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Preventing Another Vista-like Release With Windows 7
CRE writes "An article at the OS News site details how Microsoft could best avoid Windows 7 becoming another Vista-esque release. The author advises Microsoft to basically split Windows in two. Windows 7 would be a new operating system based on the proven Windows NT kernel, but with a completely new user interface, with backwards compatibility provided by VMs. In addition, to please business customers and other people concerned with backwards compatibility, Microsoft should create 'Windows Legacy', basically the current Windows, which will receive only security and bug fixes. Relatedly, APCMag is reporting that Microsoft has moved Julie Larson-Green (the driving force behind Office 2007's Ribbon UI) over to work on Windows 7's interface."
The driver situation is going to be just crazy. Its bad enough now with windows.
..create MORE 'Windows Legacy?' This is one of the major, abyssmal design choices in current Windows versions responsible for truck loads of the issues every Windows user and their grandma have come to hate said OS, simply because the Windows 'software engineers' (term used humbly) blatantly, as usual, fail with implementation. Truly a great tip.
Horrible idea, would never be put into practice. MS already spent years merging the 9x consumer brand into the NT-based line. There's no reason they would then spit it again and have to deal with two not fully compatible platforms, requiring a separate support base for each one.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Why not bite the bullet and go with an OSX type operating system? It'll be a bit painful but it'll cure a lot of the security woes and actually be a major upgrade instead of a major security update. Both Mac and Linux are running that style OS on an Intel platform isn't it time Microsoft surrendered and dumped Windows for a more stable and secure approach.
Which of the 8 versions of Vista would that be then? I look forward to the 64 different flavours of Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows Legacy Home Basic, and so-on and so-forth. The variety of Windows available is one of many ways that the whole OS should be simplified.
Keep It Simple Stupid the problem with Vista was that Microsoft wanted to make the Ultimate Operating System, that would put all other Operating Systems to shame (And give to us all the features they promiced us in Windows 95)... But with all the problems with such a large project then ended up with an OS that is arguable slightly better then their old one. I have tried myself to do ambisious projects and they always go over budget and over time, and end up having to do a lot of cuts. I learned not to go crazy and make the ultimate just get it to work correctly and impove on the other one, That way everyone is happy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's called a service pack. And you can slipstream them right into the install (new XP discs sold today include SP2). There is no need to split it into a different product.
As long as Microsoft can maintain a quick pace of innovation, Linux will always be chasing behind it.
Once the problem becomes well defined and stable, Linux will catch up and O/S will commoditize.
The longer the release cycles- and the more windows UI changes with those releases, the more likely people will change to linux. I'm ready except for Everquest. Everything else is open source on my boxes now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
...Microsoft has moved Julie Larson-Green (the driving force behind Office 2007's Ribbon UI) over to work on Windows 7's...
Oh, no...
As for the future Windows, I say build it to be a VM store, capable of taking on the personality of any VM---allowing you to have new fancy features as well as the legacy Windows (heck, maybe they should include everything, all the way to DOS, Win3.1, etc.). You don't really `need' an OS (assuming they figure out ways of enabling you to efficiently use the hardware from VM)---you might have a `primary' image that you use all the time, and a buncha others provided for compatibility with previous versions.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
How about releasing a single OS that scales suitably and automatically to the users' dynamic needs, rather than piling options on the user who neither knows nor cares what the options do.
"Make it go."
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Deliver all the features you promise, and a few extras, when the time is right.
It's that simple.
Whether or not the Vista release was successful or not is generally troll bait but from my personal perspective it had none of the things I wanted and featured many things I didn't. I certainly won't be touching it until well after SP1 and even then only if there are several great games for me to play. It was a release "failure" to people like me who expected some goodies and a new Windows iteration but Microsoft delivered a more restrictive operating system. No thanks!
crazy dynamite monkey
If they're planning on making the next Windows UI mirror Office 2007 then count me on the list of people likely to never buy it. The Office 2007 UI is horrible and badly done. Never before with MS products have I felt the desire to kill someone after using a software. Well except for that time I tried using MS Plus but that's a whole nother article.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
I don't think the answer is to provide yet another windows version. Having a "new" and "legacy" version is only going to make the problem worse. Imagine if Microsoft came out now and said they were going to support XP for 5 more years with fixes as the "legacy" version. Now no one will be forced to upgrade. Many people like XP better but accept the fact that eventually they will need to go to Vista. For Microsoft, they want to keep people at their latest version because it is easier to support the newer and hopefully "better" code than the old.
I think a a better way is to do smaller incremental releases. Sure MS may only want to make people drop the 200$ every 4-5 years, but they could make make their service packs yearly and include more new features (similar to XP SP 2). Then when it comes to the next Windows release it hopefully will not be such a drastic change for users.
Now if it actually incorporates VMs for backward compatibility built on the proven NT kernel, I think they may be onto something. What I see as the problem here is that Microsoft is going it alone like it has so many more times in the past. If this were a joint-venture between M$ and VMWare or some other company of that ilk, I could forsee this being a successful product.
Unfortunately, M$ won't do that and this product will be hyped to the max and actually provide a lackluster experience for users.
The game.
Since when has Microsoft ever done anything specifically to make your life easier, your migration easier or your overall cost of ownership cheaper?
Seriously when did that happen? When has anything Microsoft done as regards any of those points been undertaken as a panicked reaction to market complaints and screaming after the fact? Every single time.
They created a whole new version of VB, relegating VB 6 to maintenance mode. Anybody who knows a VB programmer knows how popular that decision was. The Wikipedia article on VB doesn't even mention VB.Net!
dom
And it will run on a machine like the IBM XT .
The game.
Take the Linux Kernel, Run every program as root, install a bunch of 3rd party drivers for cheap hardware that may or may not function properly. Have this in a distribution that is widly spread so about 90% of all people are using... See how good Linux holds up.
The Windows NT Kernel is actually a very good kernel. It is the fact that the rest of the OS is designed in a way that cause problems to occure.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Are you serious? Windows XP has much better hardware support AND security (SP2) then 2000. All of the years of bug fixes that have NOT gone into 2000 would have to be backported... plus Beryl? I use Beryl. Beryl is NOT ready for the masses (and technically is being reforked back to Compiz). Why would they use somerthing like that that doesn't even RUN in a Windows environment when they have their own more limited but also more stable Aero interface? I despise using Windows, and love my Linux box, but seriously, just no. Vista won't be a failure as much as you may want it to be. It will succeed as bad as it is for the same reason every previous version has, it's Windows. Like it or not people will use it. I heard these same complaints about every release of Windows in the past, the only one that did flop was Millenium.
Microsoft will SP the problems out of Vista, and in 2-3 years people will be using it in droves.
