AMD is at 65nm, Intel is at 45nm, just as when AMD was at 90nm, Intel hit 65nm. This qualifies them as being "a generation behind" in chip making processes. Please show me an Intel 45nm chip.
Hungarian notation was a bad bad idea created by someone with a poor understanding of and lacking insight into the problem they were trying to solve. Well said! And let's not forget about the morons that think '_' or '__' (that'd be 1 underscore and 2 underscores respectively) preceding or following a variable name to indicate instance or class scope is a good idea (or preceding with 'm', or any variation of such a process). I cringe everytime I see code like that. Not only is the underscore a typically unusual keystroke to make while typing out variable names, you also wind up having to select and count, especially when there's two variables (e.g., _count and __count) spread throughout a particular piece of code.
Now granted, modern IDEs help greatly with variable identification and refactoring, but those very tools negate whatever misguided reason such practices claim to exist in the first place.
It depends upon what's important to you. Is power consumption important? AMD wins. Is multiple CPU cores in single servers important? Anything over 4 until recently, and now 8, is an AMD win. Do you need the most processing power possible for a single process in a 2P or less unit? Intel wins that one. Need high density stacked CPUs with loads of RAM? AMD wins that one (That's a power/heat/space issue). Need to process web calls? Sun wins that one hands down on a/$,/kW, and/J measure.
There are definite differences in performance between the various CPUs. A mere 5% difference in power draw across a day times 1000s of CPUs is significant. Same with a 5% thermal dissipation difference, as that turns into increased cooling requirements.
They're just now laying fiber, because Cable companies have been kicking (A)DSL's ass, and the open access to their copper means they can't gouge people as much as they'd like. So, to maintain their monopoly, they're laying fiber and cutting copper since they don't have to share fiber. Even though we (the people) essentially paid for this much delayed fiber network to the tune of $200B? and counting.
It explains the telecom bubble in the late 90s and crash in 2000. Had they actually spent the subsidies as they were supposed to, they'd never would have had the "spectacular" paper results.
Realtime 4WD is not very good for off-road driving, and systems that employ an open differential will not always engage the 4WD when you would expect them to. I had an experience last year where my realtime 4WD car had trouble getting up a steep snow-covered driveway, and it was really clear from outside the car that the 4WD wasn't engaging. Actually, in my case it was called AWD, and no, it's not 4WD, which is locked front-to-back rotations of the wheels. AWD will allow variances in wheel spin between the front and back. It's very good for powering through turns and general driving, especially on dirt/gravel/sand/wet pavement/snow.
In the case where you state that your "4WD" wasn't engaging, odds are that a) 1 wheel in front and 1 wheel in back were spinning (there had better be a limited slip differential for front-to-back) and b) you did not have the limited slip differentials in the front or back. These are generally sold as an added cost item on these cars, and one I sorely missed on my car only a couple of times (but when you miss it, you really miss it).
A fully configured full time 4WD system should work just fine in 99% of your off-road fun. I'm sure there will be 1 case out there somewhere where you truly need 1:1 locked spin of all 4 wheels.
CVS has issues as well, and I certainly don't like CVS over subversion. Speedwise I've not noticed a significant difference between them. Featurewise they're both missing some features I'd like regarding branching and merging, but then, I haven't delved too deeply into Subversion yet, so perhaps I've just not run across it.
I've also had the (dis)pleasure of using Clearcase, Starteam, and MKS. Out of the entire set in my experience, clearcase performs the best on complicated branched codebases. MKS has the best feature set, but is wholly unsuitable for enterprise development. There are no atomic commits in MKS as of 2 years ago. This means you can check something in, your client thinks it's checked in, the server logs say it's checked in, but the code was not actually committed to the codebase. Makes tracking down why the build's broken lots of fun. Starteam, well, I preface this by saying it was an older version, and that experience left me with the impression it's not much better than VSS and MKS was a welcome "upgrade". Anything that allows you to permanently delete the entire source tree and its history with a single operation from a client just violates everything that SCM should be in my opinion.
Perforce is something I've yet to try. I've heard good things about it, but that was from a team that was "selling" it to the rest of us.
