[nfb-talk] FW: Just One More Release Before VISTA Goes Gold

[Wm. Ritchhart]

Does anybody know if the bright lights in Redman have bothered to
discuss the accessibility of Vista with the bright lights in St.
Petersburg and Fort Wayne?  I can see much of the businesses in this
country upgrading to Vista rather quickly.


William
 

-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
On Behalf Of Chris McMillan
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 9:35 AM
To: GUI Talk; Rehab Talk; NFB Talk
Subject: [nfb-talk] Just One More Release Before VISTA Goes Gold

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2022621,00.asp  

Just One More Release Before Windows Vista Goes Gold 
By Peter Galli 
September 29, 2006 

Microsoft will release just one more build of Windows Vista for testing
before the code goes gold, said Brad Goldberg, the general manager for
the Windows client business group. 

That build will be made available to a limited group of between 50,000
and 100,000 testers in October, and follows the interim Vista build that
Microsoft released on Sept. 22. 

Goldberg declined to say if this final test build would be known as
Release Candidate 2, adding that the company is focused, from an
engineering perspective, on targeting the group of testers from whom it
most wants one last set of feedback. 

Goldberg, who was on a cross-country tour in late September designed to
get the message out about the business value and benefits that Vista
brings, also said Vista is on track for availability to businesses via
volume licensing in November, with broad general availability to
consumers set for January 2007. 

Microsoft said it expects 10 times more seats of Windows Vista to be
deployed at launch, with deployment within the first year being twice as
quick as that for any other version, and business customers deploying it
faster than for any other Windows operating system release, he said. 

"We have differentiated how we are delivering the product for customers,
which is evident in the clear differentiation we have between the SKUs
for business and for consumers. Business will be a big focus for us for
the remainder of this year, and we will then start talking a lot more on
the consumer side next year," Goldberg said. 

Windows Vista has been built for businesses, from the very beginning
onward, and is also providing the tools and services that businesses
need to help them adopt the operating system earlier than they have in
the past, he said. 

"From the earliest stages of Windows Vista engineering development, we
had a core group of customers who would come up every few months and
spend a few days with the team, reviewing early builds and giving
feedback. That was then expanded to 500 TAP [Technology Adoption
Program] customers to get business requirements into the product," he
said. 

The number of TAP customers for Vista is 10 times larger than for
previous versions of Windows, he added. 

Microsoft also looked at what it needed to do with tools, like the
application compatibility toolkit, which was historically developed
after the product was finished. In Vista these tools were developed in
conjunction with Vista, he said. 

Microsoft has also learned some lessons from its experience with Windows
XP and the primary inhibitors to Windows XP, which included issues with
internal and third-party application compatibility, the perception that
the cost outweighed the perceived benefits to be gained, as well as the
hardware compatibility issues. 

"This was all impactful for us, and we took that feedback and drove it
into the Vista development process in terms of how we thought about
engineering and working with customers to address the issues during the
development cycle," Goldberg said. 

Vista is also designed to address the key changes taking place in the
overall business environment, which includes unprecedented volumes of
data available to users on their machines, the corporate Intranet as
well as the Internet, estimated at more than 170TB, he said. 

But this volume of data often resulted in efficient searches, and IDC
research shows that the average information worker spends 3.5 hours a
week looking for information they never find. They also spent three
hours a week creating content that already exists, he said. 

On the hardware front, there is a notable shift toward laptops in
countries like Japan and the United States, and most corporate data
resides on computer hard drives, he said, noting that the growing number
of laptops increases the risk for the loss of corporate data. 

"Last year alone some 6,000 laptops were lost in the U.S., and research
shows that 80 percent of company data is stored on a user's PC," he
said. 

There has also been an increased focus on the regulatory environment and
the accompanying need for compliance, while security breaches are also
on the rise. 

"Windows Vista and the value it brings is squarely aimed at all this,"
Goldberg said. 

