Worse, as Gartner noted of the November 2006 launch, Windows Vista wasn't actually finished. The code shipped to manufacturing with 19,000 drivers ready to go, while another 12,000 were only due to become available afterwards through download.
By July, Microsoft said there were 1,900 applications and 10,000 devices certified as either Windows Ready or Windows Vista Capable. Microsoft didn't say whether the Windows Ready or Windows Vista Capable category dominated, which was notable because the latter was possibly the easiest certification to achieve while - ultimately - being the least useful to developers or end users.
Today, you can find a slowly building list of applications certified for Windows Vista here and hardware here.
With the 2007 Holiday shopping season now upon us, there's more than a sense of seasonal goodwill in the air: there is also the vague promise that Windows Vista could, at least in the consumer market, finally see some convincing uptake.
Twelve months after Microsoft missed the 2006 Holiday shopping season, which traditionally boosts retail sales, Windows Vista is finally in a position to make inroads into the consumer market as it rides into peoples' homes on the backs of new PCs.
As for business programmers, next February's launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 should finally provide the pieces to implement some of those data and information integration, and workflow-based application programming scenarios across Windows servers and the client that Microsoft's been promising for four years.
A year in to Windows Vista, then, and pending the first Service Pack, developers could finally see some kind of incentive for putting their software on Windows Vista.®