I'll add the ones listed here to the list to evaluate.
Damn, not bad for memory on what's 10 years old, even if I wasn't 100% correct. I'd give you mod points if I could.
I should mention that I own a PP180 system (Pentium Pro, the original P6) circa 1996. I do believe that was the original K6 response. You should add that in for completeness, as that's what evolved into the PII, which then became the PIII, and is now the heart of Pentium-M and Core and was the original K6 target. Core 2 is the next iteration of that line.
Oh, and let's not forget that when Barcelona comes out, you'll be able to drop that puppy into that AM2 motherboard and use it, although not to its full potential.:)
K-6 was a P5 answer, IIRC. (Yep, standard "too lazy to look it up, going by memory" caveat).
Athlon (K-7) was the P4 answer, and it wasn't until the Opteron/Athlon 64 came out that AMD started really running rings around Intel.
And if we're going to start whining about AMD's 9 month window (not 1 year) how about the crying over Intel's 2 year lapse in the consumer domain and still running 4 year lapse in the server domain? (Yep, AMD still holds the server crown with 4P and 8P dual core Opterons, and their 2P systems are more energy efficient and can be more powerful, depending upon the application)
AMD has been crushing Intel for many years (on the order of at least 15) I'd say about 4, but hey, I like AMD.
and now that Intel slipped SLIGHTLY in the lead...I personally am a HUGE fan of AMD, and feel that their 64 bit technology is FAR superior to Intel's... Their new technology clearly leads, by 10-20%. However, it is their new technology running against 2004 AMD tech, which should be quite interesting when Barcelona finally ships. As for 64 bittedness, how is AMD's superior to Intel's? I'll admit that AMD's overall CPU design is superior, but the 64 bit extensions?
Plus the fact that memory and core bandwidth is so limited in Intel really makes me wonder how much longer Intel will go before going on-die with their memory controller. Intel will go to an on-board proprietary memory controller/architecture at the end of 2008/beginning of 2009, according to their roadmap.
I've considered dropping a T3 to my house, and working out a co-operative with my neighbors (all pretty much in the high tech business or needing internet access) but the drop price has been pretty expensive) 45 mbps up and down seems reasonable.:) I may look at it again.
I have TW's RoadRunner here and have about 6-8 mbps down and just under 500 kbps up. (Supposed to be 6 down, 512 up) However, I'm looking at going with AT&T's Fiber 6 down 1 up at about half the cost not only because it's half the cost, but also because RR's service seems flaky of late. It will go down without reason for 1 minute periods, just long enough to interrupt long downloads. It will also die about once or twice a week for an hour or more. This is unacceptable when you're VPNing into work. My neighbor's Fiber connection doesn't suffer from those problems.
Never the less, I'm still envious of those with 10+ mbps down and up speeds.
You are incorrect. I own the recording in my possession. I do not own the copyright to it. There's a large difference between those two positions that the RIAA and its ilk have been working overtime to remove.
Even the original computer with the original version won't render them correctly if the printer is different. MS long ago decided not to follow a typesetting model (like (la)Tex etc) but rather a view rendered concept that depended upon the physical aspects of the hardware. Change the target hardware, and the view changes. This was especially annoying between HP Laserjet II, III, IIIP, and IV w/wo Postscript. (At least in Postscript, the page would always print the same way).
That is a scary thing. I have a laptop that I download my pictures to, and then copy them to an external harddrive. Recently, I decided why just 1 external drive? So I've now got copies on a laptop and 2 externals. Then I'm thinking gee, why not DVD media too. So 10 or so DVDs later I feel better. But now I'm going "Hmmm, writeable DVDs will fail as well, so I better put in a plan to re-archive all this in 3-4 years when HD-DVD/BluRay prices drop. Same with the HD versions. Then I start looking at my negatives, and damn it all if they're not being affected negatively by time as well. So let's archive all those at max scanning resolution. So another couple of HDs later, dang, I'm going to have to go by a couple of stacks of DVDs.....
