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More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."
I think games might be the key for Microsoft to increase Vista uptake.
Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment. if it stays that way and games start making use of DirectX10 features then games will have no choice but to use Vista.
There is also the small matter of "Vista only" games such as Halo 2 and the eagerly awaited Alan Wake from Remedy, the makers of Max Payne. that too will be a "Vista only" title.
The only possible reason I can see for users/corporations upgrading to Vista is if vendors start releasing packages that are dependant apon features that XP does not include. For instance, if/when hardware manufacturers and game publishers only release DX10-compatible versions, or if Installshield upgrades their packages to require you to suffer the annoyance of UAC before confirming that you are certain you know that you want to install whatever software... companies still use them instead of MSI's right?
... for your next operating system, please use Windows XP as a benchmark and starting point. Create a product that beats Windows XP in relevant categories (note that "amount of eyecandy" doesn't count - usability, speed, resource usage and security do). I'm sure you will have no problem selling that.
Home users will have little choice but to migrate as and when they buy thier next new PC, buisness users will be slower but some manufacturers are already putting out machines that are very difficult to find XP drivers for.
vista will replace XP just as XP replaced 2K, it will just take a bit of time.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Its just going to take time to implement, integrate & upgrade everything to support it. You would have to be kidding yourselves to think MS just made up vista without regard for its core customers. The business version includes encryption, AD, GPO, security, performance, reliability that business users demand and to think Vista isn't an upgrade over XP or 2k in these regards is simply foolish. Auditing, Reporting, Authorization, Policy Management and Manageability have all increased 10 fold if not 100 fold over xp "out of the box" - THAT is what Corporate America wanted - and got! Lord knows They will have to implement the hardware to support it as they would with any other demanding project but that isn't a fault of MS or windows. There isn't an out of the box linux distro within ear shot of a Vista Business & Windows 2008 in end user support & management - everything would be left to 3rd party systems, agent based management and user trust.
To be honest, I don't understand the hate for UAC. Ubuntu asks me for my password before installing software or even updates, or doing a lot of other tasks like editing system files. How is this any different?
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
There was one big difference between XP then and Vista now. Most XP users upgraded from Win9X. Win9X was total crap on stability. If you went a day without a reboot, you were doing well.
XP is pretty stable, and SP2 isn't a total disaster on security. With Vista, you have all of the growing pains that XP went through with few reasons to "upgrade".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Just to know: most of the Windows applications you would use (especially corporate applications) would run just fine on an Windows 2000 Workstation.
Vista-only applications are a long way in the future