Just because
Windows 7 is right around the corner doesn't mean Microsoft intends to immediately sweep Vista under the rug and forget about it. After some confusion around the 'nets today, a company spokesperson confirmed with
PC World that its policy is to back an OS for at least four years from launch, meaning January 2011 here, but also said it plans to cut ties and drop mainstream support for the three consumer models within three years, before April 2012. Despite the minimum, most Windows variants have seen longer lifecycles --
XP, for example, had mainstream support for eight years after launch. Business and Enterprise users will still receive security updates until April 2017. Sure, it's good to see people will still have the option for Vista further down the road, but we don't expect a lot of OEMs or consumers will be opting for it once
7 goes gold.
Read - Vista's fading support
Read - XP's support lifecycle
posted May 5th 2009 1:48AM
It's this generation's Windows ME.
Windows ME was like a rehash of 98 that came out worse than 98
Vista was Microsoft trying too hard
Here's a tip:
Turn on Window update
Get latest driver
Leave UAC on (reason I don't have an antivirus installed)
Vista runs like butta
Three Vista (a gaming/3D machine and two lappy) at home and very happy.
I do 3D on a XP at work and it's a pile of virus. We get virus attack at work. These type of attack UAC would stop. Let XP die please!
To be fair Vista's performance get's a bad rap for one major reason; average Windows PC being bought is around $600 or less
imagine the hardware most of the people are living with
but there's far more to it obviously, at my school the wifi is pretty slow, but my Linux/XP netbook can connect to it fine, anyone I see with Vista has wireless connection issues
To be really fair, yes it runs fine performance wise on the two computers I have it on (one is a QX9650 desktop, the other a XPS M1330 C2d 1.66). It runs fine performance wise, it's the little things here and there that bug me. Plus, fact of the matter is the public has largely ignored the OS, cementing its failure.
XP came out with similar sentiments, and I had a fairly new system when it came out but most of my buddies stuck with Win2k forever, even though it took forever to load.
MS is kind of hit or miss with its consumer OS. 98SE was sweet! ME, not so much. Win2k was never really a consumer OS but I liked it very much. Then we had XP, and Vista. So it's hit, miss, hit, miss. 7 looks to be a hit hopefully. Going to download the RC1 tonight hopefully.
The Vista logo is getting low ranked, LOL!!
Comments like this make me a sad panda. Vista, even at its worst, was never as bad as ME.
The other interesting thing is that for a 'failure' it's done pretty well. Sure, the damage has been done but it seems to be running on about a quarter of all networked PCs.
Ah, Vista, you turned out OK but it's all too little too late.
@roach
Here's a tip:
- Upgrade to XP
- Get a free virtual hardware upgrade by discovering how a machine that ran 'fine' can now run 'fast'
- Do everything you did in Vista only faster and with a much more consistent interface
- Curse yourself (and everyone who low ranks this) for having been blind till now and having wasted machine power for years in exchange for basically two idiotic screen effects.
Cant believe there are still idiots that compare Vista to ME.
WinXP will certainly outlive Vista. Sorry to all the people that said Vista was the greatest OS that Microsoft ever built and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. Maybe you meant to say that there was absolutely nothing right to it. I thought Vista was good as long as you had powerful enough hardware to run it properly. Unfortunately, most people didn't. Vista was an all around embarrassment for Microsoft. Let Vista go. Windows 7 will hopefully be a lot better.
Vista was never nearly as bad as ME. I had a lot of issues when I first installed Vista, and reinstalled it, and messed with it for a while. Yet it still never left the bad taste that ME did. ME was just broken, unloved, and hopeless.
Now Vista runs well for me and hasn't had a problem in a long time. ME was a total disaster and to compare the two is really pretty silly. Especially considering ME was not an attempt at a great leap forward for the OS maker - while MS made a lot of changes from XP to Vista. Instead, ME was just an attempt to cash in on the 2000 craze.
...and i just finally got vista working right. :)
The 'funny' thing is that comments like mine above always get low ranked by Vista trolls but never, ever get even a semi-valid counter-argument. They only thing they can do is press the red minus button. I guess that pretty much sums up their level of intelligence.