Mp3 is already lossy, once decompressed and re-encoded to compare with a watermarked version, it will lose quality and the binary information will be different so comparing won't be easy at all. And that right there is one of the chief issues with watermarking. The Joe Sixpacks of the world apparently don't care about quality (hence the ubiquity of MP3s) and wouldn't mind decoding and re-encoding an audio track. With some of today's "music", who knows? It might even improve it.;)
Rockets can carry larger payloads than the Shuttle. The new Delta can carry over 50K pounds, about the same as the Space Shuttle. Compare that to the Saturn V's 106,000 pounds.
So no, the Hubble could have been launched on another platform. As for the repair, that could have been done with the original shuttle design, as they certainly didn't carry a 50K payload for repairs.
The half-disposable design was a direct result of the military's insistence on increasing the payload carrying capacity by an order of magnitude combined with cutbacks in original funding targets. The increased size caused other design issues for re-entry and landing. It was also to have been replaced roughly 10 years ago.
Hence you have the bloated obsolete pig we use today.
For a given system, R134a refrigerant is less effective than R12, or other replacements. George Goble is the guy that lobbied for and lost the bid to replace R12 with a relatively inexpensive superior performing propane/iso-butane mixture. R134 performs worse, requires larger condensors, and has less heat carrying capacity. Additionally, should the condenser hit 214+F it won't work at all. The summer temps here regularly hit over 100, and in full sun on black asphalt you'll get a nice cozy 140+. Add in engine compartment heat where (surprise!!) the condenser sits....
If you've never had the pleasure of entering a dark colored car sitting out on asphalt for 8+ hours in full sun on a 115 degree day and turn on the AC and get hit with cold air, and then do the same with any R134 equipped car, you don't know what you're talking about. One last note, R134 did improve on one issue that used to be a problem with R12 systems: R134 systems don't suffer from freeze lock (that'd be where the evaporator in the dash gets so cold that water freezes onto it, blocking air flow and killing your cooling power).
So yes, R12 performs far better than R134. If you're willing to void your warranty, you can improve the performance of your R134 system by doping it with propane and iso-butane and approach the performance of an R12 system.
Your first line in the response says I shouldn't respond unless I have extra time...
Heh, from that reply, I can tell that debating with you is going to be like talking to a brick wall. Saying that LDAP can replace AD with no required training and no loss of productivity is preposterous, as pretty much anyone in the business would agree. Even saying that a linux distro is ever going to create a completely smooth transition from XP with no loss of productivity and no training required is ridiculous to the point of inanity. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about it, and with any kind of experience implementing this stuff in a business environment will attest to that. That is clearly an indication that you have neither to any significant extent.
In short, you're stuck on the IT view, and the training of the IT dept you're in. In a well-run IT dept, you only wind up training a few IT people compared to thousands of other employees. Which do you think is cheaper? Training a handful of tech people to properly support a system vs teaching many an entirely new way of working?
I'll also note that I never said such a transition was "free" in the sense of no cost, and I never mentioned anything in the context of the IT dept supporting such a change.
So, since we're speaking of the IT dept costs, what exactly is the cost for the IT dept in supporting the new Vista and the loss in productivity? "Anyone with any kind of knowledge about it, and with any kind of experience implementing this stuff in a business environment will attest to that. That is clearly an indication that you have neither to any significant extent."
As for Windows 9x use in the Western world, it is insignificant and diminishing. Unless you can provide any of those published reports you claim to be supported by, I'm going to assume that you're just pulling this out of a dark orifice.
Actually, they claim about 3% of active web users. If you're still running 95/98/ME, what are the chances you're actually on the web? We all know that web statistics mean diddly.
I interact with hundreds of these people ona daily basis, and I can assure you that the general consensus is that Windows XP is fine, there's nothing wrong with the UI, and that of the people who've tried Vista, the majority are positive towards it.
Ahh, the old anecdotal argument. Well, out of the folks I know, who of course only work at little ole Fortune 500 companies and the like, not a single one likes Vista, not a single one is looking to deploy it, and only two folks that aren't in a decision chain even remotely accept it as their current OS. The rest are running XP, uninstalled Vista if they had it, or have switched to Macs within the last 2 years. (I should mention that my particular circle tends to work with business apps that deal with triffles of billions of dollars and the like, and therefore their opinions, desires, and wants are probably completely irrelevant.)
