Microsoft seems to be giving itself some elbow room in their claims that Vista will not suffer any more delays. While they still predict a late-2006 release for businesses and early-2007 ship date for regular people, they are at the very same time saying that “Vista will ship when it is ready. Quality is job one,” and that Vista will be evaluated “milestone by milestone.”

So, essentially, they’re saying that they hope to ship it when they said they would, but there might be problems, and if there are, there will be yet another delay.

Short-short version: It’ll ship on time, or maybe not.

Well, that’s encouraging! Already, the very late OS is still suffering from problems, including core features being axed to save time and late release dates for beta versions foreshadowing more delays; many analysts and businesses are already preparing for the release date of the final product well into 2007. My bet is that they’ll release it late and slightly buggy. And even if it does come out on time and is not buggy, who wants it? What features will really be useful for the end user? Mostly new eye candy, some patched security holes, and new versions of Microsoft applications–mostly stuff that’s been available with the Mac OS for a few years now.

Other complaints include the fact that the Digital Rights Management is geared for businesses, and not the end user, meaning you will be inconvenienced on the assumption that you’ve stolen your software and content. The eye candy is reported to take a big hit on computer resources, slowing things down; even for the basics, most existing computers won’t be able to run Vista very well at all. And the security upgrades, while not as good as those on the Mac, are already annoying beta users as they are too much in the way. This is the best Microsoft can do after six years of work, and it’s probably going to be late and won’t work great out of the box.

For this you should pay for an upgrade? Hrmph. Stick with XP for the time being.

What went wrong with these guys?