The announcement was followed by a management shake up, and several technology news outlets say Microsoft employees are pushing for managers to be fired over the blundered project.
According to David Richards, a tech analyst for SmartHouse, more than 60 percent of Vista’s code needs to be rewritten, which has sent Microsoft management into a panic.
The troubles, which mainly center around security concerns and glitches in Media Center code, have forced the company to steal resources away from other programming teams, including Xbox and Viiv, which means planned releases and upgrades to those products also will be delayed.
Vista started as a project called Longhorn, an operating system that turned out to be too ambitious to deliver. It was renamed, scaled back and delayed. The problems have added an estimated $2 billion to the cost of the project.
It also may end up costing PC makers, who had planned to ship hardware with Vista in time for the holiday sales season, as well as retailer chains such as Circuit City, Best Buy and Staples that had banked on having the new PCs on their shelves.