Your views are jaded to a painfully obvious extent.
Quite the contrary. I speak from experience. I will admit to you that I actually held a recently expired MCSE (finally, Hooray!). I'm probably responsible for successfully installing more MS crap than your entire circle of friends, acquaintances, and their friends and acquaintances combined (this is a really really large number), but lets not let that weigh on this. Vista is shit. Pure and utter shit. If you can't see that, you're blind. It might succeed precisely because you and many like you are blind. I hope that won't come to pass.
But that's my opinion and desires. The debate is about XP vs Vista and 3 years hence and my statement that Linux makes a better replacement for XP than Vista. Since Linux has been dubbed (with the KDE interface) an XP wanna be, and Vista most certainly isn't, that would say that merely by that criticism leveled by those that wish to disparage Linux that the Linux KDE interface is already closer to XP than Vista is, as Vista is a
I'm absolutely not supporting your argument in any way... Perhaps you're not saying what you think you're saying? I said "Businesses don't want new interfaces." and you said "They want the actual software they've gotten comfortable with, and they want an OS compatible with their existing infrastructure." Now, the software they've gotten comfortable with is XP, not Vista. XP is still shipping for this very reason, because they didn't want to switch. OEM's are shipping XP to businesses. Heck, I just left a Fortune 100 company with 10s of thousands of employees that was just switching to XP. Vista won't be in their sights for at least 7 years or XP maintenance stops, whichever comes first. They just updated to Office XP as well.
As far as infrastructure goes, you've got AD, Exchange, and potentially file servers. File servers are the easiest, as you can drop in Linux based systems with Samba seamlessly. AD can be replaced with LDAP depending on how deeply you drank of the MS koolaid. Which leaves Exchange, a pretty horrid POS, but better than many alternatives (Notes?, no thank you).
In either event, training the single digit percent of workers who may not have gotten comfortable with Vista in that time is infinitely less costly than educating users on how to use software that neither looks nor behaves like they're used to. You, however, seem to be supporting my argument in that aspect, and you're the one who seems to be forgetting that the users aren't always very tech savvy. Considering how many users are still running some version of Win9x... I think you far over-estimate how many people will be running Vista enough to be familiar with it. There's also a large number of us that have looked at Vista and said "No Thank You". The DRM crap in Vista is reason enough to ditch it. Add on the phone home crap (for the tin-foil crowd) the effects of the DRM in significantly reduced performance and you have no reason to switch. (And for those like me who can't even stand XP's reduced performance with the useless fisher price eye-candy, that performance hit is even more noticeable.)
The fact that you're saying that a Linux alternative would bring on "no losses in productivity and training" doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in your knowledge on this topic, as I'm sure most objective people would agree.
As for Office 2007 having a Fisher Price UI, they said exactly the same about XP. Look at where that got them. That latter line should say something - XP was FP compared to Win2K, and now Vista is FP compared to XP....
But back to the topic: I note that I presented scenarios based on what I see really happening, supported by published reports. You respond first by hand-waving, and now by attempting to disparage me. I can only surmise that you've run out of "facts" and even opinions to argue with. I must conclude you have no real knowledge of how people and corporations work, and perhaps this posting will educate you a little. I'll trickle in one more trinket: not a single corporation I'm aware of has moved or even stated they have plans to move to Vista. That includes my current company that's (prematurely) jumped on the Office 07 bandwagon, but then again, we're high tech and small....
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you.
Now granted, modern IDEs help greatly with variable identification and refactoring, but those very tools negate whatever misguided reason such practices claim to exist in the first place.
It depends upon what's important to you. Is power consumption important? AMD wins. Is multiple CPU cores in single servers important? Anything over 4 until recently, and now 8, is an AMD win. Do you need the most processing power possible for a single process in a 2P or less unit? Intel wins that one. Need high density stacked CPUs with loads of RAM? AMD wins that one (That's a power/heat/space issue). Need to process web calls? Sun wins that one hands down on a /$, /kW, and /J measure.
