| endimion said: Well That was the plan from the get go... The question was when and how... It is crazy how MS jacked up their release cycle the past year+ this is something that could greatly beneficiate the company in term of marketing and corporate image... With MS having new stuff to talk about/advertise almost every quarters across their different businesses... |
It also could get consumers into a very fractured environment as with Andriod.
One of the great things about Windows XP was the long life and support that the OS got. New features were added into and onto it, rather than the OS being replaced every few years.
It also was great for corporations. I integrate an OS into my environment, and the only thing I have to worry about managing over the long-term are application and system updates. Not entirely new OSes that may have new hardware requirements.
For companies that routinely rotated hardware, a long OS cycle reduced the pain and allowed hardware rotation to be natural and top-down, which often makes sense. However, when you're routinely updating the OS because of significant hardware requirement changes, it makes it a little more challenging.
The hurdle from XP to Vista is the reason why Vista was so unsuccessful in the enterprise. However, in the few years that Vista was out, the hardware prices dropped enough that companies that normally upgraded their hardware naturally had already begun to transition in hardware compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. Making the transition to Windows 7 easier.
That isn't even beginning to address the application issues, but Windows 7 also addressed them better with XP Mode and Virtualization.
