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Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows
mjasay writes "I stumbled across this fascinating Microsoft tutorial entitled "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." It's an attempt to coach IT professionals on how to sell Windows desktop upgrades internally. Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent, requiring detailed instructions on how to connive and cajole into an upgrade from XP. The most intriguing thing about the tutorial is its implicit rejection of Microsoft's older technology. Just a few years ago Microsoft was pitching the world on how secure and cool XP was. Now it's telling us largely the opposite, implying that XP is a security threat, costs too much to run, and so on. With Microsoft marketing against itself, perhaps the Mac and Linux camps can simply wait for Microsoft to self-destruct?"
However, apart from the fact that my Mandriva Laptop (which came pre-installed with Vista) doesn't run a lot of windows programs, it does a lot of stuff that win 2k, win 98 didn't do, and it doesn't take up any extra resources. It can run Compiz Fusion just fine on 512 MB of RAM, and an integrated Intel Video card. Why can't Vista run it's cool 3D desktop on the same? KDE4 touts a lot of new features, and it's going to be faster than the old KDE3. Just because they added new features, doesn't mean it has to run slower, or consume more resources. I shouldn't have to buy a $1000 machine every time I want to upgrade my OS. The OS should be at least as efficient, if not more efficient than the previous version. There is no reason why Vista cannot do what it does on a machine with only 512 MB of RAM. It's just badly coded. If they created a quality product, you wouldn't need a monster machine to run it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The heading "troll" on this slashdot article is correct and appears to be a fabrication that misrepresents the article
"How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." Why is garbage like this allowed to stay up?
1) The MS tutorial mentions older operating systems as a generic, it does not diss XP, it does not even mention XP!
2) "newer operating system, such as Windows Vista". Vista is the example, put "XP" or other OS in there if you want.
3) The article is a template to help frustrated IT admins/managers show reason and overcome objection to a proposal of migrating to a newer OS. Any admin in any environment could use this template.
I am not commenting on the PCWorld article here, just the misrepresentation in the first part of the article. Let me know if the poster is talking about a differnt version of "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade" because from what I see the posting is a lie, plain and simple.
CC
Microsoft wasn't late to this party; Windows NT 4 worked just fine when logged in as a non-admin. Microsoft's army of software developers, however, never got the hint. Now that Vista basically forces them to follow the user-separation rules, they're actually starting to fix all the bugs their software had all along. Anybody who tried to run Windows 2000 or Windows XP as a regular user can vouch for that-- all (or almost all) Microsoft software worked fine, but very little third party software did.
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To be fair, Windows NT had granular, integrated and standardized security, networking, virtual memory (even in kernel mode), a unified page cache, SMP, and other advanced features right from its first release in 1993. Dave Cutler and the rest of the VMS team MS acquired definitely knew what they were doing.
The exploits that Windows has had have very rarely been kernel or core design issues. Windows has a secure design, but it's rarely configured to be secure and has suffered numerous implementation faults. In particular: usermode components, notably the shell, LSA and RPC. Microsoft is also guilty of putting compatible defaults ahead of secure ones, e.g. making Admin accounts default in XP. OEMs are also partially to blame here because they decide how the computer comes loaded from the factory (i.e. with one auto-logon admin account), network admins for allowing it to stay that way (in a corp environment), and ISVs for making tons of software that requires admin privileges when it shouldn't.
With Vista, Microsoft is trying to keep around as much old code as possible in certain components, maintain compatibility with old software, change the default privilege level for programs to non-admin, and implement some kind of TCPAesque DRM. In short, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too, via technical means. It's not pretty. Time will tell how effective it is.