There are definite differences in performance between the various CPUs. A mere 5% difference in power draw across a day times 1000s of CPUs is significant. Same with a 5% thermal dissipation difference, as that turns into increased cooling requirements.
These things all matter in the server world.
It'd be nice if they'd spent any money on it.
They're just now laying fiber, because Cable companies have been kicking (A)DSL's ass, and the open access to their copper means they can't gouge people as much as they'd like. So, to maintain their monopoly, they're laying fiber and cutting copper since they don't have to share fiber. Even though we (the people) essentially paid for this much delayed fiber network to the tune of $200B? and counting.
It explains the telecom bubble in the late 90s and crash in 2000. Had they actually spent the subsidies as they were supposed to, they'd never would have had the "spectacular" paper results.
In the case where you state that your "4WD" wasn't engaging, odds are that a) 1 wheel in front and 1 wheel in back were spinning (there had better be a limited slip differential for front-to-back) and b) you did not have the limited slip differentials in the front or back. These are generally sold as an added cost item on these cars, and one I sorely missed on my car only a couple of times (but when you miss it, you really miss it).
A fully configured full time 4WD system should work just fine in 99% of your off-road fun. I'm sure there will be 1 case out there somewhere where you truly need 1:1 locked spin of all 4 wheels.
You were way uninformed then. The US is one of the primary food producers in the world. Per capita, no one comes close.
CVS has issues as well, and I certainly don't like CVS over subversion. Speedwise I've not noticed a significant difference between them. Featurewise they're both missing some features I'd like regarding branching and merging, but then, I haven't delved too deeply into Subversion yet, so perhaps I've just not run across it.
I've also had the (dis)pleasure of using Clearcase, Starteam, and MKS. Out of the entire set in my experience, clearcase performs the best on complicated branched codebases. MKS has the best feature set, but is wholly unsuitable for enterprise development. There are no atomic commits in MKS as of 2 years ago. This means you can check something in, your client thinks it's checked in, the server logs say it's checked in, but the code was not actually committed to the codebase. Makes tracking down why the build's broken lots of fun. Starteam, well, I preface this by saying it was an older version, and that experience left me with the impression it's not much better than VSS and MKS was a welcome "upgrade". Anything that allows you to permanently delete the entire source tree and its history with a single operation from a client just violates everything that SCM should be in my opinion.
Perforce is something I've yet to try. I've heard good things about it, but that was from a team that was "selling" it to the rest of us.
I'll add the ones listed here to the list to evaluate.
Damn, not bad for memory on what's 10 years old, even if I wasn't 100% correct. I'd give you mod points if I could.
I should mention that I own a PP180 system (Pentium Pro, the original P6) circa 1996. I do believe that was the original K6 response. You should add that in for completeness, as that's what evolved into the PII, which then became the PIII, and is now the heart of Pentium-M and Core and was the original K6 target. Core 2 is the next iteration of that line.
Oh, and let's not forget that when Barcelona comes out, you'll be able to drop that puppy into that AM2 motherboard and use it, although not to its full potential. :)
K-6 was a P5 answer, IIRC. (Yep, standard "too lazy to look it up, going by memory" caveat).
Athlon (K-7) was the P4 answer, and it wasn't until the Opteron/Athlon 64 came out that AMD started really running rings around Intel.
And if we're going to start whining about AMD's 9 month window (not 1 year) how about the crying over Intel's 2 year lapse in the consumer domain and still running 4 year lapse in the server domain? (Yep, AMD still holds the server crown with 4P and 8P dual core Opterons, and their 2P systems are more energy efficient and can be more powerful, depending upon the application)
I've considered dropping a T3 to my house, and working out a co-operative with my neighbors (all pretty much in the high tech business or needing internet access) but the drop price has been pretty expensive) 45 mbps up and down seems reasonable. :) I may look at it again.
I have TW's RoadRunner here and have about 6-8 mbps down and just under 500 kbps up. (Supposed to be 6 down, 512 up) However, I'm looking at going with AT&T's Fiber 6 down 1 up at about half the cost not only because it's half the cost, but also because RR's service seems flaky of late. It will go down without reason for 1 minute periods, just long enough to interrupt long downloads. It will also die about once or twice a week for an hour or more. This is unacceptable when you're VPNing into work. My neighbor's Fiber connection doesn't suffer from those problems.
