In order for your comment to be true the exact opposite of what I illustrated happening in my post must be happening. Since I provided links, it would be fair to ask you for some.
PC sales are up in a big way in units, dollars of sales and dollars of profit. Windows sales are off by 24%. Make of that what you will. I choose to believe that Microsoft is getting a lot less for Windows than they used to especially in emerging markets, they're bleeding share on high end retail units and they've fully booked the sales under Software Assurance. I also choose to believe this is because nobody wants Vista, especially on the cost effective platforms that don't run it well.
We have run the circle:
Pre-vista PCs unavailable with anything but XP
machines available with Vista only
units that come with Vista by default with optional XP downgrade licenses
We're back at nothing but XP for you. All your base are belong to XP. Now you just also have to take the Vista License so they can book another Vista sale for their marketeering. That way Ballmer can say stuff like "almost 100% of retail PCs are Vista." If you'll remember, Saddam Hussein also got 100% of the "popular vote" in the last election before his execution. At least they aren't making you take a SuSE coupon as well -- yet.
firefox + adblock + noscript have kept my Windows machines popup free for years now.
This is not a bad approach. Now:
get a NAT router (standard home broadband router) to make your machine invisible to people scanning the IPv4 address space. There's no good reason to have a desktop client be internet addressable - that's for servers.
turn off all unneeded services
get a real firewall package and only poke the holes you need in it
add a good hosts file so that known bad hosts lookup to the local loopback address
create a static route to the local loopback for addresses in untrusted IP blocks like China, Eastern Europe and large swaths of South America -- unless (unlikely) you anticipate needing information from there
uninstall flash
turn off Outlook's preview pane
open the Event Viewer now and then and fix the stuff that's broken
Then you'll be almost as secure as OS X. No OS is 100% secure. Good administration and usage matters far more than the software package. That said, yeah, OS X and Linux both don't have any extant viruses in the wild and most distributions don't have any exposed services or Flash by default so they are inherently more secure than Windows. Not as secure as BSD, but pretty good.
We may be coming to a time when no OS is considered secure unless it's booted from read-only media from a known good image. That'll be a sad day.
Even Vista with UAC enabled running from a limited account and IE8 a website can still silently download software that executes, escalates and installs a rootkit that cannot be detected with available tools. These tools are currently dispensed from a large number of high profile websites.
Don't pretend Vista is secure. You're not fooling anybody here. You might get away with that on some other site.
And troll your peers. You've been here a while. You should know better than this. You're not going to improve your messaging messing with me.
But the reality - once you get past the Geek - is that these aren't the choices people are making. Top Operating System Share Trend
We're more than halfway through Vista's alleged three year lifecycle. Achieving a market penetration of 15% at that point in the cycle is not a measure of success when
you started with a monopoly
you have the market power to force feed your product to all customers of all major vendors
vast swaths of your customer base can update for free because of Software Assurance
15% should be considered a very poor showing at this point, and it may never get much higher for Vista since many people are holding out for the next version and the MIDs won't run Vista well when they're released next week (or ever).
If you think Linux users have to worry about "exploits, botnets, keyloggers, malware, [and] Trojans" then you probably shouldn't be on Slashdot.
On my Linux box if a website manages to get a popup window open without asking, that's a major security breach requiring immediate examination and correction.
On the average user's Window's box an unexpected new browser toolbar, websites that redirect to unfamiliar places and a short game of Kill the popups is such a common part of the landscape that people just don't notice them until they render the computer completely unusable.
Maybe not. In June the Atom systems start wide shipping. That should generate some excitement if they deliver decent features, which could lead to wider optimism and more sales in general. Lots of buzz on this one.
When "Vista downgraded to XP" is an option on PC's, we're still pretending Vista might have legs. When it's the only available option we're done pretending it's anything but an albatross around the neck of major vendors.
It should not be surprising that choice is limited on a product that's about to be discontinued.
