Panda_man said:
Look, Vista was going to have some things that (in various forms)
were going to be in XP, in W2k but which still have not fruited.
XP was cheap compared to Vista (some forms), but W2k released
to manufacturing in like Nov '99 with Feb '00 gen. availability for
most people, and was followed by XP in '01 in the Aug-Oct time
for most people. The price of the OS is driven by expected sales
vs cost of development and needed return on that investment.
Vista had a long (hence high cost) development.
If the next client OS is more on the order of the W2k to XP timeline,
actually predicted to be longer by the late '09 mentioned (i.e. 3 years
for some, and just under for all), then it would be appearing just about
at the average of the W2k to XP and the XP to Vista timelines.
Face it, XP's features were getting pretty stale and the internal
technologies dated after 5+ years.
Roger