Never the less, I'm still envious of those with 10+ mbps down and up speeds.
You are incorrect. I own the recording in my possession. I do not own the copyright to it. There's a large difference between those two positions that the RIAA and its ilk have been working overtime to remove.
Even the original computer with the original version won't render them correctly if the printer is different. MS long ago decided not to follow a typesetting model (like (la)Tex etc) but rather a view rendered concept that depended upon the physical aspects of the hardware. Change the target hardware, and the view changes. This was especially annoying between HP Laserjet II, III, IIIP, and IV w/wo Postscript. (At least in Postscript, the page would always print the same way).
That is a scary thing. I have a laptop that I download my pictures to, and then copy them to an external harddrive. Recently, I decided why just 1 external drive?
So I've now got copies on a laptop and 2 externals. Then I'm thinking gee, why not DVD media too. So 10 or so DVDs later I feel better. But now I'm going "Hmmm, writeable DVDs will fail as well, so I better put in a plan to re-archive all this in 3-4 years when HD-DVD/BluRay prices drop. Same with the HD versions. Then I start looking at my negatives, and damn it all if they're not being affected negatively by time as well. So let's archive all those at max scanning resolution. So another couple of HDs later, dang, I'm going to have to go by a couple of stacks of DVDs.....
Rockets can carry larger payloads than the Shuttle. The new Delta can carry over 50K pounds, about the same as the Space Shuttle. Compare that to the Saturn V's 106,000 pounds.
So no, the Hubble could have been launched on another platform. As for the repair, that could have been done with the original shuttle design, as they certainly didn't carry a 50K payload for repairs.
The half-disposable design was a direct result of the military's insistence on increasing the payload carrying capacity by an order of magnitude combined with cutbacks in original funding targets. The increased size caused other design issues for re-entry and landing. It was also to have been replaced roughly 10 years ago.
Hence you have the bloated obsolete pig we use today.
For a given system, R134a refrigerant is less effective than R12, or other replacements. George Goble is the guy that lobbied for and lost the bid to replace R12 with a relatively inexpensive superior performing propane/iso-butane mixture. R134 performs worse, requires larger condensors, and has less heat carrying capacity. Additionally, should the condenser hit 214+F it won't work at all. The summer temps here regularly hit over 100, and in full sun on black asphalt you'll get a nice cozy 140+. Add in engine compartment heat where (surprise!!) the condenser sits....
If you've never had the pleasure of entering a dark colored car sitting out on asphalt for 8+ hours in full sun on a 115 degree day and turn on the AC and get hit with cold air, and then do the same with any R134 equipped car, you don't know what you're talking about. One last note, R134 did improve on one issue that used to be a problem with R12 systems: R134 systems don't suffer from freeze lock (that'd be where the evaporator in the dash gets so cold that water freezes onto it, blocking air flow and killing your cooling power).
So yes, R12 performs far better than R134. If you're willing to void your warranty, you can improve the performance of your R134 system by doping it with propane and iso-butane and approach the performance of an R12 system.
"You moved your mouse. Accept or Deny?"
Thx. I saw those myself and thought "that will never hold up in court". Of course, that was prior to the last 3 years....
Heh, from that reply, I can tell that debating with you is going to be like talking to a brick wall. Saying that LDAP can replace AD with no required training and no loss of productivity is preposterous, as pretty much anyone in the business would agree. Even saying that a linux distro is ever going to create a completely smooth transition from XP with no loss of productivity and no training required is ridiculous to the point of inanity. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about it, and with any kind of experience implementing this stuff in a business environment will attest to that. That is clearly an indication that you have neither to any significant extent.
In short, you're stuck on the IT view, and the training of the IT dept you're in. In a well-run IT dept, you only wind up training a few IT people compared to thousands of other employees. Which do you think is cheaper? Training a handful of tech people to properly support a system vs teaching many an entirely new way of working?
I'll also note that I never said such a transition was "free" in the sense of no cost, and I never mentioned anything in the context of the IT dept supporting such a change.
