Windows XP SP3 will be delayed to 2008 and Windows Server 2003 SP2 to Q1 2007. So both service packs will be at least half a year late. There is much speculation in the blogosphere [1] [2] about Microsoft’s reasons. Some say that they want to force customers to move to Vista; others say the Windows team is concentrating on Vista and Longhorn Server. I think the latter view is closer to the truth. This might be an understatement, though.

In my opinion, Microsoft has serious problems coping with the complexity of Vista. I played quite a while with Vista RC1, mostly trying features relevant for system administration. I found many bugs. There were even incomplete components in Vista RC1. For example the German translation was unfinished. I concluded that Visa RC1 is not really a release candidate.

In RC2 some of the serious bugs were fixed, others are still there. For instance, the problem that all Group Policy settings were removed after logging on in cached mode is solved in RC2. Network Location Awareness of Group Policy, however, still didn’t work. I didn’t find discussions about these issues on the web, probably because many beta testers focus only on the more prominent features.

But as soon as the final of Vista will be available, all bugs will come to the surface. It seems to me that Microsoft’s developers are working under a tremendous time pressure since Vista’s release date can’t be postponed again. I am often testing beta software, but I never saw such a buggy release candidate. The delay of the service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is a further proof of this theory. That’s why I expect a stable Vista only in the second half of next year.