Intel Won’t Include Windows Vista

Posted by Vaibhav

June 30, 2008

Intel, the world’s largest maker of processors that support Microsoft Windows, will not be installing the Windows Vista operating system internally for its 80,000 workers, as per a published report recently.

An unidentified Intel source informed the New York Times that the chip manufacturer will continue to support the older Windows XP until the software giant releases Windows 7 in 2010, as it has identified “no compelling reason” for upgrading to Vista.

Given the two companies’ good relationship, Microsoft could be embarrassed by Intel’s decision.

However, Intel is not the only one who decided to bypass Vista. The fate of Vista is such that most large corporations have refrained from upgrading their PCs to Vista, regardless of its 18 months standing in the market, and that Microsoft has lately released a service pack designed to fix a number of bugs.

Several businesses, along with government agencies, have cited Windows Vista’s resource requirements, cost, and lack of compatibility with previous applications as causes of not upgrading to the operating system.

Microsoft itself has acknowledged that Vista is a dud, in many ways. For instance, Bill Veghte, Senior VP of Microsoft agreed in a letter to customers that Vista suffers from a number of problems.

Veghte wrote that the architectural changes that improved resilience and security in Vista led to compatibility issues with existing hardware and applications.

He further said that Windows 7 will employ the same core architecture as Vista so that customers who have already bought Vista-compatible applications and hardware would not have issues upgrading to Windows 7.

Strangely, Microsoft decided recently to extend support for Windows XP, which was launched in 2001, until 2014. This is just another indication about Microsoft realizing that several of its customers would not be switching over to Vista in the near future, if ever.

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