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When I.T. professionals and consumers got a look at Vista, they all had this same question for Microsoft: That's it?

Vista as delivered is significantly different from Vista as promised. So different as to be perhaps unrecognizable. It breaks everything, fixes nothing that wasn't already fixed with third party software, and expands Microsoft's victory over Novell on the network by being consistently unreliable with Novell networking.

I was wondering if this NYTimes article would hit slashdot. It reads a little like the author's an Apple fan, but not offensively so.

While the author issues Microsoft some good guidance, they won't take it. They can't hear us at all. It's time to switch.

Looks like he's spitting the dummy now that he is out of the loop. MS are not a search company

http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true&mkt=en-US

MS dont want to be a search company

• The Battle For Better Search (April 2005)
• New Microsoft Browser Raises Google's Hackles (May 1 2006)
• Microsoft Wants More Search Share (October 27 2006)
• Microsoft puts Live services into the Labs (January 26 2006)

but as is the way when you are a perceived are the dominant IT player you must be seen to 'compete' with all the 'upstarts' to keep the share holders happy

• Online Search Hits All-Time High; Google Dominant
• (March 3 2006)
• Yahoo! gives up quest for search dominance (January 24 2006)
• Does search engine's power threaten Web's independence? (October 31 2002)

so your business heads gob off about how stupid the opposition business heads are.

Right. That's why google has to be "fucking kill"ed instead of just being allowed to die on its own.

I think most people are going to be very surprised when they realise where MS see their future and while they are currently getting slaughtered in many sections of the press over Vista they are quietly laying the ground work for the next phase, which is largely why there has been so little reaction from Redmond to the adverse press.

Vista IS the groundwork for the next phase. Everything Microsoft does is intended to extend their control over the market. Not a surprise, but still true.

Look at how cell phones are doing in North America vs. the world. The world has GSM where you are not tied to a provider you buy the handset from, and you do not pay for received calls. The contrary is true in North America.

See for example how Via makes some living selling cheap C3 CPUs. Yes, they're not fast chips. But here's how it works: some poor chinese wants to get a computer. He/she can't pirate a CPU, and can't afford to pay 400$ for a top of the line Intel chip. So he/she gets a 40$ VIA chip instead.

Which in turn keeps some people employed at VIA.

That's how it would work for software too.

No, not really. There's a big difference in job generation between manufactured goods and services. If an entirely new software product is created because those people can't pirate from Microsoft anymore, you create a few jobs... but not many. If you simply broaden existing markets, you create practically zero jobs.

If Via needs to make low-end chips for some markets, they have to make capital investments in the assembly line and assign workers to build those chips for as long as they're making them. If Open Office needs to be translated into Chinese, they hire a translator or two on contract for a little while, and bring them back every so often when they add functionality to the interface. Maybe they even hire one full-time, but that's *one job*.

Just think about this: Microsoft has 55,000 employees, and they are by far the largest software vendor in the world. Intel, which makes a whole lot of the processors out there, but isn't anywhere near as dominant in the market as Microsoft, has 78,700 employees.

Did you know that Commodore 64 BASIC V2 was based on a dialect written by Microsoft.

Not this again. Things change, especially where technology is concerned. I have seen some sticklers who demand that K=1024x and k=1000x. That's neither here nor there. But common usage is going against you here.

webcoaches.com disagrees with you.

Ohio State University disagrees with you.

ABC Computer Classes disagrees with you. They also go into detail about the 1024K vs 1000k.

PCToday.com disagrees with you.

As for my personal opinion:
Oh COME ON! Do you really think there's any danger of someone getting confused and thinking we're talking about KELVIN BITS PER SECOND? What is that? The heat generated by the bit's friction?

Oh, and I'll try to refrain from slapping you for that oh-so-superior 'Bzzt, wrong'

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To be nice I thought I'd be provide some links to 2.5" HDs and Accessories:

eCost - A listing of some notebook (2.5 mostly) hard drives

PriceTrack - A listing on 1.0 to 3.9 gig Hard Drives (some may not be 2.5)

More 2.5 Drive Comparisions - Just more of the same

IDE Connectors - May or may not be what your looking for

Hope it helped,

Bandwidth