"Windows Vista: A work in progress", was the opening words of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's speech to the company's Most Valuable Professionals conference in Seattle.
After the laughter and applauding cleared off, Ballmer went on to explain that - he believes that - Microsoft "did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting. We can't ever let that happen again."
Ballmer also admitted that, compared to Windows XP, Windows Vista's performance is disappointing. "We had some things that we can't just set the dial back, but I think people wish we could. Vista is bigger than XP. It's going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve."
Microsoft CEO concluded his speech by acknowledging the continued demand for Windows XP, but refused to give any indications that Microsoft would forgo its plans to cease its distribution by the end of June 2008.