Vista wasn't ill received because of the incompatibility. Plain and simple, it was not a step forwards. It wasn't something that improved your working, playing or surfing experience in any way. If anything, it was a step backwards.
Add various real and perceived problems with privacy, the data hunger of MS, the dread of DRM/TCP and other rather negative reviews, and you see the reason why Vista wasn't the next Win95 hype.
The problem is that XP already has everything the user wants. It can play games, it's compatible with almost any current hardware right out of the box, there is no USB (WinNT) or WiFi (2k) that would require him to update, whatever hardware he wants to plug in, XP can take care of it. Whatever software he wants to run, XP can do it. DirectX10-only games are still far from reaching the shelves, and no business software that I'm aware of requires Vista. The user interface of XP has all the main features that make working, surfing and playing in Windows enjoyable, and all the kinks and wrinkles were also taken care of by third party software vendors (where "vendors" does not necessarily mean you had to pay anything for the soft).
Basically, the reason why Vista didn't sell like hot cakes was simple: It was not needed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
with backwards compatibility provided by VMs
That just gave me an interesting idea: Why doesn't MS ship fully functional versions of previous OS's, wrapped in a VM, with newer versions? What would they lose? I know I'd be far less worried about upgrading to Vista if I knew I could load up a built-in VM of DOS 6.0 or Win98SE or WinXP and play all my favorite shareware games from the '90s as easily as the latest-and-greatest. Same goes for here at work...it would be nice to know that some of our older software could just be loaded in a VM until the vendors catch up with Vista. As long as they maintain security on the sandbox itself, they wouldn't need to worry overmuch about keeping the old OS up to date, and it's not like people would be buying Vista just to exclusively use it to run XP, but it would make for a much more obvious upgrade path than the current hard cutoff in backwards compatibility.
Unpleasantries.
Why come out with a new OS like 'Windows Legacy' that functions just the same as XP except maybe a few more features and guaranteed security updates, when simply supporting XP and releasing a SP3 or 'expansion pack' with new features for it would be enough. I'm sure Microsoft would rather patch and upgrade the old Windows than rather start from scratch, especially since it's not their flagship product anymore. But then of course, forcing Windows XP users to purchase a 'new' OS that runs exactly like XP just so they could continue using an XP based OS would be a typical M$ move as well.
The issue here is proprietary lock-in. If MS would fix all the architectural problems of MS Windows, it would basically be a new OS. It could keep parts of the kernel, but the userland interfaces would change so much that only VMs could keep compatibility -- and with them comes a huge resources consumption boost on an already heavy architecture. But resources are not the main issue: it is that the new applications would be so different from old ones that vendors would most likely do something cross platform and MS would loose proprietary lock-in.
Also, it would take so long that GNU/Linux would have a huge window of opportunity, with the added benefit of low resources usage and true backwards compatibility.
Finally, it would be so different from MS Windows and so much like GNU/Linux or the Hurd that people would see the king is naked.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Other than the fact that Beryl isn't available on Windows (since it works with the XOrg server) and that Compiz would be better for the masses as it's more stable (or Compiz Fusion, for the best of both worlds) then "Compiz-Beryl-Fusion" isn't just for "people_who_like_flashy_stuff/idiots".
Yes, it adds flashy stuff, but it also adds some usability things as well as the hugely sensible idea of offloading window rendering to the graphics card. If you've got a $200+ graphics card then why leave it idling when you can make it do some work (which it's far more suitable for) and leave more processing power for more 'useful' processing?
Microsoft selling Windows Legacy looks suspiciously similar Coke selling Coke Classic. Tell everyone they like "New Coke", realize the don't, and start selling "Coke Classic". Tell everyone they like "Vista", realize they don't, and then sell "Windows Legacy."
I am already bracing myself for the "Windows 7 the operating system that was supposed to ship in 2007" jokes. Microsoft picking Windows 7 as a product name in 2007 appears unfortunate.
Why doesn't Microsoft take yet another page from Apple's book with the next release of windows. They should break all backwards compatibility with COM, DCOM, VB6, etc and build Windows 7 from the ground up. They would still have to provide an emulation layer similar to what Mac did between OS9 and OSX. This way companies running all that legacy code won't be left in the dust, but they will have even more incentive to move on to more secure platforms.
How may I help you today?
I'm quite happy with the Vista Kernel thank you very much. I find the multitasking I/O and http stack to be working better than NT. If you have speed issues then try using the XP desktop that is there in Vista. If you have driver issues, well yes it's not as good as XP on the driver front. If anything I think maybe a Vista Embedded Light or something could be made that has a smaller footprint and only runs .NET 3.0 apps.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Sorry, dropping DRM support is not an option.
Isn't it a little premature for Microsoft to be working on the next Windows release? Wouldn't it be more seemly for Windows to _finish_ VIsta first, i.e. fixing the big problems with it and delivering all the stuff that was promised to be in it (in the days when it was still called Longhorn?)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
who modded this troll?
though i'd prefer XP as the base rather than 2k (they're mostly the same, but i'm more familiar with the former), this is a reasonable idea.
take XP, take the stuff originally planned for vista (WFS, DX10, etc.) throw it in with security upgrades (like doing UAC properly) and bug fixes, then sell it for the cost of an OSX upgrade.
sounds reasonable to me.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Its worse than that for Microsoft. The cost to develop a new OS has increased exponentially (with the complexity) since their 3.1/95 days. That trend isn't going to reverse, and it is going to become impossible for Microsoft to innovate and profit from the OS alone. That is why widespread support for ODF can break them, and why they are fighting it so hard.
The OSS model is working a lot better at spreading out the complexity and costs of innovating within an OS. Its simply a more sustainable "business" model than Microsoft's.
I'm wondering why they keep on calling 'em "Windows". Why not Microsoft "Doors"? Or more seriously perhaps "Microsoft Unix", now that would be interesting. And yes, I'm also looking so forward to a completely new kinf of GUI.
Two versions: server and workstation. That's it. No more "ultimate" or "home" or any other stripped down versions.
For Server: no client access licenses. When you buy a copy of the server software, you can have as many clients as you want. Each server version is capable of everything, including clustering, load balancing, and everything else.
For Workstation: one interface. It could be new or old, whatever, but exactly one. If it's new, we all need to learn the new version. Don't like that? Get Linux or a Mac.
Finally, both server and workstation should support a single hardware compatibility list. If your hardware isn't on the list, you can't load it; update the list monthly through Windows Update. There is Driver Signing already, but you can get around it by ignoring the warnings. Eliminate getting around the warnings.
microsoft needs to accept the fact that they can not build a decently secure & stable OS and what microsoft should do is take a clue from Apple, use a core of some flavor of BSD and build on top of that...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
XP is a good, level building block that's safe for almost everyone (if they run Opera as their browser, haha). Vista's the next generation. We don't need another Windows; we need better versions of the windowses we already have. But definitely put Julie Larsen-Green on the interface, because the mishmash of PARC and X-Windows has grown old already!
technical writing / development
...but, by introducing different product lines in their OS, Microsoft will only confuse the customer, and they're way too smart and customer oriented to allow something like that to happen.