I feel like I'm the ONLY Person never to have any problems with VISTA. I've never encountered any problems with it basically at all. Like I've gotten normal computer problems that my MAC gets as well, but like nothing to drastic. In Fact i like it 10 times better then XP. But this is also coming from a Console gamer, and a person who doesn't need a super amount of power....o wait i think i saw that you need a lot of power in VISTA? Hmmm....my VISTA computer Runs faster and has less hardware specs then my Last XP, and my last XP was slow as shit, and thats compared to desktop and laptop. I'm excited for windows 7, yea, but honestly people who didn't like VISTA were either to Nit-picky, or just watched to much porn.
@Miles:
I would bet that you also feel "...like your the ONLY Person never to have any problems with GRAMMER...but like...basically at all."
@ OneLove
Fuck you!
I had just woken up, I'm so sorry that my grammar in the morning isn't up to your standards.
Fuck off!
leave vista and never come back
microsoft supports their products?
..for free!
you misspelled policy in line 2
The writer has a lisp.
It's hard to imagine that Vista used to be a genuinely poetic word to me.
I've always called it Svista (means oversight in Italian)
vista aint no xp microsoft, drop it like its hot.
Vista:"I'm melting!! Meeltiinnng!!!!!
at leats it's not freezing
yeah that's true.
Ha, they are just trying to save face.. You think you'll even SEE THE WORD 'VISTA' once 7 ships?? No way in hell will they be advertising that anywhere.. They'll probably burn all the remaining retail discs in a big bonfire!
Do you see XP in any of their current advertisements? Most companies don't continue advertising old products when they have newer ones out that replace the old ones.
That's what they said about XP and look what happened.
It just turned out that XP didn't suck (as little as a MS product can suck, at least =P)
Good bye Vista ME!
Just proves (by Microsoft itself) that Vista sucks. xp will outlive vista.
and wheres that person who said ppl who says vista sucks are just sheep??
Interesting icon choice when mocking someone for calling others sheep.
what do you mean? you don't like my icon?
I made a previous comment about XP being much better than Vista, and someone tells me that im a lemming for 'bashing vista because its the cool new thing to do'. yeah, well everyone here is a lemming right?
Changing your icon and then replying is pretty low, man.
What icon do you see? its suppose to be a mac-windows icon, but sometimes it changes back to my old apple logo, some bug with engadget profile setting.
wow really - shows how microsoft fanboys are stubborn idiots, when someone who uses apple products bags vista, its low-ranked, but not when other windows users who bag it.
I like that fade on the logo...
I've finally updated from XP to Vista today. The first time I tried it I had purchased Home Premium and it did not support my Raid 1 array because of not supporting dynamic disks. Doh. That was a nice $100 lesson.
First thing I do when I get Vista is turn off UAC, Balloon tips and all those shortcut icons. Only problem I had was it didn't like Norton Ghost.
Vista for me seems to run best on 4GB of ram. So far i'm liking it and it loads a bit faster than XP. Main reason I wanted to upgrade though is for DirectX 10 and better SSD support. I hate to admit it but XP is finally feeling a bit outdated. I don't want to be one of those people still running XP five years from now.
+ 1 for sensible timing of your upgrade to Vista.
:/
Kinda silly buying Vista just recently when the RC for Windows 7 just released today.
You may as well have saved your money for 7 and downloaded the RC1 candidate that came out today, you can then upgrade easily when the full version is out. Sorry, but you just wasted your money.
Can't believe it's been this long already.
I'll be the first to admit vista isn't what it should have been, but me and several other colleages use it and have done for a while with no problems. If you ate a power user then maybe you might hit problems but in my experience the interface is far better than so ( with the exception of getting to network card properties)
Roll on 7 is all I can say. More stability and nicer UI
Policty?
Just love how we post a comment & then it takes "Engadget" lord knows how long to send a confirmation email. I've been waiting for over 1/2 hr. & still haven't received my email.. Even sent myself a test email to make sure it wasn't on my end & sure enough I received my test email in minutes. What's up Engadget, why should we even comment if by the time we can confirm there's 100's of other comments that have already been posted.. Not much of an incentive to participate..
If you actually read the email they send you, they provide a password. Just use that password every time you comment. It's way too hard to remember, so just have your browser remember it for you (like Opera etc).
I sure hope they reconsider and support Vista for far longer. Oh, wait... no I don't. Nevermind.
it looks like we should be waiting long for 7 to come along!
but i think it would be much better than the VISTA the loooser
2012? This can't be it.