I’m hearing a small amount of chatter that Microsoft is planning to dramatically reduce the price of Windows Vista next year to $99. I’ve done my best to track this story down, and as far as I can tell it’s not, shall we say, reality-based. One Web site (which I will not name or link to, because they have zero credibility in my opinion) wrote a speculative piece arguing that the price of Windows Vista should by $99, because anything else would be too much. Over the weekend, a relatively new blog focusing on Windows Vista wrote a similar story, which appears to be just a rewrite of the original, minus any proper sourcing. (I’m not linking to this source, either, until they establish some credibility.) Update: Looks like I got this backward. Vista Knowledge posted a blind story over the weekend, citing “word coming from Redmond.” Other sites seem to have picked up the unsourced story, often without attributing it properly. The editor of Vista Knowledge has posted in the comments, and we’ve exchanged some e-mail. Based on that exchange I’m willing to credit the story (but I’m still skeptical).

The original story shows up on Google News and a few other people pick it up. They link to one another, and a few of them embellish the story with details that appear to come out of thin air. Pretty soon you have a half-dozen sites all repeating a rumor that’s based on nothing. Seinfeld would be proud.

And really, is this news? Currently, an OEM copy of Windows XP Home Edition costs around $90. An upgrade version costs $99. If the rumor-mongers are true, the news here is that Microsoft doesn’t plan to increase prices for the most popular version of its operating system.

This rumor also ignores the biggest question of all: How many versions of Windows Vista will Microsoft sell? Currently, you and I can choose from at least four: Home Edition, Professional, Media Center (OEM only), and Tablet PC (with tablet hardware only). A few months back, eWeek reported on a speech by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at an analysts’ meeting. According to this story, Microsoft plans to introduce a number of new versions for Windows and Office next year, including an enterprise version of Windows Vista. Will all those versions cost $99? I don’t think so.

If anyone has heard this “Vista for $99” rumor from a credible source, with a plausible story behind it, please leave a comment.

Looks like Windows Vista will have a cool new feature with a cool name. The word comes from ZDNet Australia:

Windows Vista will include a new technology known as Freeze Dry designed to maintain application states and unsaved documents even when patches are automatically applied and PCs are rebooted.

Speaking at the Australian Tech Ed conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland this week, senior product manager Amy Stephan offered a preview of the Freeze Dry technology.

Many IT managers plan to automatically install patches and updates on machines during periods when they are inactive, such as overnight or on weekends. However, as some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated.

Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts, Stephan said.

This is one of the biggest complaints people have about Automatic Updates as implemented in Windows XP. If you forget to save a file and leave it open overnight when your machine gets an update, you might find that file gone in the morning. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works.

VNUnet.com is reporting that a Microsoft staffer in France has revealed the projected release dates of IE7 and Windows Vista:

“Beta 2 of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s future operating system, is slated for release in the first week of December 2005 at best,” a posting dated 29 August said. “The final release has been pushed back until September or October 2006.”

This comes shortly after a similar post in Windows IT Pro earlier this week, which was reportedly gleaned from “very recent internal Microsoft documentation.”

It’s reasonable to expect the final release of IE7 and the Beta 2 release of Windows Vista to be in sync, probably in early December, before the developers leave for the holidays. And you can expect Microsoft to do whatever it takes to have the operating system ready for release to large system builders by August 2006. If they miss that date, they miss the crucial fourth-quarter holiday buying season. Of course, there’s a lot of wiggle room in the definition of “released” – do you mean the date when the code is signed off as final? It can be weeks or even months before shrink-wrapped copies appear in retail outlets, but unlike the halcyon days of Windows 95, retail sales are just a drop in the bucket. The big market is in copies preloaded on new computers.

When I see stories like this, I assume that the leaks were deliberate and that the reporters in question were specifically targeted to pass the information along without a lot of filtering. A “leak” gets a lot more publicity than a press release, and it also gives Microsoft the opportunity to change its schedule later without too many recriminations. This isn’t an “official” schedule, after all, and in fact the VNUnet story specifically notes that a spokesperson refused to confirm or deny it.

Kudos to PC World’s Yardena Arar for a straightforward first look at Windows Vista. And extra kudos for putting the October 2005 issue online as soon as it’s ready.

Arar notes that the new Virtual Folders feature is “a bit puzzling,” and I agree. This feature needs to evolve a lot over the next few betas so that it becomes more usable.

I’ve never read anything by Nate Wooley at Government Computer News before. But based on this test drive of Windows Vista, he’s worth following. “Beta 1 is a significant milestone, particularly in terms of security,” he notes. And he backs up that observation with some damn good technical reporting. Go read it.

Bill Husted of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is another clever writer, and at least he spends most of his early review of Windows Vista Beta 1 poking fun at his own mistakes. He buried the lede, though. This graf is near the very end:

The problems may involve one of two things: my own incompetence, or the fact that I’m working with a beta copy. In fact, Microsoft discouraged me from even loading this copy and asked that I wait for the next, more polished, beta release. This first beta is intended for software developers and technicians more interested in the inner workings of Vista than in fine-tuned features that will be part of the finished product.