What they really ought to do is something more like what Apple did with the Classic Mode environment for supporting OS 9 applications, which ran within OS X. Thing is, MS will probably have to support theirs indefinitely, while Apple was able to successfully kill Classic Mode within about 5 years.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
My understanding is Microsoft has turned a profit by its Office suite and perhaps by stamping its name on a variety of cheap hardware, like some two-button mice. In a normal business, you sell off the unprofitable areas and concentrate on what makes you money. Windows doesn't seem to ever turn a profit and there is no reason it is needed to run Office.
If Microsoft wants to survive, they'd better concentrate on what is profitable and leave the whole Windows behind or better make it 'Open Source' and let the community make it a success. Windows is the biggest blunder ever, 100% cause of spam and many other problems that plague all users, not only Windows users. No more Windows looks like like the only "Road Ahead" for them that isn't a dead end.
How does an article like this make it to the front of slashdot? I think I come here to feed an addiction rather than actually get intelligent news nowadays...
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Windows XP was the dramatic rewrite of Windows on a new core, if you are running XP that was almost 10 years on the making.
Microsoft has already failed at all of these things people want them to do, you have to look elsewhere and fast because Windows 7.0 is just one release after Vista (6.1) it is going to be mostly the same. Microsoft Research hasn't fixed major architectural flaws. The sloppy security of the app platform is just one problem. For example the apps are all hard-coded to 96 dpi and nothing has been done to move forward. Displays with 300 dpi are essentially print devices, MS hasn't got any printing chops, even Word is only WYSIWYG by 1980's standards. MS also does not have a Web 2.0 browser or a lightweight browser or modern media support (MPEG-4) and their 64-bit transition is a disaster.
This guy is the kind of dreamer Microsoft feasts on. He's so full of excuses for MS yet bitter also. He wants a reward now for all the years he did free grahics driver QA. Sorry, that time is gone for good.
While the FUD machine has done an admiral job at making Vista seem like a steaming pile, that's all it has been: FUD.
I've been using Vista since November of 2006, essentially days after it was released to MSDN, and it is without a doubt better than XP. The improvements are both obvious and subtle. I'm not going to list them all here, because others have done a good job already.
So if Vista is superior to XP technically, which was deemed by most as a great success, then Vista being a failure must be attributed to sales data. Many early reports showed Vista having poor sales, but those reports were flawed due to the fact that they compared the launch of Vista to the launch of XP. Vista launched Jan. 29th, long after the holiday season was over, where as XP enjoyed the entire holiday season to boosts its sales.
Once this was corrected, reports showed that Vista was selling on pace with XP. Indeed, as of March 2007, Vista's sales were double that of XPs.
In addition, despite being released to consumers and businesses separately, Vista's sales were only 4% behind XP, which was released to both simultaneously. In other words, Vista beat expectations by a long shot.
So it must be that sales of Vista have stagnated since March... opps, that's not true either. Apparently, Vista sold so well that it offset the massive hit Microsoft took as part of extending the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years.
And then there is the wonderful story that Vista has somehow boosted XP sales, which is completely silly. It didn't boost XP sales. There was a larger proportion of XP sales than were expected, but the breakdown is about 80% Vista, 20% XP. Part of this is thanks to the FUD machine (good job guys) prompting some large OEMs, like Dell, to offer XP on lower end machines. Microsoft underestimated the FUD machine's ability to influence the market. (By the way, there were 7% more XP sales than were expected. Hardly a tidal wave of XP purchases.)
Sorry guys. I know you desperately want to believe that Vista is a failure, both technically and in terms of sales. But you're wrong on both accounts. 2 years from now, when 90% of PCs are running Vista, you'll probably still claim it's a failure, although you'll fall back to the technical side of things.
I'll be sure to bookmark my post and repeatedly link to it in all those flame wars.
As XP is the dominant OS out there, I point out that Vista so far is selling better than XP at the same point into XP's life. XP also had most of the same complaints now leveled at vista. I suspect by the time windows 7 (with the inevitiable delays) comes out, most will have an attitude of I'll buy 7 when you pry vista out of my cold dead hands.
Windows 7 would be a new operating system based on the proven Windows NT kernel, but with a completely new user interface
What the **** for?
How will repainting, and then moving all the icons around help anybody get the next quarterly reports or respond to an email faster? Sheesh! An OS is supposed to facilitate a user's management of their hardware and software. Another 'new' interface that just shifts things around doesn't help anyone, and there is very little else that CAN be done.
I don't mean to put Linus on a pedestal, but I remember something he said that I've found to be very prescient over time. It was something along the line of, "We found that there was only one best way to do things. Implementations that didn't follow the typical pattern were usually trying to cover up for some other deficiency, and the implementation improved once it was made to look like everyone else's implementation."
It's the same for UI. Do something substantially different, and it's just different. More often than not, it is less effective.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
You seem to be under the impression, there is competition and if MSFT does not do what is best for the customers, they will desert it in droves. Time and again MSFT has proved that its customer base is loyal to a fault and is a sucker for punishment. Now go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan for Windows-7 that will force all the weary recently upgraded to Vista finally dudes to plunck down more money to upgrade to Windows-7.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...and where is that "innovation" exactly?
All I see are pointless changes to the UI and the occasional bit of inescapable DRM put in place to apease the RIAA or MPAA.
Most of what people "gush" about when they talk about Microsoft products where features available in non-microsoft products more than 10 years ago.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Here's a tip. If you don't want another failure like Vista, then don't include the overly restrictive built in DRM schemes...in other words, stop taking it up the ass from the MPAA/RIAA.
They could keep the Lust, Gluttony, Greed and maybe the Wrath, but loose the Sloth, Envy and Pride - that would speed things up.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Find me a version of Linux, FreeBSD, etc that will run on my hardware and play the only game I really play on a regular (that is twice a week) basis; World of Warcraft... and I'll try to switch to it.
In windows 7 Unsigned code will be locked down in a sandbox.
.Net or some thing like that.
.NET / old UI apps and one for your new windows code with the new UI.
M$ has said they are working a kind of VM like set that will sandbox all unsigned code for the next mayor release of windows as well as fully redone UI.
First of all if they are this alot of people will dump windows for mac or linux at that point and / or there may be a lot of anti Trust lawsuits.
also fully redoing the UT / forcing unsigned code to be locked down will brake so many apps that Up take of this will be a lot slower then Vista slow up take.
