Computerworld Australia has received reports that IT managers have begun spontaneously donning Munchkin hats and breaking out in song.
Very strained strains of “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” were reportedly heard country wide yesterday as Microsoft issued the news that Vista had begun to be officially killed off -- that is, that they’d officially stopped supporting Vista Service Pack zero.
“On Tuesday 13 April 2010 USA time, the Microsoft operating system Windows Vista without an installed service pack (commonly referred to as RTM/SP0) will reach End of Support (EOS),” the company said in a update to customers.
I think the little people of Oz probably summed up this news best: “She's gone where the goblins go, below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out. Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low. Let them know The Wicked Witch is dead!”
Microsoft also kindly issued details of when further nails would be driven into Vista’s coffin.
Using terminology with more than a whiff of futuristic bounty hunter speak, the company said it had slated Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for ‘retirement’ on 12 July 2011.
The wording for the killing off of Service Pack 2 was a bit more ambiguous: “Support ends 24 months after the next service pack releases or at the end of the product's support lifecycle, whichever comes first.”
That Service Pack was first released 29 April 2009, so here’s hoping the gold watch gets broken out a little early for the ‘retirement’ of that little bit of rogue technology on the loose.