But since Windows is used by so many people, it made sense to take an early look.

The review starts with his description of trying to install the software on three different PCs and failing each time. Horrors! What a terrible beta! Oh, wait:

When I finally tried it on a fourth computer at work, I realized that the disc was a DVD, not a CD. Have I mentioned I can be a bit dim-witted? None of the machines I used had a DVD drive.

The mainstream media is doing an excellent job of setting low expectations for Windows Vista.

Hiawatha Bray reviews Windows Vista Beta 1 in today’s Boston Globe online. His snarky opener (with matching headline) praises Windows Vista for being pretty but lacking substance:

The new software sure is pretty. Maybe that’s why Microsoft recently dropped its rough-and-tumble working title of Longhorn. The new product will be called Windows Vista, a handle that calls to mind a ski lodge in the Rockies, instead of a bedroll on the Chisholm Trail.

Vista uses a new graphics engine called Avalon for drawing windows and icons on the screen. Windows feature translucent edges and hurl themselves onto the screen with a zoomy animated effect.

The toolbar with its familiar Start button is now black with glowing green accents, and the Programs listing has been revised in a way that keeps it from running all over the screen as you install more applications.

Still, after a few days’ use of Vista, it’s hard not to feel disappointed. Dolled up though it is, Vista still resembles good old Windows XP, only with a lot more bugs.

That’s funny. I could say the same thing about this review. The writing sure is clever and witty – too bad the review manages to make at least three major errors in the first page. Let’s review the list:

• “Vista connected easily to the Internet, but wouldn’t link with other machines on a local network.” You have to open the Windows Firewall and enable Printer and File Sharing manually. This process will be automated in later betas. (And it’s the first place that a knowledgeable technical beta tester would look.)
• “[I]t would not make friends with a Serial ATA hard drive — the kind found in most new computers. Good thing the test machine had an extra drive that uses the older parallel ATA interface, or you might not be reading this.” My copy of Windows Vista, on the PC I’m using to write this post, is installed on a SATA drive. Not every SATA controller is supported initially. If you’re doing the installation from scratch, you have to provide a storage driver disk (Windows XP drivers will work) during the first phase of the installation process. This procedure is documented in the readme file. To be fair, that document doesn’t mention SATA disks, but a Google search for “Windows Vista” install SATA turned up thousands of pages that describe the necessary steps.
• “[In the new Internet Explorer] you can’t drag its toolbars around to rearrange them, a pleasant feature of today’s Internet Explorer.” Unless you right-click on the toolbar (or choose View, Toolbars) and clear the Lock the Taskbars option. Once you do that, you can move and resize any toolbar any way you like. This feature is in Internet Explorer 6, in fact.

It doesn’t get any better on page 2.

• “Windows is notoriously easy to infect with rogue programs. Just ask Massachusetts workers who had to fend off last week’s attack of computer worms.” Yes, in a review of Windows Vista it’s important to mention problems that occurred with people running Windows 2000 who did not have a software firewall configured and who had failed to install a critical update.
• “Such things rarely happen to Apple Macintosh computers, or machines running Linux, because their operating systems block unauthorized programs. Microsoft says its new security features will do the same, and make Vista machines as secure as a Macintosh. Not a moment too soon. An effective security upgrade might help Microsoft overcome its toughest business rival: Microsoft.” Ahem. Had they been running Windows XP Service Pack 1, which was released in 2002, they would have been immune to this worm. The additional protections in SP2 would have prevented even more of the problems Bray ticks off. The baseline work on security has already been done and is available today. Bray doesn’t mention the actual security features in Windows Vista, like the much greater support for limited user accounts and a two-way firewall planned for later betas.

And what else didn’t Bray mention? How about the new Explorer, with a Virtual Folders feature that makes it possible to find documents very quickly and to save those searches for reuse? It’s the single most innovative aspect of the Windows Vista interface, but it doesn’t get a mention. The Quick Search bar at the top of every Explorer window? Windows Parental Controls? Might as well be invisible. A slick new preview tool for pictures and videos? Labels for digital pictures? Missed it completely.

A Beta 1 release of any operating system is, by definition, rough and incomplete. The reason this is available to developers and technical beta testers and not to the general public is precisely because of the issues that Bray raised here. I assume that a PR person for Microsoft sent Bray this version of Windows Vista. Even an hour on the phone with a support professional would have helped him work through every one of his issues. Instead, Bray paints a misleading picture based on fundamental misunderstandings.

It’s going to be a very, very long year.

Tim Coyle has an interview with Charlie Owen of Microsoft’s Media Center team. I thought this part was interesting:

I know you probably can’t say much about Longhorn, but what are you hoping will be in Longhorn?

You’re right — I can’t talk about Windows Vista much. I will say I have been using it on a daily basis as my main workhorse machine already for a while now and it’s hands down better than Windows XP. That bodes well for consumers and developers, especially considering we just recently hit the beta 1 milestone.

I’ve now got Windows Vista running on two machines, including a Tablet PC. It’s very stable, and the new shell is growing on me.