As usual, M$'s software lags hardware by five to seven years. Expect a continued messy transition to 64 bit computing that will favor Intel, the other monopoly laggart.
This is a lot like the transition from 95 to XP. How many times did Bill Gates declare the "death of DOS" or "16 bit computing"? The messy steps between included 98, NT, ME and W2K. It took that long to marginalize competing software vendors but the real cost should be measured in intentionally wasted hardware. Non free and free software competitors continued to produce technically superior software such as DRDOS, Lotus, Word Perfect, OS/2, BeOS and Apple, of course. The competitors all won the race to 32 bits by years but M$ used it's market position to shove them all aside. This is the lesson they thought they learned then.
Free software has handed M$ it's ass for 64 bit software and architecture independence. Almost as soon as there were 64 bit platforms GNU/Linux and BSD were running on it, Alpha, AMD, Intel, Sun and more exotic stuff. Lesser computers are also working. Thanks to the fantastic work of GNU it's just a compiler switch.
The problem for M$ is that we have all learned the same lesson and are sick of it. People are not going to just go along with things. They are not going to throw their hardware out again for another buggy version of Windows. Free software works all of it better now, so Windows 7 is just as dead in the water as Vista was. The industry is losing money, and their trust in M$ is gone.
If it goes like the iplayer's amazing development time, it will be here till we all retire or DRM is finally out of style. BBC, taking time to do IT wrong.
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As usual, M$'s software lags hardware by five to seven years. Expect a continued messy transition to 64 bit computing that will favor Intel, the other monopoly laggart.
This is a lot like the transition from 95 to XP. How many times did Bill Gates declare the "death of DOS" or "16 bit computing"? The messy steps between included 98, NT, ME and W2K. It took that long to marginalize competing software vendors but the real cost should be measured in intentionally wasted hardware. Non free and free software competitors continued to produce technically superior software such as DRDOS, Lotus, Word Perfect, OS/2, BeOS and Apple, of course. The competitors all won the race to 32 bits by years but M$ used it's market position to shove them all aside. This is the lesson they thought they learned then.
Free software has handed M$ it's ass for 64 bit software and architecture independence. Almost as soon as there were 64 bit platforms GNU/Linux and BSD were running on it, Alpha, AMD, Intel, Sun and more exotic stuff. Lesser computers are also working. Thanks to the fantastic work of GNU it's just a compiler switch.
The problem for M$ is that we have all learned the same lesson and are sick of it. People are not going to just go along with things. They are not going to throw their hardware out again for another buggy version of Windows. Free software works all of it better now, so Windows 7 is just as dead in the water as Vista was. The industry is losing money, and their trust in M$ is gone.
If it goes like the iplayer's amazing development time, it will be here till we all retire or DRM is finally out of style. BBC, taking time to do IT wrong.