Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Suffers Leaks, Lagging Sales Numbers As They Look Forward To Windows 8
nandemoari writes "With only a few weeks until Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices." Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company's 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.
Point of reference: Apple Q2 sales of Macs fell 3% as opposed to MS' 6%, but ipods and iphones were still growing, giving the company a net profit. Couple this to the data over the last year or so showing that usage share of windows operating systems has been eroding a 1-3% a year for the last four years, it appears that microsoft seems to be losing, but it's slow going. It could easily turn around with a new successful operating system by MS.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I think the most interesting new feature will the new Windows XP Mode which is
basically Virtual PC running Windows XP client seamlessly on the desktop. Most
likely it will gain interest in enterprises planning to upgrade XP installations.
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx
2003 dude, all the way. Switch to windows classic (start menu, taskbar, window decoration, folder views) and disable the 'themes' service which seems to intercept graphics calls and the result is snappier than 2000, esp with boot/shutdown times taken into consideration (with concurrent service start/stopping that came in 2001's XP).
Throw a couple of UI enhancements on (launchy, freelaunchbar) and you're away. Nothin beats it. One of my problems with 7ista is that you can't create a second bar on the screen (eg, add quicklaunch toolbar, and try drag it to the top or side of the screen. You now have a new bar, great for adding an address toolbar, a freelaunchbar, website bookmarks etc). I don't understand the mentality behind removing functionality.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
They don't have large actual cash reserves. That is just slang for liquid accounts. They have a whole team of people who sit around forecast the exact amount of cash necessary to do things like make payroll and A/P at certain times. Then, they manage a whole slew of really low risk investments that come due around the time they need the cash. The rate on really low risk investments investments is by defintion the expected rate of inflation for that period + the time value of money. It's not hard to find investments like TIPS (Treasury Inflation protected securities) that guarantee the proper rate of return.
And is "revolutionize file access in branch offices" the filesystem MS promised for Vista
Microsoft never promised a new filesystem. WinFS was an abstraction layer running atop NTFS.
Mod Parent Up.
This lovely little tidbit of information is completely correct and it always gets iterated every single time someone bashes Microsoft over WinFS. It's not a file system. It never was. And it's not dead, it's now part of SQL server under a different name.
But somehow, people don't get this. It's been years since it's been "dropped" from Vista (presumably because it's not actually all that useful after all) yet people still harp on about it.
I don't know why the message isn't getting through: It's not a file system. It's not abandoned. It's not a big deal.
Until it gets through, all we can really do is mod up the people that constantly point this out =\
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
The following is taken form Adobe's website. Adobe Systems Incorporated and ARM today announced a technology collaboration to optimise and enable Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIRâ for ARM Powered® devices
The joint technology optimisation is targeted for the ARMv6 and ARMv7architectures used in the ARM11â family and the Cortexâ-A series of processors and is expected to be available in the second half of 2009. announcement here
Well that depends on how long you have been listening to msft hype. A database file system has been promised from msft sine roughly 1994. Back then it was a full FS. The latest version is a database layer on top of NTFS. Something they have been promising since 2002. They still can't get it to work. It has led to improvements in windows. However apple and gnome had those features without false promises of winFS.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.