Zack Rippy

Microsoft has announced that their newest operating system, Windows Vista, will be delayed. Corporations should have the final product by November 2006 and it will be available for consumers in January 2007. When the operating system does finally ship, there will be six versions available.

I am sure that this delay will affect new PC sales around the holidays, due to some people really wanting vista on their new machine.

Me personally? I don’t really care. I would much rather Microsoft get it right with Vista than rush to get it out the door early. I want them to ship a stable, secure product. Also, it is not like I am in desperate need of a new Microsoft OS. I have been running Windows XP as my primary Microsoft operating system since Beta 2 days in early 2001. Quite honestly, I think it is a good operating system. Sure, it is not perfect, but I have been very pleased with it. It gets the job done for me. Therefore, I have no urgent requirement for a replacement. I have been playing with Vista Build 5308.17 for several weeks now, and this build seems relatively stable and feature complete. I will try to post a mini-review soon. However, there is nothing in Vista that has me on the edge of my seat in anticipation of its release. I am perfectly content with Windows XP (and Ubuntu Linux) until Vista is ready.

While I am on the subject of Microsoft operating systems, I want to address something that I have mentioned in more than a few places online. I believe that Microsoft is held to ridiculously high standards when it comes to their operating system and compatibility with third-party applications and hardware. Think about it. If Microsoft ships a new OS and it breaks some piece of shareware out there, who will get the blame? Microsoft. If a small business has an antiquated DOS-based accounting system that does not work on the new system, who will be blamed? Microsoft. If your obsolete SoundBlaster 16 sound card is silent, who will be blamed? Microsoft. It is completely unfair. Apple maintains a primarily closed architecture for their systems, so they rarely are faced with this problem. Linux users are generally technically savvy (yes, I am generalizing), so they are more adept at tweaking their systems to get their hardware/software working. Besides, the open source community would quickly recode and recompile any application/drivers to get them working under a new system, so there is really no comparison to the traditional Windows user.

As a result of this demand for endless backwards-compatibility, Microsoft is forced to include a myriad of drivers for third-party hardware plus pile new code on top of old in order to allow old legacy applications to function. I wish they would just say, “Enough is enough” and take a completely new approach their release strategy. I propose the following approach.

Microsoft is already committed to shipping Windows Vista. I am sure it will contain tens of thousands of hardware drivers and support for incredibly old applications. That is fine. Vista is already under heavy development. Microsoft should announce that they will provide full support for Windows Vista until 2012. That is well within Microsoft’s established Life Cycle Policy. Microsoft should also state that in 2012, they will release a complete 64-bit recode and redesign of the Windows operating system from the ground up. No legacy code. No DOS support. Only the most basic native hardware support. When you plug in a new video card, you get native 800×600 256 color graphics. You provide the drivers. Of course, Microsoft could still certify drivers through their HCL process, but they should not be shipped as part of the OS itself. Microsoft should publish the basic technical architecture well in advance. This would give application developers ample time to prepare their applications for the new system.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that Microsoft should abandon all their APIs or their basic OS structure. I do not think they should “recode” to a completely new framework. I am not talking “Microsoft Linux” or anything like that. I am basically talking about a completely “fresh” Windows… without all the baggage. On such a system, the majority of existing applications (especially by the time the OS would actually be released) would function normally, but Windows would no longer have the added weight of a decade of legacy hardware and software support. Essentially, what I envision would be a “reboot” of Windows itself.

Of course, I doubt anything like above scenario will ever happen. People will continue to expect Microsoft to provide an environment in which they can leverage their legacy applications and hardware. As a result, stability and reliability will continue to be an issue and the same people demanding compatibility will be complaining about instability.

I do not want to give the impression that this would solve all the problems inherent to Windows. It wouldn’t. However, I do believe that it would eliminate or mitigate many stability problems that exist due to the presence of legacy code. Unfortunately, consumer demands probably guarantee that such a course of action will never happen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 10:10 am and is filed under Commentary, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.