Could you have done better?

[AJUK]

This article states that Vista took 5 years, 10,000 people and £10 billion to develop.

Not being funny Billy Boy but with that sort of resources I am convinced I could have done better, don't you?

 

[Macro]

Less talk, more action...

We'll wait to see the results with baited breath...

 

[NathanE]

That doesn't seem too bad to me. 10,000 people is about a quarter of Microsoft's workforce IIRC. £10bn is not much really.

It took longer than 5 years, so the article is wrong there. 7 years by my count.

 

[Energize]

They could have done much better, it's essentially xp with a few extras. They haven't done enough to warrant it taking 7 years and £10bn.

 

[Duke]

Lol, I'd like to see you guys try and do better Long as it works and makes them money, which it will, job done.

 

[Energize]

Lol, I'd like to see you guys try and do better Long as it works and makes them money, which it will, job done.

They're going to have to make a lot of money to cover their 10bn capital, probably why it's such an insane price. At the price it costs I can't see any casual users upgrading soon.

 

[AJUK]

Bearing in mind our next generation of nukes, announced earlier this month, will cost £20 billion, it seems like an awful amount of money for an OS. No wonder they will be wanting £250 a pop for the fully loaded version.

 

[Glaucus]

Not that much money, remember not all the code is in the release version, the new file format will of been covered in that cost, ect.

10k people on a decent salary for 7years, plus buying out of any companies, legal fees will come to millions, buildings, overheads.

They'll make more than enough back. 98% of companys that use xp will swap to vista at some point. Then there's the 100's of millions of home users, that will have vista pre installed.

Large amount of money but not extortionate.

 

[the-void]

I suppose that MS will continue to abuse its monopoly position forcing business users and large OEM's to install vista in the long term.

Some business reservations remain about the "kill switch" in Vista regarding several DRM issues. A lot of governments outside of the US are also going to be wary about a US operating system with a remote "kill switch". (Check out the EULA on this feature.)

All is not a bed of roses with Vista. Of course the fact there is no alternative and the threat of running an unsupported OS (XP) will eventually force companies and consumers to update to Vista. However this is only because of MS monopoly abuse. If MS was a German, French or British company you can bet the good old US would be rushing off to the WTO regarding unfair competition.

There is nothing inherently wrong with XP that will have companies jumping to get into bed with Vista. XP works for them. Migrating to Vista will be expensive and that expense will have to be justified. (Aero isn't justification and don't go saying Vista is more secure - you just don't know that yet - already we are seeing vulnerabilities)

As to if we could have done better. I guess if a fraction of that money and time was spent on the UI of linux then we have a killer OS that is secure, scalable and wont require expensive hardware upgrades to get the OS running comfortable.

Who knows if any of us could have done better. MS would have bought us out of crushed us long before we could become any sort of threat to Vista. Viva la Revolution comrades.

I am a pathetic p r i c k

 

[neocon]

Think how many companies MS will destroy with Vista.

Vista has new functionality like DVD player, Antivirus,..right?

Which means companies like Cyberlink and Norton might have a bit of a hard time selling their products.

 

[modo77]

Which means companies like Cyberlink and Norton might have a bit of a hard time selling their products.

Which considering those two companies are pants, I don't see the problem

As for the time and expense of coding Vista, it sounds about right. And don't think that vista is just xp with a few extra bits. its been completely redone hence the time/money.

 

[neocon]

Which considering those two companies are pants, I don't see the problem

As for the time and expense of coding Vista, it sounds about right. And don't think that vista is just xp with a few extra bits. its been completely redone hence the time/money.

Touche

 

[the-void]

Which considering those two companies are pants, I don't see the problem

As for the time and expense of coding Vista, it sounds about right. And don't think that vista is just xp with a few extra bits. its been completely redone hence the time/money.

The problem arises that when there is no competition (however poor modo77 says the competition is) there is no incentive for the incumbent to try. A classic example of this is the browser market. Once MS effectively destroyed Netscape it left Internet Explorer to rot. Only when Firefox started eating into IE share did MS do anything about it.

Compeition is healthy modo77. Putting all your eggs in one basket isn't. At present at least you have the chance to try someone else other than MS if Norton and Cyberlink doesn't tickle your fancy. What we are saying is that Vista will reduce competition as this is the MS way and the cause of so many anti-trust filings.

Also saying Vista has been completely redone compared to XP doesn't justify the cost or expense. I doubt the CEO of and MD's or medium and large companies will accept that as a reasonable justification to migrate to Vista.
Nor is the amount of time or money spent on Vista any indication of its quality or its ability to perform real world tasks. (If time and money spent on something is an indicator of its quality then the millennium dome should be one of the eight wonders of the modern world.)

I am a pathetic p r i c k

 

[modo77]

yes I was taking the **** out of norton.

 

[this_is_gav]

Vista doesn't have Anti-Virus anyway.

It can play DVDs, but frankly, it was only licensing issues which stopped them in the first place. You'll struggle to find many people, legality aside, who'd have said that XP (especially MCE) shouldn't have had a DVD decoder included.

 

[Deleted member 58846]

This article states that Vista took 5 years, 10,000 people and £10 billion to develop.

Not being funny Billy Boy but with that sort of resources I am convinced I could have done better, don't you?

No I somewhat don't think that so why don't you make your own instead of blabbin on how you can do a better job

 

[Baz]

They could have done much better, it's essentially xp with a few extras. They haven't done enough to warrant it taking 7 years and £10bn.

Er no, it started as 'XP' with a few extras, but they ended up writing majority of it from scratch, to make it more secure.

It's not just a piece of software, they have to make sure it is compatible with everything, and robust, as well as easy to use and secure. It looks similar to XP, because if they made to big a departure from the overall feel and look of XP, it may discourage people from upgrading to it.

 

[Baz]

I suppose that MS will continue to abuse its monopoly position forcing business users and large OEM's to install vista in the long term.

OK, what else would people use? ASde from *nix, there isn't anything else out there that people can 'use' unless they are a techie

As to if we could have done better. I guess if a fraction of that money and time was spent on the UI of linux then we have a killer OS that is secure, scalable and wont require expensive hardware upgrades to get the OS running comfortable.

And if Linux was as widespread and as popular as Windows is, it would be considered as insecure, why bother writing a program to hack into Linux when in comparison to Windows, hardly anyone has it, when you can write a program that could potentially attack 90% of the worlds computers...

 

[Deleted member 58846]

I love these threads people claiming that Microsoft does a No swearing! job at everything. If you got a problem eitha:

1: Don't talk bout there product if its something nasty to say.
2: Make your own I acctually doubt anyone on this forum is capable at that to be honest.
3: Just shut the No disguised swearing! up

Microsoft try and the amount of money it has took to get this far.... 100% of the people on these forums won't make as much as him so why complain about his products?

 

[Haircut]

10,000 people and £10billion is a hell of a project, possibly the largest ever in terms of software development.

Anyone saying they could have done better clearly hasn't worked on a large development project.
Businesses in general are appallingly bad at project management and to be honest I'm impressed it got delivered at all.