Hasta la Vista!

So Microsoft has admitted defeat in the race to get Vista out before Christmas, and this is supposed to have gutted resellers worldwide.

Apparently, anal-ysts all agree that we won't be able to flog any PCs without the shiny new operating system flickering on the monitor.

Well, maybe that's the way they think in the land of the free and the home of the brave, but down here in Gondwanaland every reseller breathed a sigh of relief. Check out Lilia Guan's story at https://www.techpartner.news/story.aspx?CIID=36213 if you don’t believe me.

The worst thing that can happen to a reseller after you've sold a new PC is a barrage of support calls. And nothing is guaranteed to generate support calls like version 1.0.0 of a brand new operating system.

If they had released Vista before Christmas that would have meant a massive increase in the number of newbies asking why nothing worked as advertised, or why their PC didn't look like exactly the one at work/school/next door.

Far better to release the new-look Windows during the quiet zone in January. Then let us sell a modest number of them and get Microsoft to fix the inevitable bugs before the next retailer’s bonanza day approaches.

Same goes for Office 2007 – nobody at Rabid Reseller wants to see that feature-bloat waddle into the store before, well, 2007 sounds good.

Hasta la vista, Vista!