Steve Ballmer has openly admitted that Vista was a waste of time, which is not something you hear often from the CEO of a major company when talking about their products. Thinq.co.uk have quoted Ballmer as stating: ?We tried too big a task and in the process wound up losing thousands of man hours of innovation." It was a 5yr wait for Vista, the follow up OS to the much loved and reliable XP.

Vista wasn?t as bad as it?s current reputation implies, but the delays in it?s making created an expectation with consumers that it would have the stability of XP. It received allot of bad press straight after it?s launch. Vista was just never able to recover, and it was detrimental to it?s long term success. Apple also stuck the knife in with it?s ?Mac VS PC? advertising campaign, which pointed out all of Vista?s flaws to the public. And there was the disastrous Intel/Microsoft ?Vista Capable? campaign, which promised consumers that certain PC models were compatible with the new OS. Unfortunately they weren’t, which was more down to Intel than it was Microsoft. All this put the nails in Vista?s coffin before it really had a chance.

But it?s not all doom and gloom, Microsoft?s Windows 7 has been a huge success and has been widely adopted. Ballmer’s recognition of the wasted time incurred by Vista is a rarity coming from the CEO.