The new search capabilities in Vista will probably have the single
biggest impact on users in terms of how they use their PC, with the new
search pane allowing them to search and access the data in their
documents, e-mails, and files more quickly, recover deleted and
overwritten files, as well as simplify remote access to their
applications. 

Vista also brings a new default "sleep" state, where the computer moves
in and out of this mode in just a few seconds, while the length of time
for startup and shutdown has also been reduced, he said. 

Asked about the concern that Vista would require new hardware to run,
Goldberg said that is not the case. 

"Much of the experience will be available to those with older hardware,
even that which is not able to run the new Aero user interface," he
said. 

Analyst firm Gartner has said Vista will run on just about any PC
available today, but it will only show its true colors on about half of
them.  

Businesses also tend to buy new hardware every year as a way to manage
their desktop refresh. 

"I believe that most organizations will look at Windows Vista initially
on new machines, followed by upgrading existing machines and wipe and
load," Goldberg said. 

Vista also brings changes when a user transitions from offline to
online. 

Now, offline documents will be synchronized in the background and be
less visible to the user, he said, while IT will be better able to
customize the number of folders that can be set to be redirected. 

Security had also been one of the top design points from the start, not
just in terms of reducing vulnerability to attack, but creating multiple
layers of security and including anti-phishing protection as well as the
work around BitLocker drive encryption. 

For the IT professional, Vista brings significant changes in terms of
image management, and moves to a single image across language and form
factor and allows greater control with regard to custom group policies,
such as the level at which USB Flash drives can be blocked. 

Vista also brings a new diagnostics platform that gives better warnings
and clear directions to users when things are not working the way they
are expected to. 

"If you are in Internet Explorer and you get a message that you cannot
connect to a Web page, you can pull down a menu and diagnose your
network connections and see what the issue is. If your hard disk is
about to fail, you will get a message warning you of this and telling
you what the steps are you need to take," Goldberg said. 

Asked about customer concerns about the cost, complexity, management and
implementation challenges that came with the release of not just a new
operating system, but also of Office 2007 as and Exchange 2007 around
the same time, Goldberg acknowledged that some customers are concerned
and still trying to determine what their migration path should be. 

However, most customers like the idea of Vista and Office 2007 being
available at the same time, because that means they would only have to
test the desktop once and would result in their adopting them faster. 

"There are also a lot of scenarios that overlap naturally between the
two products," he said. 

With regard to the question of how Vista and Office 2007 will work with
previous versions, say Windows XP with Office 2007, Goldberg said that
Office XP would be compatible with and run on Windows Vista. 

"We have tried to design the products so that those customers who want
to keep one product current and move to the new version of another will
definitely see a set of benefits in each case," he said. 

The application compatibility toolkit had also, for the first time ever,
been developed in parallel with Vista and would be released alongside
it. 

With Windows XP, for example, it was released with the second service
pack some nine months later. 

What is the real compatibility picture for Windows Vista?  

Microsoft is also approaching the certification of applications
differently with Vista: There is the "works with" designation that
indicates the application will work with and run on Vista. 

Internally, Microsoft has done internal testing on some 1,900 external
applications since the release of the first Vista beta. 

The "certified for Windows Vista" designation, which has a higher bar,
is for those applications that exploit and take advantage of Vista in a
unique way, Goldberg said. 

Asked whether Microsoft is pushing ahead with Vista outreach in Europe,
even though it has said the product could be delayed there unless the
European Commission gives it more guidance on whether Vista complies
with European competition law, Goldberg would only say that the company
is fully committed to providing a version of Vista that is fully
compliant with European law. 



-- 
Sincerely, 

Christopher McMillan
Rehabilitation Engineer
chrismmcmillan at gmail.com       
203 404 7275                             Work Number
203 286 2156                             Fax Number
Chrismcmillan                            Skype Username
christophermcmillan at hotamil.com        MSN Messenger Username 
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