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Steve Lohr reports at the New York Times that Intel is not going to upgrade its internal PC users to Windows Vista:
Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.
The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.
“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.
I would observe that there is a difference between upgrading everyone and an orderly migration, but this story was broken by Charlie Demerjian in The Inquirer where the decision is phrased as “Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines… ever.”
Ouch! Such enterprise decisions aren’t uncommon for a variety of reasons, but for Intel to do it has got to hurt. The only thing that would hurt worse would be if Intel decided to go with a non-Microsoft operating system.
Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc reports that Microsoft has released Windows Search 4.0 which replaces Windows Desktop Search in Windows XP and Instant Search in Windows Vista as well as the relevant applications in Windows Server 2003, 2008, and Windows Home Server. Downloads of Windows Search 4.0 are now available and if you can wait a bit, it will show up on Windows Update.
Some notable enhancements in the new version include cross system searches (as long as they all run Windows Search 4.0) and improved Group Policy management for large organizations, but I expect that the greatest initial interest will be in ordinary desktop search. XP’s Windows Desktop Search was a resource hog that produced such mediocre results that disabling it figured prominently on most lists of XP performance improvement tips and had me pining for my old copy of Lotus Magellan. Vista’s Instant Search is certainly improved in both form and function so it will be interesting to kick the tires. Early reviews of Windows Search 4.0 indicate that there are still some rough edges and while it beats Google Desktop search in function, it still lags in speed.
In April, Microsoft gave Windows XP Home a reprieve on low-cost mobile computers until at least June 30, 2010 and today they extended it to low cost desktops:
Today at Computex, Microsoft Corp. announced that following the success of Windows on netbooks, the Windows offering is being extended to include nettop devices. Netbooks are commonly referred to as ultralow-cost PCs (ULCPCs) and were originally intended for students and other first-time PC customers in emerging markets. Nettop refers to desktops that are ultralow-cost.
I guess some head shaping for the PR staff went on after the April announcement which prominently mentioned Windows XP Home. Today’s announcement confusingly mentions only generic Windows except for one partner quote. So what’s the reason for the enlarged reprieve?
Customers are asking for Windows on these devices because the experience is familiar to existing PC users and easy to learn for customers who are new to computing. Customers want to be able to take advantage of the wide range of applications, devices and online experiences supported by Windows today. Microsoft partners also appreciate Windows-based solutions for these computers because they already know how to build and support high-quality systems that are powered by Windows.
And they can’t do any of those things with Vista apparently, presumably because of its considerable heft, and don’t want Linux sneaking in. One would also guess that the definition of ultralow-cost PC is subject to some negotiation.
So, here’s what the end of life plan for Windows XP currently looks like based on today’s announcement and the Microsoft Volume Licensing Brief, the Royalty OEM Reference Sheet, and the License Availability Roadmap:
- No XP retail availability after June 30, 2008
- No XP OEM (large PC manufacturer) availability after June 30, 2008 except:
- No XP volume purchase licenses after June 30, 2008, but volume purchasers and System Assurance subscribers can always downgrade to XP as long they have the appropriate media.
- No System Builder (smaller PC assemblers) XP availability after January 31, 2009.
Last night was the kickoff of the D6 conference and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were the opening act. Aside from a little light comedy and some reminiscences, the big news was a teaser for Windows 7 which will have multi-touch support for PCs with the requisite touch screen hardware.
The applications shown seem to be PC versions (e.g. no bar coded foreign objects) of those demonstrated with Microsoft’s Surface table kiosk system (aka "Big ass table") which was demoed last year at D5. Touch screens have been around for Windows seemingly forever via third parties and while it may be useful for kiosk builders to have the support baked into Windows 7, it is hardly the kind of thing that will draw the crowds. Still, it makes a nice demo and that’s the point after all.
After the embarrassment of the early public promises for Vista that were never realized, Microsoft’s Windows boss Steve Sinofsky has been keeping a tight lid on all information released about the upcoming Windows 7. Therefore, it was quite a coup for CNET’s Ina Fried to get an interview with Sinofsky about Windows 7. The only problem is that he didn’t really say anything beyond the following:
Actually, I am a little surprised Sinofsky said anything about a date.
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