Steve Holstad's "the bright lights"

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." - Edward R. Murrow
in

Vista due for January.... Anchorman-style

Sixty percent of the time, Bill Gates releases on time, everytime.  haha

Looks like Bill Gates is 80% sure that Vista will launch in January, while the next version of Office could come as early as December.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13812973/

He left the 20% as a disclaimer, stating that if beta bugs prove that the software isn't ready for primetime, he won't force a release.  What's the general consensus on this one, is it better to launch late and be more solid, or on-time, with more shaky code?  This is a software team's nightmare....neither is great, but Microsoft tends to have the reputation of "release now, let our production users test it", which is not an ideal strategy, and smells of bad PR when the patches come... I'll stay on the side of delaying to solidify code, and let the world have it when it is ready...

Posted: Jul 11 2006, 12:38 PM by sholstad | with 1 comment(s)
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Comments

The Answer Man said:

To ship or not to ship...like so many things, "it depends" <g>. If the benefits of the software outweigh the risks, I say ship it. We've worked on projects where each day without software resulted in literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. We shipped with known issues and worked them out over time. That said, support calls and patch distribution cost money, too...

The bar for an OS is high - especially one with Window's market share. *No* amount of testing will uncover every bug. But, if the new features add value, some portion of the user base will tolerate the bad with the good (and some will complain <g>).
# July 11, 2006 5:41 PM