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Ballmer gives up on Vista
Admits it is ok to wait for Windows 7
Understated CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer seems to have thrown in the towel over Microsoft Vista. For ages, Ballmer has been encouraging outfits to upgrade from XP to Vista and been banging on about how waiting for Windows 7 was a bad idea.
But in a surprising comment to Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference he has admitted that it is a lost cause. He said that some companies are planning to skip Windows Vista, and that's OK.
He admitted that "if people want to wait they really can… But I'd definitely deploy Vista." Ballmer still defended Vista, saying that the adoption rate of Vista is two times faster than XP at two years in.
However, he did admit that the operating system had compatibility problems with some applications and hardware, but that those problems have diminished.
Gartner said that 61 percent of respondents were thinking about skipping Vista altogether. Ballmer said that Microsoft would be ready for that outcome and reiterated Microsoft's pledge that Windows 7 will be compatible with Vista.