Joyous News? Vista Available Until At Least 2011, Support Ends In 2012

I guess that tells us all how much love Vista gets from its own family. This effectively means that Microsoft will be doing the full court press to get everyone on board with Windows 7. It also means that some people might be using XP much longer than the entire lifespan of a newer operating system. More and more this sounds as though history will change the name from Vista to Me2.

After some had been speculating about the end of retail sales of Vista, due precisely to the full court press, an official statement was offered today.

from ComputerWorld

Richard Francis, general manager and Windows client business group lead at Microsoft Asia-Pacific, told the news service Monday that, “We are still not sure if [computer makers] will be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is made available.” The comment fueled speculation that Microsoft, embarrassed by the poor reception given to Vista, was getting ready to abandon the operating system at the first opportunity.

Not so.

In a follow-up reply to questions today, a Microsoft spokeswoman declined to confirm that the company would, in fact, dump Vista when Windows 7 appears. “We have not made any final end-of-sales decisions for Windows Vista,” she said in an e-mail.

But she also pointed out that Microsoft’s policy is to keep an OS in distribution for at least four years after its debut. “Under the Support Lifecycle policy, Windows desktop licenses are available for four years after general availability in all standard product distribution channels — direct OEM, system builders, retail and volume licensing programs via licenses or via downgrade rights,” Microsoft’s Web site states.

For Vista, that mark would be January 2011 — four years after its January 2007 launch.

and

Even without that policy, it would be a sharp departure from past practice if Microsoft did drop Vista shortly after Windows 7 shipped. According to Computerworld’s analysis of Windows 95’s, Windows 98’s and Windows XP’s transition periods — the time span during which the company sold both old and new versions — Microsoft has never offered less than a six-month overlap.

Perhaps Microsoft is going to let the market pronounce the death of Vista. Another site [Download Squad] has extrapolated the announcement to mean that Vista Ultimate customers might be shoved aside, and treated the same as the users of Vista Home Basic, losing their support before Vista Business users. If that is true, the Ultimate users would be getting the shaft a second time, after the Ultimate Extras fiasco.

which one did you go with? Your choice could have been better it seems.

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