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I am not here to dis Windows XP. I like Windows XP.

However, the whole point of the Asus Eee PC is that it is a stripped down unit for common tasks, generally net-based. You write a letter or short text on an Eee, you surf the net, you check your email, maybe SSH into a UNIX host.

For this, even for longtime Windows users, a light implementation of Linux is probably better. There are fewer licensing issues. All necessary tools are built in. It can maximize the limited processor, memory and disk of the Eee.

I could see installing Windows 2000 on one, sort of, but in my experience, the overhead of Linux is a lot less because it does not have to support binaries from the past 3500 generations of Windows.

Please, let us return to sanity. You may want Windows XP on your full-size HP laptop, but on your Eee, go light.

See:
Asus Micro Laptop Brings Linux to Desktop

What people like about the Eee is that it does 90% of what a computer does for the price and portability of a cell phone.

Toying with that formula is unwise. Instead, further pare down the bloated Xandros and XP installs so that people can use a 4-8 GB machine.

I thought they were going to install Intel's Atom in the next revision?

Regardless, the Eee is an important step for open source and Linux. See Asus Micro Laptop Brings Linux to the Desktop.

There's two competing paradigms that are going to define the market for the future: web-based Software as a Service (SaaS), and its nemesis, old software industry styled computing as a service (CaaS).

SaaS relies on you buying the OS or installing a free one, ditto for browser, and then using your applications online. Problems include: portability of your data, privacy, control of your data and its removal, the unreliablity of internet connections, and the unreliablity of browsers. Advantages: it's free, no IT department controls it, and someone else updates it. Google is the champion of this paradigm.

CaaS takes the current computing paradigm, in which you buy a computer, buy or download an OS or software, and maintain it yourself (or have an IT department do it if your business is big enough) and makes it subscription based. Somewhat realistically, it insists on this being a pay service, which as the internet ad bonanza begins to fade, seems sensible. Problems include: what happens if you don't keep up your subscription, unreliability of network software delivery, large companies like MSFT having knowledge of what's on your computer. Advantages: your software stays current, you can buy additional software and services from a trusted vendor, you know what your patch level is. Old software -- MSFT, Adobe, even Apple -- are the champions of this paradigm.

http://www.chrisblanc.org/blog/information-technology/2008/03/24/computing-as-a-service/

Basically, while mesh computing sounds cool, it's a regression to a cheap form of thin client interaction. It adds nothing other than someone else maintaining your software for you, which Microsoft will do for their software, as will some Linux distros, automatically. Ignore the hype and the trends, look for the enduring technologies... that's the engineer's way.

Vista contains a number of quality enhancements, but most of them are under the hood. For a comprehensive list, see:

Windows Vista

The GUI, some of its information architecture (specifically, screen transitions in widgets) need work. So do some of the internals.

Vista is released now to see how the world reacts to it, so it will be tried and true tested in 2010. As another article here pointed out, the codebase is now standardized with Server 2008 and Windows 7 will be built on a modified version of it.

Windows XP was released in 2001, and it took a couple years to be usable, also.

To use a historical metaphor, Windows Vista is Windows 95 for the millennial generation. It will be replaced by Windows 7, which is the equivalent of Windows 98: same idea, much more refined implementation.

Bennett's article is consumer research gold for Microsoft, if they choose to use it. It's the small daily frustrations that make users go mad, because as weird as it sounds, gigantic fundamental problems are obvious and all planning starts with workarounds.

2009 will be the year of Vista, and almost immediately, Windows 7 will be out, and we can go through this battle again!

They are not Microsoft.

Therefore

They are beyond criticism.

Anything that is not Microsoft, and makes us feel like the hipper kids in the street, is automatically beyond criticism. We all wish we were the rich kids in Redmond, but since we're townies instead, we will speak ill of them any time we can. Macintosh is not from Redmond. True, they are greedy and wealthy. But they are not our enemy so they are us.

(See also Apple's identity problem.)

When I first started programming, in BASIC on an Apple ][ (not IIe), I remember being baffled by the fact that the computer did not operate with multiple concurrent streams. To me, this seemed the point of making something that was "more than a calculator," and the only way we would be able to do the really interesting stuff with it.

When I first started writing object-oriented code, I was somewhat dismayed to find that OO was an extension to the same ol' linear programming. It seemed to me that objects should be able to exist as if alive and react freely, but really, they were just a fancy interface to the linear runtime. Color me disapointed yet again.

It's an important paradigm shift to recognize parallel computing. Maybe when the world realizes the importance of parallel computing, and parallel thinking, we'll have that singularity that some writers talk about. People will no longer think in such basic terms and be so ignorant of context and timing. That in itself must be nice.

Sutter's article hits home with all of this. His conclusion is that efficient programming, and elegant programming that takes advantage of, not conforms to, the parallel model is the future. Judging by the chips I see on the market today, he was right, 2.5 years ago. He will continue to be right. The question is whether programmers step up to this challenge, and see it as being as fun as I think it will be.

So I took a walk this evening, actually while visiting family. We cruise on past this house in a nearby neighborhood and then stop, because I've backtracked. Next to the trash can is a Dell computer. I think, how bad can it be? And take it home. Older processor, dead hard drive, monitor with a bad cap causing intermittent screwups. The only part not fixed is the monitor, but I dropped in an old IDE drive and it's a perfect FreeBSD machine. Heck, if I had the bandwidth at home, I'd serve my website off of it.

The Linux box came from three or four older computers, two of which belonged to me, combined in the least-junky case I could find. I'm still not certain of which distro will be "final" on it, but I'm trying Ubuntu now. This machine gets re-imaged at least once a week, because it's the "beater" box for experiments.

I've also got a Windows XP machine that I love dearly. It's an Intel board, a 2.4ghz P4, some other stuff I forgot. I put it together for $600 and it's more stable than the Windows machines my neighbors bought from Dell. I have no plans to upgrade to Vista for another two or three years, for the largest part because I don't want to buy the hardware.

Life rewards intelligence if you're willing to apply it. Is this hacking, best practices, or common sense? I also get free jalapeno peppers from a very small garden, if I remember to water it. No "corporate chilis" for me. Linus would be proud.