The only operating system choice on the XW4600 workstation is "Genuine Windows Vista® 32 downgrade to Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional 32". As in, you can't get it with Vista preinstalled at all, but you also can't get it without a Vista license. I found that intriguing. I wonder how many Vista sales are like that. I doubt the monopoly influence could get more blatant.
If his figures are correct, the PC market just experienced the largest contraction ever and nobody noticed. Especially odd in that Intel's operating income is up 23%. Top PC seller HP's net income is up 16% on strong notebook sales and huge growth in emerging markets. Lenovo is reporting a 17% increase in sales on strong global demand.
Is anybody besides Microsoft seeing this decline? Is somebody lying to Ballmer? "Gee, no, Steve. Business is off everywhere. It's a recession. People adore Vista. You can put the chair down now."
Warning: You are about to experience a collision. Now applying automated force feedback controls and intelligent brake assistance on a large vehicle hauling an unpredictable, possibly liquid or poorly secured load to avoid detected hazard.
Problem?
"Bridge out" error. (R)etry, (A)bort, (I)gnore?
Thanks but I'd rather have my shipments delivered by rickshaw.
MS could port their crap to Ubuntu and call it Windows 7. It wouldn't take them 20 months to move 140M real units. They could save on development costs -- all it would cost them is some office furniture. There is nothing magical about the Windows kernel that makes it a better host to well designed apps than Linux.
Although it would be so much fun to see Ballmer doing the happy dance for Shuttleworth, I know it won't happen and I'm glad. We don't need the malware ecosystem that comes with their DirectX, Explorer, Outlook and such. They can keep it.
How many of those copies of Vista were licenses only and were not even on the computers when they left the factory? How many when the PC's arrived at the end user? How many haven't been wiped since they arrived at the end user?
I ask because in my experience that process shrinks the numbers considerably.
You should not count reverts and license only sales in your 'win'. Those show only Microsoft's immense marketing powers, not the adoption rate of Vista.
With the rest of the motherboard and a 20" LCD that's like 30 Watts. Yeah, that's cool. Especially when you multiply it be the 1 billion people in the developing world who really don't have the watts for a 1KW gaming workstation.
Slashdot Mirror
The water is likely a wee bit further north. Congratulations on a successful landing though.
All schools should have redundant gigabit fiber. This should be provided by the telecommunications providers as a condition of their rights of way.
Anything less and we're not doing everything we can to compete.
Oh, and communications infrastructure is too important to leave to commercial enterprises. (see sig)
The sticker looks more high tech.
um.... yeah, I'm done.
Wait for it...
Unlimited. Client. Licenses.
How cool is that?
In order for your comment to be true the exact opposite of what I illustrated happening in my post must be happening. Since I provided links, it would be fair to ask you for some.
PC sales are up in a big way in units, dollars of sales and dollars of profit. Windows sales are off by 24%. Make of that what you will. I choose to believe that Microsoft is getting a lot less for Windows than they used to especially in emerging markets, they're bleeding share on high end retail units and they've fully booked the sales under Software Assurance. I also choose to believe this is because nobody wants Vista, especially on the cost effective platforms that don't run it well.
We have run the circle:
We're back at nothing but XP for you. All your base are belong to XP. Now you just also have to take the Vista License so they can book another Vista sale for their marketeering. That way Ballmer can say stuff like "almost 100% of retail PCs are Vista." If you'll remember, Saddam Hussein also got 100% of the "popular vote" in the last election before his execution. At least they aren't making you take a SuSE coupon as well -- yet.
This is not a bad approach. Now:
Then you'll be almost as secure as OS X. No OS is 100% secure. Good administration and usage matters far more than the software package. That said, yeah, OS X and Linux both don't have any extant viruses in the wild and most distributions don't have any exposed services or Flash by default so they are inherently more secure than Windows. Not as secure as BSD, but pretty good.
We may be coming to a time when no OS is considered secure unless it's booted from read-only media from a known good image. That'll be a sad day.
