Windows Vista RIP

Published: 2012-04-10
Last Updated: 2012-04-10 16:43:02 UTC
by Swa Frantzen (Version: 1)
13 comment(s)

Microsoft Windows Vista was your full name. Internally you identified yourself as windows 6.0. Most would call you simply Vista. You were never liked all that much. In part this was due to your security inspired nanny attitude. Despite that, you carried a lot of essential and long overdue security improvements. Improvement which allowed e.g. the practical removal of administrator rights without impacting the users of software written under the false presumption that users should have administrative rights.

The market has rejected you and killed you off. Your last copies went over the counter in October 2011 according to your maker. And finally, today that same maker buries you too: Microsoft is stopping support for Windows Vista today.

There is some hope that consumer rights groups will fight such a short lifespan of support and patches (e.g. in Europe there 's a mandatory 2 year warranty requirement for products sold to consumers), but overall and for all practical purposes, you're about to be forgotten by all but a handful who'll send significant donations to your maker.

So you will nonetheless live on for a while -for a maximum of 5 more years- through extended support as well as through your technically very closely related sibling Windows 7 (which identifies itself internally as windows 6.1 in a sort of tribute to you), and which was given a bit better of an education on how to interact with the public by the maker's marketing department.

Still those that have you will now have to decide to bury you in the trashcan or pay for extended support.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/lifecycle

P.S.:
- Hat Tip: Rene
- I hope this doesn't offend any of our readers. it's only meant to be a bit sarcastic and to lighten up the rainy day a bit.

--
Swa Frantzen -- Section 66

13 comment(s)

Comments

Ah Vista, you were such a big step forward from XP as far as security is concerned and yet you had so many nagging prompts that sadly the majority of users just gave up and turned off UAC. Thank goodness that your younger brother 7 learned from your foibles and made good on the promise you showed initially. You will be remembered fondly by me for your contributions, but you were sent out into the world before you were ready and you didn't stand a chance. Rest in peace, bits and bytes.
A lesson in User Interface design, I think. Under the covers, awesome things were promised and delivered, but poor performance overall and clumsy messaging left a bad taste in so many mouths.
Vista Vista, hate to see you leave but love to see you go. On to the next great Microsoft thing. Windows 8
Note that Extended Support includes free security updates, so Vista will continue to receive patches until 2017. It's non-security updates that you have to pay for.

I will not miss Vista myself.
Good riddance....a dreadful OS
Humor does lighten the day! Thank you for this!
As the less subjective earlier post suggests, it'll still get security patches thru '17.
Buried under the UAC annoyance; we also saw the declaration that installed software files/directories must be separated from working user data files, with the appropriate directory privileges. Of course this this annoyed sw vendors, but another good practice MS mandated.
dsh: yes: there should still be (some) security patches for Vista. BUT since the vast majority of customers will be unable to open even a mere support ticket, the odds of getting security problems only present in Vista (or older) taken note off or acted upon by Microsoft diminishes from today on significantly. So regardless of the possibility to get security fixes for security problems also in Windows 7 and more recent for the next 5 years, I still classify running unsupported OSes as a risk - a relatively easy to avoid risk in fact.
I think it is probably deserved as was Windows ME to put it out of its misery before it was due. Thanks!

Matthew,
http://mjddesign.wordpress.com

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