We are ramping to the launch of Windows Vista SP1 and most of the Microsoft watchers are speculating whether business, particularly enterprises, will move to Vista once this major patch is out. In thinking back to Windows 95, we had similar issues, but Windows 95 had some rather significant and unique benefits as well and the speculation on Windows 7 suddenly has a Windows 95 feel.
The ramp to the Windows 95 launch was in many ways very much like the ramp to the iPhone. Folks were excited about the offering, news programs ate up every code change, and there wasn’t a month that went by in the release year where some major news service wasn’t covering the offering. There wasn’t a lot of other sustaining news, particularly in the technology market, and this was to be the big breakout product.
The ramp to the Windows 95 launch was in many ways very much like the ramp to the iPhone. Folks were excited about the offering, news programs ate up every code change, and there wasn’t a month that went by in the release year where some major news service wasn’t covering the offering. There wasn’t a lot of other sustaining news, particularly in the technology market, and this was to be the big breakout product.
Application developers, seeing what appeared to be a massive wave, were all over themselves trying to build applications for the offering, and we had hardware vendors coming out of our ears who wanted to build specifically for Windows 95. This led to one of the most amazing launch events I’ve ever attended; the Microsoft campus was turned into a circus with the main tent showcasing the product in a presentation that concluded with the developers taking a bow.
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My personal feeling? The launch of Vista was part of it's bad reception. Or the lack thereof...
Let me elaborate. The Betas and RTMs were WAY too public - "Joe user" had his hands on an unfinished OS. This was not the case with previous Windows - or rather to a much smaller scale. Maybe this was due to Microsoft being more public, maybe it was due to bandwidth being more available for it to spread.
Either way, a lot of people were using Vista (or Longhorn even) way before they should have been. People who didn't grasp the fact that it was unfinished, people who couldn't deal with the testing process and simply wrote it off as "teh fail" without any understanding of what they were doing...
Just a thought.
Just a thought.
Also, MS promised us that Vista will be Longhorn but was just a half-baked OS without the goodness of Longhorn.
I think that Windows Vista it's equal to Windows98, just a step to a more popular os :Windows 7 (or equivalent to windows98SE).
In Windows 95, they had a Public Preview where you could pay $19.95 to test the final beta and release candidates. They did that for the last six or more months before the launch.
Example: 14 year-olds on mum and dad's Dell wouldn't have cared back then. These are the people (or some of the people) who wullied Vista's name before it was even released.
I remember wondering if someone at Microsoft had mistakenly labelled a download as RC1 when it distinctly felt like another public Beta...
Example: 14 year-olds on mum and dad's Dell wouldn't have cared back then. These are the people (or some of the people) who wullied Vista's name before it was even released.
I personally take offense to that. I was a 14-year-old with my own self-built computer running the Windows 95 preview.
when i see a beta is available i will start to think about it
KNOWS??/caresYike...too long! It must be in 2055. Bill Gates will be 100 years old.
and well, imo Vista's "bad reputation" developed not because of "Joe users" but because of MS's approach to the release. They've promised a lot, then we had several cuts of what to be released, finally we've got an updated XP with several security holes, different kinds of incompatibility, aero interface and better memory management (including .net memory optimizer, which, I agree, is really a good addition)
so, the idea is that all these small benefits are not worth either 5 years of development or the price you need to pay for them; if it is going to be the same about windows 7, no way it becomes popular
Hmm, let's see...
"When Windows 2000 was first launched, Chairman Bill Gates said Microsoft had "come up with breakthrough ways to assure its reliability" and hailed the operating system as the most important product launch since Windows 95."
Source
Microsoft, freshly recertified as a monopolist by the U.S. Court of Appeals, calls its next-generation Windows XP operating system software the company's most important product launch since Windows 95.
Source
For Microsoft, the new Xbox is the biggest launch since Windows 95.
Source
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told shareholders Tuesday that Windows Vista could be the company's biggest product launch since Windows 95 debuted more than a decade ago.
Source
its like de-ja-vu each and every time I hear this.
Hmm, let's see...
"When Windows 2000 was first launched, Chairman Bill Gates said Microsoft had "come up with breakthrough ways to assure its reliability" and hailed the operating system as the most important product launch since Windows 95."
Source
Microsoft, freshly recertified as a monopolist by the U.S. Court of Appeals, calls its next-generation Windows XP operating system software the company's most important product launch since Windows 95.
Source
For Microsoft, the new Xbox is the biggest launch since Windows 95.
Source
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates told shareholders Tuesday that Windows Vista could be the company's biggest product launch since Windows 95 debuted more than a decade ago.
Source
The only reason for Windows 95 being repeatedly mentioned is because it was the beginning of the 32-bit era in Windows computing. It was a gigantic milestone in the history of Windows computing. Of course, it had its share of problems, but the fact remains that 95 only got better and better through Windows 98 and 98SE. What about XP? I'm not sure. Personally, I use XP, but I still believe Windows 2000 works best. It is like a stable version of ME, or rather, ME is an unstable version of Windows 2000!
As for what Windows 7 will hold, I wish these speculation and curiosity-building articles about it would stop. I mean, I like news about the status Windows 7, which is what many of us want here. After all, this isn't a personal "this is what I like, so I'm going to post it on the front page because I can!" deal. Things like this make me want to leave Neowin sometimes...
This better mean that Windows 7 is 64 Bit. I mean, 64 Bit owns 32 Bit, but no one optimized it for performance/usability. Go 64 Bit go!
Vista is very much like 95, its just not AS drastic as a change....and people are looking to compare it to win 95....before that all 95 could be compared with was Win 3.1 and NT4.
I have a feeling a restart with a new code base want in the initial plans, that's what really tossed them off track, with out that they would have had more then enough time to get out an OS that was really what they wanted. I have a feeling Windows 7 will be a lot closer to the original Longhorn goal.
Since then the OS releases have been evolutionary, not revelotionary. And that's fine. Change for the masses has to come slowly (sadly) as too much change to an enviorment casues too many issues.
I do not believe that Vista, or Win7, will be SO dramatic as to cause the media stir that Win95 did.
Those who are skipping over Vista entirely will be excited as this is the newest OS from Microsoft we've had since XP - so it's been a few years.
Those who adopted Vista will be excited as this could be everything Vista isn't.
Just as long as Windows 7 doesn't suffer a fate similar to Windows Longhorn.
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