Unsigned code and antitrust lawsuits do have connection if you have to pay to get singed code and only m$ can say what gets signed. M$ is doing this right now some types of drivers for vista.
Some of the major programs vender's may come out and say you want a singed code BUY the new vision.
Also this code signing may force a major rewrite to want ever ms wants like singed code must be
also code signing is bad of open and free software even more so if MS wants you to pay for it like they do with some of the vista drivers.
Sand boxing may end braking a lot of old apps and code making people that need to use is house apps and older apps less like to move to a new version of windows cutting out the old UI will do the same thing as well.
Also running old apps in VM may lead to high ram use and lots of space need to pull it off. As you likely will have to run 2 full os 1 for all of your older win 32 / win 64 / old
This will be the time of apple to come out with MAC os for ALL x86 systems or a lot of people will just go out and buy it and then hack it to run on there hardware.
If you have speed issues then try using the XP desktop that is there in Vista.
So your solution for Vista speed issues is to make it look and act just like XP. Gotcha.
I don't mean the crapware that Dell et al install, but all the internal DRM crap inside Vista. You're not serving your customers at all with it, and I, for one, have resisted Vista despite having free upgrades to Premium precisely because of that.
Vista has no performance improvement over XP, a much bigger memory footprint, no must-have feature(s) -- especially since DX10 can now be ported back to XP (thank you incompetent Nvidia driver writers) -- DRM Everywhere [tm], and unknown security issues. Why in the world did you ever think I'd want to upgrade to that?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's going to be OK.
A few days a go, there was an article about how the many distros in linux confuses people, and the masses in slashdot came to defend how linux is all about choice. Now Vista has a few version, and the masses in linux bash windows as confusing to end users. Yippie. ps: and yes, i'm a linux user.
If they're planning on making the next Windows UI mirror Office 2007 then count me on the list of people likely to never buy it. The Office 2007 UI is horrible and badly done.
Lemmie guess, you've used pre-2007 MS Office a bit?
In user testing, Microsoft found that for people who had used old-style Office, the success rate for old-style and new-style UIs was the same (though they bitched about it, as you are). For people who had never used it before, the new-style UI had a much higher success rate.
I know a bunch of people are religious about "if it doesn't look like MS Word 5, I hate it!", but Ribbons mean more people can use it, and more importantly, that *new* users can use it. All you old-style users will be dead, eventually, and keeping UI-backwards-compatibility will be as useless as CPM-backwards-compatibility: upgrade to keep up with the times, or die out.
Normally I can't stand Microsoft apps but this time they've got it right.
You've just described OS X... only 2 versions (supporting both 32 and 64 bit),and no client restrictions.
I think if people were interested in such a scheme, they'd be buying OS X.
But as many people still (mistakenly) swear by the Windows superiority and market-share, it's obvious that people don't really care about what MS is selling, they'll still buy it, simply because they're comfortable with their "Start" menu and delusion of right-click exclusivity. I think it's as simple as that.
Like the 7 years it will need to release this OS ? Every OS from Microsoft took more and more time to release. How will they reduce the release cycle ?
The reason you're not seeing the business side jump all over this OS isn't because of just compatibility issues. It's the Genuine advantage.
For example. here where I work, we had Vista running everything most office workers need; Office, IE, SCT, Even wintegrate, which is an ancient terminal program from 96. There was three reasons we didn't go to vista. One was the System requirements we were not ready to meet, another was that F-secure did not have an official Vista version at the time, but the real reason we decided to stay with XP was simple. The Genuine Advantage is for lack of a better word a total pain in the ass.
In vista there are two ways of handling corporate keys. One with a Key Management server and the other with a Multiple Activation Key. Under KMS. You are required to have a KMS server on your network, tie it to DNS and give it your VLK (which can be changed if your old key is disabled and propagated to networked PC's). once you do that it will activate any Business version of vista automatically every 3-6 months without entering any keys, but if the computer is no longer on the network (say a Laptop) after 3 months, the system locks you out in a reduced functionality mode which can be described as useless.
The Second method; MAK isn't much better. basically MS handles the KMS for you. this means that you don't have to worry about traveling users not being disconnected from your network for too long since it works over the internet, but now MS is handling your activations, and you have to contact them every time you hit your quota in order to activate more windows. (which isn't as bad as it sounds. According to MS activation isn't counted against your licence count, and you can request indefinitely) However, if MS sees a huge activation spike. (say your activation rate average goes from 100 a day to 10000000 a day) they disable your key (which brings us to reduced functionality mode for all MAK'ed PC's) and then you must go to each and every MAK managed PC and change the key to a new one supplied by MS.
So basically, to use Vista you either have a server on your network and pray no one's laptop cripples while their on a business trip, or you contact MS until the break of dawn and pray that no one pirates your key so you don't have to touch 1000 Crippled PC's with the Dreaded "YOU ARE A PIRATE!" message
Office 2007, however, doesn't have the "YOU ARE A PIRATE!" system built in it and still has the old VLK licencing system like XP. I can guarantee that it's adoption in business is much higher than Vista. I know we're using it here, but Vista is sitting on the shelf.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Actually thats one of the major new features of vista. Hardware accelerated desktop, and across multiple monitors no less...
By the time Windows 7 is released, everybody will finally be used to the Vista UI, and know where the bloddy hell Microsoft moved all the XP features and commands to.
Then, Windows 7 will arrive, removing menus, forcing all apps to use ribbons instead, and move all the features and commands to yet another hiding place, so we're all back to square one. In fact, the only people who will find themselves on familiar ground will be the malware writers!
Minimum requirements for Windows 7: quad core processor (dual quad core recommended), dual video cards with 1GB dedicated video memory (2GB recommended), 1TB hard drive space required for installation. Think I'm kidding? Wait till you see what Symantec's gonna need by then!
Gee, I can't wait. Pass me the Kool Aide, will ya, someone?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Why has nobody brought this up yet? Are we so detached from the Microsoft world that we don't know the .NET initiative is Microsofts response to binary compatability.
Really, what's all the fuss about Vista failCOM SURROGATE HAS STOPPED WORKINGing ?
Once the problem becomes well defined and stable, Linux will catch up and O/S will commoditize.
What won't commoditize is Linux support for the plethora of Windows apps. The current Wine-based efforts are not something enterprise would touch with a 20 foot pole in most cases.
And from what it seems, another thing that won't commoditize is the Windows experience onto Linux (out of principle or whatever have you). If even Linux users would be disgusted at the prospect of having to clone Windows in their free contributions.
The attack on Windows could come from only two placed currently: web apps crawling back to the desktop, and mobile apps crawling back to the desktop.
