Microsoft’s Ballmer: It’s OK to wait for Windows 7

October 19th, 2008

Not sure how many people ever went out and got Vista, but I know I still run XP on all of my computers. IT isn’t like this is a new thing anyways. Almost every new release of Windows has had enough problems that waiting an extra year or 2 to get the newer version has always made sense. Besides the older version is usually the best buy anyways as you can get a computer with that OS dirt cheap. That is unless you are an Apple fanboy and want to get one Mac when you can buy 3 PCs .

Ballmer said that “if people want to wait they really can,” ZDNet’s Larry Dignan reports. “But I’d definitely deploy Vista,” he said.

Dignan’s post isn’t all that informative on the issue, but he does says some things that I agree with. He editorializes that companies don’t see the need to upgrade to Vista since computers last far longer than they are expected to and upgrading for every new OS does’t even make sense in most cases. I completely agree. It isn’t like I’m really missing anything with Vista I haven’t been able to do on XP still.

I still remember when i got XP for the first time. I got XP right away since I needed a new computer at the time and it was what was available. XP had just as many problems as Vista did when it came out. Remember the Service Pack 1 problems back then? Depending on your PC manufacturer you might have virtually killed your computer with that upgrade at the time. Heck, my partner and I both had virtually the same computer (Dell Inspirons when they were released I believe. Mine had better hardware, but I believe it was still the same model.) and his was unusable after that upgrade while mine was perfectly fine. All those early patches tend to have problems with XP.

“Our next release of Windows will be compatible with Vista. The key is let’s get on with it. We’ll be ready when you want to deploy Windows 7.”

Big deal. Computers are so cheap now why would I even “upgrade” anyways? For the cost of the Windows OS I may as well just go out and buy a new computer with the OS already installed.