Windows Vista Beta 2 plagued by bugs; release date could slip yet again

“What began as a murmur a few months back is turning into an audible grumble, as beta testers and experts question the stability of the latest Windows Vista beta and Microsoft itself hints at yet another release delay,” Top Tech News reports.

Top Tech News reports, “Testers and pundits alike say Vista Beta 2, released publicly in June, is plagued by bugs and blue screens. Some testers are saying a Beta 3 cycle, which is not planned, may be needed and that the software isn’t ready for final testing before shipment, which Microsoft calls Release Candidate 1 (RC1). ‘I have been testing Microsoft operating systems since Windows 95, and this is the buggiest OS I’ve seen this late in development,’ says Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. ‘Look at the older operating systems, and by Beta 2 there is a stable foundation on which the [independent software vendors] can build. Right now, Vista is like a ship on stormy seas.'”

Top Tech News reports, “Former Microsoft blogger advocate Robert Scoble used his blog to say, ‘This sucker is just not ready It feels like it needs a good six more months, . . . which would mean a mid-year release next year.'”

Top Tech News reports, “‘Put the testing aside, I can’t find a valid antivirus software that works with it,’ says Michael Cherry, an analyst with research firm Directions on Microsoft. ‘That is a key application and runs at a core level. If the antivirus vendors, who work closely with Microsoft, can’t get Vista working, then the core is not stable.’

Top Tech News reports, Cherry says it might be time to reset expectations because an operating system no longer should be a groundbreaking piece of technology. ‘I am impressed with Apple OS and I like the way over the last couple of releases they have made a series of incremental improvements. It has not been earth-shattering,’ he says.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Anger Monkey” for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Take: Windows Trainwreck. Microsoft is incapable of shattering the earth as Apple did with the release Mac OS X. Microsoft’s need to cling to backwards compatibility retards Windows (and it wasn’t that bright to begin with). If Microsoft ever made a clean break and started over, Apple would grab market share numbers in even larger bunches than they are gaining now. At this rate, Windows just gets worse and worse, while Apple is free to move ahead decisively with the Mac platform. Through major transition after major transition, Mac users have proven they will stick with Apple; we’re still here, we’re way ahead, and our numbers are growing.

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52 Comments

  1. I’d like Ballmer to stay head of M$ until Vista is released, that way he will have no option but to be 100% accountable for the POS that Vista is.

    I mean, Vista, what a totally beige name. Their website promoting this abomination OS is completely absurd – why does the index page have a picture of a woman sitting in a field with a silly grin on her face? Has she had enough of “Vista” and decided to run away to the fields?

    Everything about M$ is abhorrent, its Management, its products, its attitude. EVERYTHING.

    Let’s hope Monkey Boy stays as long as possible.

  2. “. . . why does the index page have a picture of a woman sitting in a field with a silly grin on her face?”

    The same reason infants grin. It’s gas.

    P.S. A few words of advice. If you’re on a bus or plane and you see a guy nervously glancing around, giggling and sniffing his fingers, don’t sit next to him.

  3. Mac OS X was indeed groundbreaking as Apple completely broke away from the old OS code base and started with something new and far more stable. Until Microsoft ever does the same thing with Windows, it’s just going to be more crap piled on top of a very unstable foundation. That foundation is well over a decade old now and it has more cracks in it than anyone can count.

  4. “P.S. A few words of advice. If you’re on a bus or plane and you see a guy nervously glancing around, giggling and sniffing his fingers, don’t sit next to him.”

    …is that because he has a Dell notebook in his arms – a terrorist!!!!

  5. I transitioned to OS X in October 2001 not long after they released Puma (10.1), and currently run Tiger on all my primary use Macs — my two Powerbook G4s and my Blue & White with a G4/1000 in it. Hence, I’m part of that 18 million base … and should be counted 3 times. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    This being said, it should be noted that I still have and use 2 Macs that run OS 9.2.2 (an 8600/300 which I use to play a slew of favorite Classic Games (like Descent) and an “old world” G3 266 tower with a G3/800 in it that I use as an OS 9 base for all my legacy software. I also have an old G3/300 Wallstreet Powerbook that used to run OS X but I’ve backed down to OS 9.2.2 and which my mother uses for word processing and accessing the internet. It works GREAT.

  6. As a die hard Mac user my opinion is biased.

    That said, recent builds of Vista are apparently much more stable than the public beta. This article has already been torn apart on other forums.

    That said, it was torn apart by die hard Windows users.

    The bottom line…Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do when compared to Apple but Apple has a lot of catching up to do when compared to Linux XGL.

    Check this out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3304682858126153303&q=linux

  7. Tank can you explain what is going on in the video and how a computer user might put those things to good use in the real world?

    Is this what kids are doing these days to get chicks?

    Because quite frankly all that stuff just looks like another form of penis envy.

  8. Tank, I’ll admit it looks cool, but how is any of that useful to actually getting work done? Possibly the transparency when you move a window. OSX has transparency also (use GeekBind to control it), but I barely ever use it because it isn’t very useful. As for the windows that flop around and get stuck to the edge of the window actually decrease productivity because you don’t actually know where the edge of the window is going to stay.

    I think it’s great that they can do all of this cause it means they can actually perform useful features, but Apple does not need to catch up to this. Apple could very easily produce these kinds of effects, but they chose not to because they don’t help you understand what is going on. All of the effects in OS X are there to help you understand what effect the action you just took is doing. The only one I have found that is pretty much purely eye candy is the ripple in Dashboard. Just because you (or a company or a community) can do something, does not mean that it is actually worth doing or is going to be productive.

  9. Nothing “earth-shattering” in the recent OS X releases? How about a code base that makes my 6 year old Cube run faster with each release and is faster now than when I first got it with OS 9 on it? How about Spotlight? How about Dashboard? How about Expose? How about plug and play that just works? How about the Core Foundation (audio, video, image, and soon animation)?

    To name a few.

  10. who cares? we can put windows on mac for any app on earth? use CIder for gaming, if necessary (though i don’t recommend video games to healthy humans).. the marketshare story is over now that BootCamp and Parallels are out.. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

  11. Time to double the number of programers working on Vista so it can ship on time ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />

    At least they should make the next Xmas season. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

    MW – “cost”

  12. What build are they using? Article doesn’t say, that I saw. The public Beta 2 that I have is as they say — exceptionally (even for Windows) buggy. I’ve heard the later (non-public) builds of “beta 2” are much less buggy and much more stable and complete.

    But it’s still Windows, so I’m sure it still sucks rocks.\

    Magic Word: LATE. Ha! ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

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