Even Vista with UAC enabled running from a limited account and IE8 a website can still silently download software that executes, escalates and installs a rootkit that cannot be detected with available tools. These tools are currently dispensed from a large number of high profile websites.
Don't pretend Vista is secure. You're not fooling anybody here. You might get away with that on some other site.
And troll your peers. You've been here a while. You should know better than this. You're not going to improve your messaging messing with me.
We're more than halfway through Vista's alleged three year lifecycle. Achieving a market penetration of 15% at that point in the cycle is not a measure of success when
15% should be considered a very poor showing at this point, and it may never get much higher for Vista since many people are holding out for the next version and the MIDs won't run Vista well when they're released next week (or ever).
I did see an article once about installing Linux on a dead badger. Where was it? Oh, there it is. Very funny.
On my Linux box if a website manages to get a popup window open without asking, that's a major security breach requiring immediate examination and correction.
On the average user's Window's box an unexpected new browser toolbar, websites that redirect to unfamiliar places and a short game of Kill the popups is such a common part of the landscape that people just don't notice them until they render the computer completely unusable.
Userfriendly has a cartoon about the boat you're in.
Talk about damning with faint praise...
Maybe not. In June the Atom systems start wide shipping. That should generate some excitement if they deliver decent features, which could lead to wider optimism and more sales in general. Lots of buzz on this one.
When "Vista downgraded to XP" is an option on PC's, we're still pretending Vista might have legs. When it's the only available option we're done pretending it's anything but an albatross around the neck of major vendors.
It should not be surprising that choice is limited on a product that's about to be discontinued.
The only operating system choice on the XW4600 workstation is "Genuine Windows Vista® 32 downgrade to Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional 32". As in, you can't get it with Vista preinstalled at all, but you also can't get it without a Vista license. I found that intriguing. I wonder how many Vista sales are like that. I doubt the monopoly influence could get more blatant.
The XW4400 is discontinued. Try the XW4600 which comes with XP downgrades.
Especially anybody that didn't get the employee discount and run it so they could show their company loyalty?
It's remarkable how he can paint a happy face on the steepest decline in the history of the company.
If his figures are correct, the PC market just experienced the largest contraction ever and nobody noticed. Especially odd in that Intel's operating income is up 23%. Top PC seller HP's net income is up 16% on strong notebook sales and huge growth in emerging markets. Lenovo is reporting a 17% increase in sales on strong global demand.
Is anybody besides Microsoft seeing this decline? Is somebody lying to Ballmer? "Gee, no, Steve. Business is off everywhere. It's a recession. People adore Vista. You can put the chair down now."
"Bridge out" error. (R)etry, (A)bort, (I)gnore?
Thanks but I'd rather have my shipments delivered by rickshaw.
MS could port their crap to Ubuntu and call it Windows 7. It wouldn't take them 20 months to move 140M real units. They could save on development costs -- all it would cost them is some office furniture. There is nothing magical about the Windows kernel that makes it a better host to well designed apps than Linux.
Although it would be so much fun to see Ballmer doing the happy dance for Shuttleworth, I know it won't happen and I'm glad. We don't need the malware ecosystem that comes with their DirectX, Explorer, Outlook and such. They can keep it.
How many of those copies of Vista were licenses only and were not even on the computers when they left the factory? How many when the PC's arrived at the end user? How many haven't been wiped since they arrived at the end user?
I ask because in my experience that process shrinks the numbers considerably.
You should not count reverts and license only sales in your 'win'. Those show only Microsoft's immense marketing powers, not the adoption rate of Vista.
Interior department compromised by botnet.
By at least twice, yes.
The next generation chipset will have low power. Low power chipsets are available now. This is a development unit.
You're on the right track. Once we're buying millions of them they'll branch out into task-specific platforms.
With the rest of the motherboard and a 20" LCD that's like 30 Watts. Yeah, that's cool. Especially when you multiply it be the 1 billion people in the developing world who really don't have the watts for a 1KW gaming workstation.
Cool but the watts are way too high to fit in my RPV airplane.