Both markets are relatively undeveloped (in the grand picture) to say if it'll have any effect on Windows' market share
Here's why releasing a new OS where the backwards compat is provided only through VM is suicidal:
1. Why would I buy it, if I can buy the exact same thing today in any Apple store? There won't be any apps (excluding Office) or drivers for the new OS, at least not within the first year.
2. What are you gonna do with legacy server software when it's time to release the server version of the OS? Run it in VM? Virtual Server users will tell you that running SQL Server on it is nothing less than torture - the IO crawls.
The biggest problem is that if you want to _replace_ your flagship OS you'd have to get the new one RIGHT on the first try. Microsoft never gets anything right on the first try. Therefore, the only viable means of releasing a new OS for them is doing what they did with NT - ship the new OS side by side with the old and graft backwards compat (and POSIX layer, of course) onto the OS.
Just implement a process that involves actually throwing out 2/3+ of all the features before coding, then cycle that about three or four times to let the really needed items rise to the top. Then simplify, simplify, simplify.
"Just cause it fits in there - doesn't necessarily mean you should put it in there." ~ Words of wisdom from my sophomore roommate after 3 months of debauchery.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
Didn't I just get flamed a while back for saying that Apple's 'Classic mode' was a decent way of handling backwards compatibility? I was told it was dumb, slow, and didn't help developers transition- though the point of my post was more Carbon... anyhow.
Now that Microsoft is going to do it, is it somehow a 'better idea?'
I can't verify the information, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it were true.
I _love_ the Ribbon UI in 2007 and think its a huge step forward. I'm a casual user of all the office apps -- I write proposals in word, technical presentations in power point, and i do data analysis / visualization in excel. I don't do _any_ of these for my day in / day out work -- i'm in software engineering. If you were someone that worked in word day in, day out, every day, and you needed to be "Trained" on how to use word to acheive a specific function, well yeah, the ribbon re-arranges all of the things that felt comfortable to you. I can understand being mad about that, but come on.. we're human beings. Aren't we supposed to be adaptable?
In any case, I'll compare a few tasks that I do commonly between Word 2003 and the Ribbon UI
Word: I am starting a new section of a document, and want to make the section header a different font. (something like \subsection{Justification} in TeX/LaTeX)
Ok, in Word 2003, i needed to highlight the text, and then pick the font / font size that i had used previously. Which one did i use previously? Hrmm.. let me click on one of the other sections i want this one to look like and see what hte font settings change to. Oh? is there a copy font on the right lick menu here? No? Hrmm, i'll have to remember it. Now i go back to the text i wanted t ochange, re-highlight it, and then set the font properly.
Word 2007: I've finished typing the section header. Now, I mouse over the styles in the "styles" box on the Home tab of the ribbon. As I mouse over each one, the text is dynamically updated to that font / style. When it looks like the one i want (assuming i dont remember that i liked "Header 2" and just click on it directly), I click.
The difference for me between these two experiences is night and day different. I spend less time screwing with formatting and fonts and other stupid shit, and just say "i want this to be a header 2" and it looks right (honestly, its a bit more like the TeX/LaTeX usage model that I grew up using and prefer)
Another one is in Excel. I want to make a 3 series line plot in a worksheet. Ok, i can highlight the 3 different sets of cells. In Excel 2003, i can go throught he chart wizard and try to remember which style is what, etc. Or in 2007, I just click on the chart style i want directly from the ribbon.
The ribbon UI is great. We've re-implemented something similar in the product I'm working on. It elegantly solves the problems of discoverability, cascading levels of importance, and toolbar/function overcrowding. It also looks shiny, which, when you get down to it, makes a difference.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I'm going to take exception to that claim.
For the most part, the basic C level services of Win32, that do things like manage processes and files, work JUST fine. Everything else, really, sits on top of that, and can be thought of as a set of libraries, each of which has their own personality just as much as all the different libraries for Linux do.
USER is a bit dated, but, the only real feature improvement to be made there would be make the U/I pervasively multithreaded like BeOS was. I don't see anyone doing it on the Linux side, either. But CreateWindow, SendMessage, PeekMessage, all work pretty well for most applications. GDI is a bit dated, but, still remarkably useful, and GDI+ is an easy enough thing to use for someone even writing straight up SDK style applications?
From there, we have to ask ourselves, what libraries in Windows do you NOT like? I could see an argument against all the services that are based on COM. It makes Windows a PITA to program in a language like C, whereas Linux doesn't have that problem.
To go beyond that, we really need to think deeply about assumptions in OS design... all mainstream operating systems are based on procedural languages. BeOS was based on C++, but its dead. Do we really even want an OOP implementation for an OS anyway? I'd be willing to bet that plenty of Linux kernel hackers would strongly vote NO. Or what about some sort of a relational database as the OS core. I bet Oracle salivates at the prospect. Then we could all have super RDBMS based operating systems that take 20 minutes to find a file and an hour to paint a display... but we would be secure as all hell. Implement rollback in an OS, anyone? What does THAT mean?
This is my sig.
I envisioned this a while back [in March], right about when Vista made some of the first news.
http://hackd.net/2007/03/22/split-personality/
I don't want to reiterate all of my points - suffice to say, I believe Microsoft has more to gain by not needing to pimp out their enterprise version as often as their home version - cooler technologies to the users while keeping all the stuff businesses love separate. Would it cost more in development? I doubt it. It's not a matter of two different technologies, just two targeted platforms [just as we usually get with Linux, distros targeted at servers vs. servers etc]
I don't think that having a seperate "Windows Legacy" OS would detract from MS's market share, as long as Windows 7 supports Win 200x and Win XP apps. Think about it - the only people who would suffer from this would be the people running code that was meant to run on DOS, Win 3.x, and Win 9x. These people haven't upgraded their apps in over a decade. Do you really think they would be rushing out to upgrade their OS, anyway?
I'm ambivalent, at best, about the 31 Flavors of Windows. But it raises an interesting point...
Old computers that still kick A55 and would be a shame to throw out. I have a PIII-400 that stills does what it needs to, and a Mac 8500 that still does nearly everything I ask, except that IE Mac doesn't work on most sites. What we need to do, sometime <BLINK>REALLY SOON</BLINK> is to freeze a subset of computers and OS forever into an R2-Unit standard.
Recall that the R2 unit loaded into Luke's X-wing was the SAME unit that Obi-Wan used. How likely is it that ANYTHING we have on a computer now will even physically plug in, let alone work in 40 years. Some computers can do 90% of what we need from now until at least 20 years from now. Can we PLEASE pick a set of standards and let that class of computer be supported? For example, ATA-100, USB 2.0 (or Firewire800, I don't care), DVI, RJ-45... I have peripherals in my garage with no computer capable of connecting them. I still have a copy of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... as if. Something. Anything.
