Slashdot Mirror
The Myth of Upgrade Inevitability Is Dead
Several readers pointed out a ComputerWorld UK blog piece on the expanding ripples of the Vista fiasco. Glyn Moody quotes an earlier Inquirer piece about Vista, which he notes "has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system": "Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading. Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future." Moody continues: "What's really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realized that they do have a choice — that they can simply say 'no.' From there, it's but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic."
I work for a hospital. Our medical records software does not support vista yet. General Electric is the vendor and they have recently announced vista compatibility will happen some time next year.
If they had been ready two years ago we might have tried it. With today's economic situation I don't think we can afford to upgrade.
So no vista for a 5,000 employee organization.
There are hundreds of other hospitals with the same medical records software.
XP just works. Why would anyone upgrade?
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the... ah, wait, wrong cliche.
Still, the fact is that someday, Microsoft will stop supporting XP even when it comes to security. That'll mean all those businesses who try to hang on will be forced to seek another option then, assuming MSFT hasn't learned and made something that would be a logical, worthwhile upgrade from XP. Assuming things stay the same by that point, you might start seeing a frenzied stampede away from Windows.
Do I get bonus points if I act like I care?
I take issue with this bit:
why would 70% of eeePC sales be XP models?
At least where I'm living (in western europe), there's no way to get one of the decent hardware versions (i.e. models 901, 1000) in the Linux version.
In fact, I've just this morning ordered a couple XP versions, fully intending to not even boot those but to immediately replace them by my favourite Linux version. So, Asus will have sold a couple of XP licenses, but they won't ever get used - how many more like me are there? I don't even know if there's a chance to get my money back on the licenses.
I'm even happily shelling out Euros to at least get the kind of keyboard that's standard in this country instead of the foreign ones offered locally.
Asus, your sales model sucks! Unfortunately, the alternatives aren't any more palatable.
If XP is end of life and Windows 7 is supported, it's already better right there. Sorry to say this mate, but I have a vague feeling Windows 7 will be better regardless.
Currently I'm running Vista on my corporate desktop, and I'm not unhappy about it. The only gripe I have with the platform is that network discovery is done every time you open Windows explorer.
If I hibernate / sleep while on the corporate network, and I wake up that thing at home, opening an explorer window will take ~20 seconds because it tries to access the previously mapped network drives. This should be done out of band or potentially not at all in my view, not *every* bloody time you open an explorer. It's a bad implementation.
Apart from that the GUI is nice, the Networking menus are a pain in the backside, and XP's control panel was better. However, it manages sleep / hibernation more nicely and runs very (dare I say it) stable with the software suite I need.
To cut a long story short, I've been with Windows since 1.0x and I can tell you that in general the quality of the OS has been going up steadily. Vista is not perfect, but it's a *lot* nicer than NT4, 2000 for the desktop, 98, 95. Whether it's better than XP is somewhat debatable, but in the end it's a tight race. All in all, the trend is upwards.
Now Windows 7 or whatever the new iteration for the Desktop will be, will likely be better than XP indeed. Anyone who claims different probably hasn't paid attention to MicroSoft's history.
The thing is that this site is a Linux-centric religious institute, so obviously you'll easily and frequently hear "Upgrade myth busted", "Linux to dominate world in 2009" and "w00t!". The truth is that MicroSoft isn't all bad, and neither is Linux, but at the end of the day I do believe people will skip Vista to some degree (ME anyone?) only to hop on board at the next iteration again.
Which is not necessarily bad for the market or the consumers.
Well, this Apple "fanboi" is, in my own small way, annoying to Microsoft's OS ambitions because I can run XP in a virtual machine that moves with me across my various desktops, laptop, etc, in a 100% consistent "hardware" environment so I can stay on the hardware upward speed curve as Apple brings out new machines, but I don't have to deal with XP not understanding later architectures, nor with it "playing in the street" outside a network sandbox.
I can keep XP safely off the net, even while OSX is fully connected; I can keep it safely backed up outside the world it knows about; and I can knock it back to a "newly installed, but fully enabled" condition by simply copying one file. I can maintain a full software development environment within this virtual XP machine, and if I need something from the net, I'll get it with the Apple and safely hand it over using a virtual filesystem.
No more Microsoft upgrades. Period. Microsoft has seen their last OS dollar from me. And I'm glad; I feel that it was an abusive relationship, both as a developer, and as a user.
I keep a couple virtual linux machines available on my desktop as well, Ubuntu and Redhat; don't have to go to such extremes, as they're about as safe on the net as OSX is. Someday, if they ever develop an actual open, standardized GUI API that is free for everyone to use, regardless of why they want to use it, I may develop for linux, too. In the meantime, I'm keeping my hand in. I like linux, and I particularly like Ubuntu.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.