So, since we're speaking of the IT dept costs, what exactly is the cost for the IT dept in supporting the new Vista and the loss in productivity? "Anyone with any kind of knowledge about it, and with any kind of experience implementing this stuff in a business environment will attest to that. That is clearly an indication that you have neither to any significant extent."
As for Windows 9x use in the Western world, it is insignificant and diminishing. Unless you can provide any of those published reports you claim to be supported by, I'm going to assume that you're just pulling this out of a dark orifice.
Actually, they claim about 3% of active web users. If you're still running 95/98/ME, what are the chances you're actually on the web? We all know that web statistics mean diddly.
I interact with hundreds of these people ona daily basis, and I can assure you that the general consensus is that Windows XP is fine, there's nothing wrong with the UI, and that of the people who've tried Vista, the majority are positive towards it.
Ahh, the old anecdotal argument. Well, out of the folks I know, who of course only work at little ole Fortune 500 companies and the like, not a single one likes Vista, not a single one is looking to deploy it, and only two folks that aren't in a decision chain even remotely accept it as their current OS. The rest are running XP, uninstalled Vista if they had it, or have switched to Macs within the last 2 years. (I should mention that my particular circle tends to work with business apps that deal with triffles of billions of dollars and the like, and therefore their opinions, desires, and wants are probably completely irrelevant.)
Your views are jaded to a painfully obvious extent.
Quite the contrary. I speak from experience. I will admit to you that I actually held a recently expired MCSE (finally, Hooray!). I'm probably responsible for successfully installing more MS crap than your entire circle of friends, acquaintances, and their friends and acquaintances combined (this is a really really large number), but lets not let that weigh on this. Vista is shit. Pure and utter shit. If you can't see that, you're blind. It might succeed precisely because you and many like you are blind. I hope that won't come to pass.
But that's my opinion and desires. The debate is about XP vs Vista and 3 years hence and my statement that Linux makes a better replacement for XP than Vista. Since Linux has been dubbed (with the KDE interface) an XP wanna be, and Vista most certainly isn't, that would say that merely by that criticism leveled by those that wish to disparage Linux that the Linux KDE interface is already closer to XP than Vista is, as Vista is a
As far as infrastructure goes, you've got AD, Exchange, and potentially file servers. File servers are the easiest, as you can drop in Linux based systems with Samba seamlessly. AD can be replaced with LDAP depending on how deeply you drank of the MS koolaid. Which leaves Exchange, a pretty horrid POS, but better than many alternatives (Notes?, no thank you). In either event, training the single digit percent of workers who may not have gotten comfortable with Vista in that time is infinitely less costly than educating users on how to use software that neither looks nor behaves like they're used to. You, however, seem to be supporting my argument in that aspect, and you're the one who seems to be forgetting that the users aren't always very tech savvy. Considering how many users are still running some version of Win9x... I think you far over-estimate how many people will be running Vista enough to be familiar with it. There's also a large number of us that have looked at Vista and said "No Thank You". The DRM crap in Vista is reason enough to ditch it. Add on the phone home crap (for the tin-foil crowd) the effects of the DRM in significantly reduced performance and you have no reason to switch. (And for those like me who can't even stand XP's reduced performance with the useless fisher price eye-candy, that performance hit is even more noticeable.) The fact that you're saying that a Linux alternative would bring on "no losses in productivity and training" doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence in your knowledge on this topic, as I'm sure most objective people would agree.
As for Office 2007 having a Fisher Price UI, they said exactly the same about XP. Look at where that got them. That latter line should say something - XP was FP compared to Win2K, and now Vista is FP compared to XP....
But back to the topic: I note that I presented scenarios based on what I see really happening, supported by published reports. You respond first by hand-waving, and now by attempting to disparage me. I can only surmise that you've run out of "facts" and even opinions to argue with. I must conclude you have no real knowledge of how people and corporations work, and perhaps this posting will educate you a little. I'll trickle in one more trinket: not a single corporation I'm aware of has moved or even stated they have plans to move to Vista. That includes my current company that's (prematurely) jumped on the Office 07 bandwagon, but then again, we're high tech and small....