The release of Windows Vista is a great achievement, but
Microsoft should not lose sight of the fact that many of its
customers will be running Windows XP for a while yet.
Although everyone will surely want to upgrade to the latest
operating system platform, it is difficult to justify a pretty user
interface to a CIO. And while Vista has many significant
improvements under the covers, much of the marketing has been about
how the new operating system is "clear, confident and
connected".
I am not suggesting that organisations stick with Windows XP for
an extended period, but it seems likely that most early adopters
will be consumers and smaller firms.
Meanwhile, many corporates will receive Vista on new hardware
but downgrade to standard desktop environments based on earlier
versions of Windows. And, once they do start to upgrade, it will be
mainly those who are running Windows 2000 that move first.
On that basis, Windows XP will remain in mainstream use for
quite some time, regardless of Microsoft's support lifecycle
policy.
Microsoft's Windows Server product roadmap indicates a major
release every four years, with an update release at the mid-point.
I would like to see something similar for client releases, with a
service pack every 12 months. Based on the release dates for XP SP1
and SP2, we should have seen SP3 already, but Microsoft's roadmap
indicates that the next Windows XP service pack will not be ready
until 2008.
Is this Microsoft's way of gently nudging us all towards
Vista?
In time, Vista will become the operating system of choice, but
until then, those of us using XP will still need to download,
assess and test individual updates every "Patch Tuesday", while we
wait for SP3.
Mark Wilson has been implementing and supporting IT
infrastructure since 1994
Read Mark Wilson's blog
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