassed: "Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it’s embarrassing. But we have been through product slips before ... and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."

» Joe Wilcox smells a rat: "Windows XP released to manufacturing in August 2001 and launched in late October. That's what it takes to hit the holiday sales cycle ... I don't see how there ever would have been enough time for PC manufacturers to get Windows Vista on new systems or for Microsoft to hold a massive launch event with lots of marketing ... For the record, in August 2004, Microsoft committed to broad availability in 2006."

Meanwhile, over at Sun, Jonathan Schwartz is crowing: "The Network is the Computer ... we're going to prove the point by unveiling the world's first on demand supercomputer. And by on demand, I mean accessible through your browser, with a credit card. This isn't yesterday's definition of On Demand, involving custom financing contracts, prepositioned inventory and a sales rep in a crisp blue suit ready to negotiate."

» James DeLong: "It does seem like this and similar services should further narrow the advantages that large firms have over small. IT departments are expensive, and thus require economies of scale. But a large outfit does not get a competitive advantage because it needs to use a lot of power ... Win or lose, its another example of the ability of innovators working within a market system to come up with daring approaches, and try them out, with possibly revolutionary consequences. And another illustration of the folly of government mandates that specify particular business models, such as net neutrality or a ala carte cable programming."

» Frank Gruber: "I am still trying to fathom the magnitude of Sun's feat and think others will have the same struggle. Therefore, I feel adoption of the Sun Grid may be slow to begin with since it is the first offering of its kind. Not to mention, I am concerned at the potential cost associated with paying for process like any other utility. I guess I do not want to see it get out of hand where processing consumers are being taken advantage of."

» Birdonthewire: "Sounds quite neat. Don't see how it's going to help their bottomline though, in the near, or for that matter, the forseeable future. Oh well..."

Buffer overflow:

• Eric Roch: SOA Quality Assurance
• Jeremy Reimer: MS launches anti-Phishing initiative, prepares IE 7 beta update
• Techdirt: Will DSL Really Get Naked?
• Vladimir Stojanovski: Mashup: Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Eclipse
• ResourceShelf: Here We Go Again: "Congoo to offer subscription content for free"
  
• Scott P. Shaffer: Pizza Coupons By Text Message
• Ed Foster: Is Software Quality Getting Worse?
• Fitzsim: Fedora Core 5
• Martin MC Brown: Opening the T1 CPU
• Alex Scoble: Myth busted: Vista a memory hog? Not so much...
• CJ Kelly: Security problems with U.S. Missile Defense Agency
• Martin McKeay: Do you believe in fair use?
• Robert L. Mitchell: Good technologists are hard to find - NOT?
• Ken Mingis: Say it ain't so, Apple
• Brian Babineau: Become a Test Pilot, sort of

And finally... The Honest Boss

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.