And Windows Whatever. XP, XT, 2KSP17. I don't care. That way, as we retire, the Geek Squad can say, "Do you want us to replace your computer? This one's seen a lot of wear." "Not on your life. That G4 Titanum and me have been through a lot together."
PS: The blink tag was fake.
For Microsoft to be talking about the next Windows release so soon after its first main release in 6 years, Vista, and potentially putting customers off buying into Vista now, speaks legions about just how bad Vista adoption is going (notwithstanding fanboi propaganda FUD like the /. article comparing Vista to OSX marketshare). It says to me that Microsoft must really be panicking, badly.
Thom Holwerda puts forward a convincing argument that Windows needs two operating systems, a backward compatible operating system and one on which future application development can be done. He is far less convincing in his contention that the Windows NT kernel is a good design for a long range committment as the basis for future software inovations at Microsoft.
Windows development got into trouble through poor design. In order to bundle application with Windows Microsoft consistently designed applications to be non-modular. Pieces of each application were scattered throughout Microsoft code, including the kernel. This meant that the total bundled software package became more and more unwieldy as development progressed. Adding a new application entailed rewriting all Microsoft software instead of simply adding a new module containing the new functions on top of the existing stack. As Microsoft's software became more and more unwieldy the development effort slowed until in Longhorn it failed.
Now Thom Holwerda is proposing that Microsoft start over by taking the NT kernel and throw all of the entertwined legacy code out of the kernel. This will make development on NT a lot easier. But what about the current set of applications? DRM will still be intertwined through the NT kernel and probably the other current applications will be also. This lack of modular design will still hamper development on NT even though by getting rid of the legacy code the development effort now becomes doable. And what of future applications? Are they going to be intertwined into the NT kernel just like the existing applications? If so, then the new NT development tree will eventually suffer a Longhorn like crisis serveral years down the road.
Microsoft might be able to slough off a lot of legacy cruft by switching to a NT kernel with the legacy code removed but the basic design flaws remain to bedevil future development of Windows NT. Microsoft would be best off to design a new operating sytem from scratch and get rid of the lack of modularity once and for all.
-----------
Steve Stites
Yeah, and half the time, that doesn't solve it in Windows either.
Instead of making a 'Windows Legacy' they could just... I don't know..
KEEP USING THE ONE THEY ALREADY MADE.
Why comment on "Windows 7" at all?
It's obvious that MS is pushing the PR now in order to draw attention from Vista. Vista is a trainwreck, so they're playing the "look, shiney!" game.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes, this idea worked so well for Windows ME!
More choices is absolutely the WORST idea. We already have what? 5-6 variants of Windows and that's just English. Two completely different versions of windows each with X variants would just complicate the problem.
What we need is Three things.
A. Make features, not bullet points. This means give us features to help us. Not a newly designed interface that just looks pretty. Make stability and bug free a FEATURE. Look for features we can't get elsewhere, and ways for us to extend it. That means don't worry about firewalls (ship with Zonealarm) don't give us a weak anti-virus and pretend that's a major feature. Don't pretend "integrated music player" is a feature. Microsoft's current beliefs are bullet points are better than other goals. Games that run at 60 fps are more important than games that are "fun". Office suite that integrate perfectly are better than bug free. Get over it and get us actual innovation. And if you offer Backwards compatibility with old windows code make sure it's 100 percent Backwards compatibility before you ship.
B. Ignore the side projects. Windows 7 is about WINDOWS not Media player, outlook, office, and the rest. Want to include those? Great make them bug free, and allow us to uninstall all of them, otherwise focus on Windows. Giving us 30 programs along with windows doesn't make you my friend, when I have to work around 29 of them to get MY functionality back.
C. Cut the price, cut the fat. Two versions of Windows. Upgrade for 100 dollars, Full for 200 dollars. don't try to nickle and dime us saying "well ultimate has..." Ultimate has shit. Either an upgrade or full and make them AFFORDABLE. When Windows costs more than any of 4 tvs I own. (Including a 52 inch CRT) that's a problem.
Vista died because no one needed it and no one wanted it, but Windows is slowly forcing it's bloated corpse on us. That's what caused the Vista Like release, an unwanted unneeded product who's only benefit is making Microsoft more money and looking pretty.
Could you imagine it?
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Business
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 We Just Want Your Money Premium
Windows 7 We Just Want Your Money
Windows 7 We Just Want Your Money Basic
Windows 7 Legacy Ultimate
Windows 7 Legacy Home Premium
Windows 7 Legacy Home Basic
Windows 7 Legacy Business
Windows 7 Legacy Enterprise
Windows 7 Legacy We Just Want Your Money Premium
Windows 7 Legacy We Just Want Your Money
Windows 7 Legacy We Just Want Your Money Basic
The Win32 API is a horrible mess, but the NT API underneath it is very good. It's much more self-consistent than the Win32 wrapper. I wish Microsoft would sanction its use, because it's really much better.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
thinkFr33ly - Its good to see someone make a clear and intelligent arguement and actively continue to support that arguement in it's thread. Too many people simply throw something up here (usually uninformed) and never return to defend them. Thank you.
This plan is a doublespeak for dump backwards compatibility (only do it in delayed manner so no one can stop us).
Besides, this would only work for one upgrade cycle. What are you supposed to do, incorporate all your new changes into Windows Legacy when it's time to hit the next Windows version? Ask yourself how that would be any different from what happened with Vista.
At XP Launch I was at Microsoft Event recieved Brand Spanking new RC1 for my PC, Installed my partners on a laptop during the ride home. Was greatly impressed. Installed it on My PC at home. USed it for 6 months. Reinstalled, used it 3 months Reinstalled. This went on and on, During all this time working as a tech "Repaired" meaning wiped and reinstalled about 45 machines.
At Vista Launch I was sitting here at my Debian Desktop. My Daughter is sitteng at her Kubuntu, My Stubborn Gamer Son is still sitting at his XP desktop. None of us have even a remote interest in purchasing/installing Vista.
I understand your excitement at installing Vista, Xp was a great improvement over 98 and Ungh ME. I was excited too. It'll fade.
Meanwhile new version of my OS comes out. I just apt-get it. No money. No disappointment. No Party. Just a small news item. I've been Windows free for years now. Feels really good. Feels right. Do miss those free pens, keychains and lunches though. Guess I need to get out to a LinuxWorld Conf.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
> But what makes you think Windows is less stable and less secure than *Nix or OSX?
... or are you using just the ancient Archive/Hidden/System bits which are too much the OTHER direction?).
... not that that'll ever stop marketing, of course.
What makes me think it's less secure?
It has loads of legacy cruft (remember the WMF hole, due to old, forgotten code)? It has ridiculously complex permissions that are almost impossible to audit (quick! what ownership rights should be on NTOSKRNL.EXE, for which users, and why do I have 11 copies of it?
It's made of complex pieces that interact in complex ways, rather than simple pieces that use standard means of communication. The user is not allowed full control of the machine, certain settings are controlled exclusively by the system (e.g. DRM) and not user modifiable or auditable (per the EULA, among other things).
Now, I'll give you that stability is decent. For XP, that is. Vista was a piece of crap last I tried it.
But security? It's more than just a collection of whiz-bang features. It's a process, and humans are a big part of the equation. Sure, you can add things like non-executable stacks to reduce certain well-known problems. That's even a good idea. But attackers don't hit you where you're well-armored, they find the hidden weak spots. And when you have a huge, ugly hodge-podge of mystery programs that interact via undocumented or under-documented means making up your OS, it's just not going to be secure.
Unless you can perform decent audits that can guarantee reasonably full coverage of the system, you have no right to call your system "secure"
Um hello, Microsoft already did this
WindowsNT has a WOW.EXE that runs win16 and DOS stuff
Windows XP64 has WOW64 which runs win32 stuff. There's windows 'Legacy'
The idea is an interesting one, but not the right one. It would be better to simply do a one-off code reduction in going to 64bit and drop all the API's that had limited to no use, or have been depreciated. Caveat though, In Visual Studio 2005 and later, it doesn't want you to use the standard C library anymore but use a 'secure' version of the same functions. Since it breaks ANSI C, there's more lockin for ya.
It should convince you that the Mac is going to make it. Linux will never be the standard for home users. Not gonna happen.
Wait, so Vista is a failure because you have no interest in it?
Isn't it possible that you don't really know much about Vista, and that you get most of your news from extremely biased sites like Slashdot, and therefore haven't been able to come to an educated conclusion about the product?
Wow. That was an absolutely quintessential ignorant slashdot post. I'm gonna bookmark this one for future reference.
I like vista 64...its perrrrty. But really whats wrong with vista other than it needs new high end hardware?
> but with a completely new user interface
So don't bother training people to use Vista because you will have to retrain them to yet another UI in a couple of years. ROI for Vista takes another dive and TCO for Windows goes up again.
This is a fair question so no one should mod you down for asking it.
The reason why people have a "gut feeling" about Windows is that it is a system built upon a myriad of disconnected components requiring a myriad of permissions and settings both at the "local" and enterprise/domain level all of this resulting in "who knows how many billions" of actions and interactions. But wait, other operating systems have this sort of "lots of components, lots of permissions, lots of possibilities" so what makes Windows different? Other solutions it in a much more transparent and less draconian way to avoid what often happens on Windows. This behavior on Windows manifest itself on XP as rampant use of "Administrator". It was really really really hard to accomplish many straightforward tasks navigating the system with anything less than the highest privilege.
Or to put it another way, the reason why AV software exists on Windows is that system, components, and permissions are so messed up it is hard for humans to keep it straight let alone get it right. That is why many have this vague feeling Windows isn't as secure where just throwing another layer on top of it to ask "you", as if "you" are an expert on the situation at hand, if everything is functional, OK, or permissible doesn't make it better. It is just another hurdle the malicious and the user have to overcome. If you are at a permission level on Linux, BSD, or OSX, you know the risks the permission levels gives except baring bugs. If you are at a permission level on Windows, you aren't quite sure what is at risk and hope your AV software catches something you didn't consider.
Doesn't that describe a "service pack for Windows?"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I would have expected them to transfer the designer behind the ribbon UI to the other side of the front door, not over into the shell team. The ribbon UI is quite probably the single most misdirected UI effort that has ever taken place within MSFT. Yes, it's worse than Clippy.
Right as take-up in widescreen LCDs is reaching record highs, they go and release a version of Office that not only takes up more vertical space than the previous toolbars could be adjusted to, it completely ignores the nature of the screens everyone is buying. Completely ridiculous.
In a few years everyone will be using 24+ inch widescreen displays, except that the ribbon and start menu/taskbar will have grown to occupy all but one vertical inch of the screen, leaving a sliver of space where we can read a line of text at a time.
Well, presumably, with a different name to avoid confusion with the existing operating system "Microsoft Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs".
Why? Because Micro$oft has made it a tradition to release an OS & then IMMEDIATELY needs to release a patch like the next day. It's to the point where it's a joke in the industry. It's been happening, to my experience, ever since the release of Windows 95. That's 13 years of a bad record. As long as home consumers know no better & businesses are bound to their OS, it'll never change.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
Two reasons I do not use my purchased Vista... 1.) The GUI isn't 98SE compatible. I don't have cut/copy/paste buttons in Windows Explorer with text labels and icons. Some people may think that's stupid but it severally hurts my ability to work efficiently in numerous situations where it's more convenient. The problem WAS a "new" GUI or more specifically a modified version of it. 2.) Inability to manage resources. I disabled everything, virtual memory, all services, all startup items, etc. Restarted and Vista's processes accounted for less then 30MB (64bit). However the memory load was over 600MB. Not that I really mind with 2GB and I never let virtual memory run on my machine (I'll buy more ram if I want it) but being unable to disable 600MB (forgot what the feature was called, prefetch was it?) my top 1.4GB load on XP (mostly WOW+Firefox simultaneously open) jumps to 1.9/2.0 GB roughly on Vista because of this feature. At DDR-400 and 2GB my machine is more then capable of doing what I need and want. Why should I buy another 2GB of ram (even though 64Bit Vista would support it) when AMD is jumping on the DDR3 bandwagon soon? Not that it's even worth going to DDR2 unless you're using a laptop that would benefit from the lower voltage consumption. Microsoft needs to understand consistency, but inconsistency seems to be the only thing they're being consistent about these days.
- John
http://www.jabcreations.com/
Aaaaargh! Nooooooooooooo! You keep her the hell away from explorer!
>>Julie Larson-Green (the driving force behind Office 2007's Ribbon UI) over to work on Windows 7's >>interface."
When Windows E13v3n comes out, I'm sure I will still be waiting for a real tabbed cmd prompt like Konsole. And the SF 'Console' project, and the pay one from Lighthouse or whatever don't count since they use IO redirection and have serious flushing issues.
http://blog.slaingod.com
a third party stable VM for their own VM, and, in case that does not work out with current marketing strategies, even faster boot times.
Red Screen of Death, haha, we had the good ol' fashioned GURU MEDITATION once, if anyone can remember... and that beast did boot up very fast afterwards...
Besides that, it was also a sloth menace in virus prevention, in fact, it did spread viruses like hell in the good old days they were...
SCNR
I tried to install vmware player by ticking "vmplayer" on ubuntu 7.04 and it didn't work.
Microsoft had seven years to remake itself but failed and produced the Vista media lockdown nightmare instead. Poor quality has finally lead to poor sales. The vendor backlash is here. We're talking about sales worse than ME.
The only real option for them is to retool a GNU/Linux distribution. There is no way they are going to fix Vista in time to save themselves from disaster. It might be too late even for that drastic solution. As the market floods with $200 GNU/Linux laptops, they will be entirely squeezed out.
Good Riddance, M$. They don't have three years left, but it will take years to undo the technical and legislative damage they did.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...if you've never seen it crash.
{ok} sync
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
HAHAHAHAHAH! OMFG, HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Oh please stop!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Holy mackerel batman, omfgfgfg! oh god plase make it stop!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!
...with the sweetener replaced became Diet Coke.
So it wasn't a total loss.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Keep It Simple Stupid the problem with Vista was that Microsoft wanted to make the Ultimate Operating System,
You can talk till you're blue in the face, they keep doing and saying the same thing every time. They never have had the resources and organization to integrate all of the software they bought. $40 billion is not enough money the non free way, but they will burn though that quickly as revenues start falling.
Falling revenue? Yeah, flat today despite a new release of their OS and Office suite. The public has rejected Vista and the vendor revolt is on. Revenues have nowhere to go but down, and that's the death spiral predicted by ESR long ago - no money, no coders, no product, no money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Customers HATE it when things are moved around. People were just getting used to XP's change over previous versions and now everything is changed around again in Vista. Plus there's no Windows XP theme. There's a Windows Classic theme which looks like Windows 2000 but no XP theme. Many customers still request Windows XP. CHANGING THE LAYOUT OF THE GUI OWNZ TEH SUCK!!!
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I expect similar statements from IBM, HP and Dell soon. Vista is buggy and it's not selling. If it were selling, others might go along. Because it's not, they have no incentive to lie to their customers. Vista is so bad, people selling it risk their already tarnished reputations if they keep selling it. Dell has danced around the issue already. HP and IBM are openly defiant and will soon be offering more GNU/Linux for you. If they don't, they will be over run by companies like FIC and Acer who are more than happy to sell $200 GNU/Linux laptops.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No, of course not. Linux is where it's at, right? Except that even Windows 98 has more market share. With a combined market share of 93% for all "M$" operating systems, I can see how they're going to disappear in three years. Oh, wait. You said that in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Oh yeah, 2008 is the year of Linux in the desktop according to you. No, really. Too bad the desktop doesn't really work. Anyone who uses Linux knows this (and many other things), but it's just too inconvenient to mention them. Instead it's so much more productive to troll Slashdot with hilarious FUD and spell Microsoft with a dollar sign.
I've always been curious twitter, do you really believe this stuff you write? Seriously? Are you just delusional or does someone pay you to preach the same tired mantra year after year?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Do I expect a well-thought out response? Nah. You tend to keep me waiting when you're asked to actually prove the things you say.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The best way for MS to avoid another Vista-like release isn't to change the UI (didn't Vista do that?). It's not to release another OS at all. Well, not one that doesn't significantly improve on their existing products, anyway.
People will stay with their current O/S, i.e. xp or win2k. If they need to run 'vista' or 'vienna', they will install those oses in a vm or in another partition or computer.
There already is Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs
If the author is not familiar with current offerings, why should we trust the author to suggest future ones?
Microsoft should make one version of the O/S named 'Windows'. This new version:
1) is a completely re-written from scratch O/S with no compatibility with previous software. It is not based on C, but on an advanced C-like programming language which offers modern programming functionality.
2) contains virtual machines to run all previous versions of windows, in a similar way with Macintosh classic apps.
3) contains options for installing server modules, if it is a server.
Thus we buy a single DVD, we can run all our previous software, but new software written for this new version is outstandingly better than anything Microsoft has offered so much.
Ubuntu has really come a long way man. Money is being put into improved user experience.
Mac has alway been too expensive. It is a very nice machine if you have the money. I view it in a different universe where folks with lots of money are willing to pay for things that "just work".
Windows "is cheap enough and usually works except when the drivers don't work or some other mysterious thing happens or you get a virus but it works often enough and is cheap enough and is friendly enough that most folks go for it."
Most folks that buy windows buy a working, installed box and use a very small software stack. The fact that 40k programs run on windows doesn't matter to 99% of users.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Some WEAK lamo moderator/admin here modded me down as "flamebait"? LOL...
Hey, "mighty slashdot moderator":
Why not beat my score on CIS Tool 1.x instead, using your *NIX variant rig (because everyone pretty much KNOWS this site is SO "Pro-*NIX", & SO "Anti-Microsoft", this has to be the case with you running a *NIX variant setup no doubt)?
It's simply BECAUSE YOU CAN'T, lamo...
Most likely, you're TOO "technically weak" in this field to do so, & ALL you have is your stupid "mod points" bullshit!
So that all said & aside??
So much for your b.s. modding me down: Because, in the end? I get that "last laugh" here @ slashdot, as is per usual...
APK
P.S.=> ROTFLMAO! & especially for the 16th time now in fact, when you *NIX dorks RUN from this challenge per this posting & the 16 url's I listed in my first post here (I LOVE IT!)... apk
Worked out really well with Windows 2000 and Windows ME.
(Speaking of...7? By my count, the next version of Windows will be NT8.)
Um no. It is my job to keep abreast of the IT world. I read articles from all over the web. I read reviews from everywhere, and I have even been forced to use the new OS on more than one occasion. The Dreaded Vista has installed itself within my very family circle. My brother has it, I have used it while visiting his abode. I abhor it. I find nothing apealing in it, hate the UAC with a passion I can only describe as pathological. Every task has me muttering to myself "Fuckin Windows" As an update to XP; I suppose it fits that description. Not one I would personally pay for. If I am buying a new PC (I haven't done so in years, prefer building my own) I would rather have XP preinstalled (Not that it would last long anyway in my house).
My point was, I am now as then a Microsoft Partner (VAR) Microsoft has done nothing to keep me as a customer, nor have me reccomend Vista as an upgrade to my customers. (Short of bribery for favorable blog comments.) That is kinda their job and they failed miserably.
Wow. That was an absolutely quintessential ignorant slashdot post. I'm gonna bookmark this one for future reference.
I find your jump to this conclusion a little far fetched. I am sorry for shattering your misconceptions though.
Perhaps you could enlighten me how Vista has changed your computing experiences for the better. Ooo, I know, you can now play Halo2 (An XBOX game that was a what a 700mhz pc) thanks to DX10 only available on Vista. I can see why you are so excited.
Want me to say something positive about Vista. No problem, it runs Kubuntu great in VMPlayer.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games