this move will probably anger the hardware companies that were convinced to use Microsoft's software. Now Microsoft is turning around and competing with them.
That's because those products were total crap. I played around with a couple of them, and the most "famous" of them all, the Creative Zen is a piece of shit.
Is it really that hard to make a good MP3 player like the iPod?
We'll see what MS comes up with.
And if they're really smart (aka learn from Apple's mistake/feature) they'll have it so that you can mount it as a drive in Linux, and you can put your songs on it, w/o using the software.
It's not worth it for them to target Mac users, you can't beat the intergration that comes with iTunes, but Windows users def, and this is one area where they'd "use" linux against their competition.
As for free downloads of iTunes purchases, does Microsoft think people use iPods because of the iTunes Music Store?
No, but that is one thing keeping them using ITMS. If you have ITMS, and have purchased songs and such, would you want to re-buy them so you can not use ITMS?
According to MS get the facts, their products are cheaper.
In this case, it's not Win vs. Linux, but the company offerings. For MS, Windows would be free, but for the company who will actually install and maintain the routers, it's not.
MS is not an ISP, so they don't just put windows on some routers and install/maintain them. They hired a company, and they're paying them for a _service_.
Or is it really that they are UPGRADING the existing one...???
The article says "replacing current Cisco routers", so I'm assuming upgrade.
MS also has a linux lab, with people running lots of flavors of linux, not to mention they have the second largest Mac lab, for their Mac:Office team.
This whole article is crap. It's old news, and MS didn't go and say "we're going to replace our routers with linux", but had offers from different wireless companies, and decided this is the best one. They couldn't, and shouldn't care less what the company runs, as long as the customer (MS in this case) is happy with the delivery.
Give me a break, Google counts this as a major feature also, and while ICQ had some nice features in the 90s, they've presented nothing interestring in the last (probably) 10 years... you can probably thank AOL for that.
Still, this is good for the competition, thus good for the customer.
So, my household could be counted as 100 percent IE.
No, these stats are not based on computers sold and firefox downloads made, but what the user-agent string is. So unless you changed your firefox/opera (btw the default is IE) to show up as IE, you will not be counted as IE.
The only inaccuracy is the dynamism of this: I have more than one machine, more than one OS, each having a different browser. On my Mac for example, I switched from Safari to Firefox to Camino back to Safari to Opera back to Firefox.
As long as the websites I visit are functional from all broswers I use, I really don't give a crap who has what percent of the market.
wiped the floor with Netscape 4 in terms of speed and stability. It didn't stop me using Netscape, but even at the time I admitted it was shit, but "at least it's not IE".
But this is exactly the opposite mentality of today. You were using a worse product because of personal beliefs, users do it because it's what they're used to.
IMHO this is hypocrisy. If one product is better, why not use it?? I use Linux, OSX and Windows, each have their good things and bad ones, but saying I'll use one only regardless of what everyone else is doing doesn't make much sense.
We blame users for using MS products although they're inferior, but when they're better we still refuse to use them because of ideologies...
The EU is saying MS should ship an OS without WMP. Microsoft says it's part of the Windows core, that it is part of the underalying video engine and the API is tied with the OS.
EU says that's BS, that WMP is just an app that can be removed. Apple says Quicktime is part of the underlaying video engine and the API is tied with the OS.
So either call BS on Apple or on the EU, and while I agree MS gets special "care" becuse it's got 95% of the market, that "care" only goes so far. k If MS would be selling Windows without WMP, IE, Notepad, Outloo etc, it'd be like people buying Darwin.
You don't want to use WMP, IE, Outlook? Don't...If your computer would come without IE, how would you go get Firefox or Opera? (w/o booting on a live CD and installing a linux distro:-p)
For MS it would be much more profitable to sell all thost apps instead of bundling them with Windows, but it jus doesn't make sense, and right now I feel the EU doesn't make sense with some of the things they ask.
Special treatment because you're a monopoly != double standards
The core is $299, the "regular" is $399. There are bundles that go even for $800+, but that's not the point.
and that's without the HD-DVD.
For now. MS is already losing money on the XBOX hardware, they'll add an HD-DVD player when the time comes, right now most people don't even have HD-TV, why would you need the HD-DVD? Not to mention games will also be more expensive for HD-DVD since the disks cost more.
Plus, Sony's online play is free,
Sony has an online play? I wouldn't compare the fact that it's free compared to $50, but how much you actually get for it. Given XBOX Live already has built a large community, and is rapidly increasing, the $50 are worth it. Plus Sony is _announcing_ it's free, given the greedy bastards they are we'll see. They'll have a free sign-up but get very little and probably charge the same or more for the equivalent.
All Sony has to do is throw in a couple games and they'd have MS beat already.
Wrong...all Sony has to do is release a console, and then they can actually start playing catch-up
I tend to agree with the article. PS3 has so far nothing to offer me the XBOX360 doesn't. The people who buy Nintendo consoles do it cause they're huge SmashBros et. al fans. The market targeted by Nintendo is different than the one MS/Sony is going after.
Microsoft is dying, losing marketshare...yea sure...with the chance of being trolled - they have _90%+_ of the market in dekstop, they have about 99% of the business dekstop market and even in the server world, while they don't have a lead, they're in the fight.
Quiet or not, MS will have a major switch in the next year and a bit with a new Windows coming out, a new office, new API, new IE, new webapps...and while for most people here it's a big MEH, for the sheer majority of users using MS products it will be a _huge_ thing.
Vista is not just XP SP3 - I've tried out the beta and I like it much better than XP: it's more stable, you're not running as admin, it's improved security a lot - and this might actually make regular users dislike it since it asks your everytime it needs to do something "unusual", Joe user just wants it to work, no clicks, even if it trashes his machine.
Office might not bring a lot of technical improvements (yay for Save as PDF after years with OO), but it will bring a huge UI change which will make users more productive.
IE7, although arguably inferior to Firefox, is much better than IE6, and for people who have not user Firefox/Opera it will be great. The rendering is better, it's more standards compliant.
Live has some neat ideas, they still have lots of work, but it's playing decent catch-up. They have the data that google has, MSN has been crawling the web for years, they just have to improve the way to get that data.
MS has been lazy in the past years, but they work the best when they have clear competition, and with Google, Firefox, Linux/OSX, OO they have clear targets.
You can't honestely think the largest software company in the world that has LOTS of smart people working there and has virtually unlimited resources will go away because they now don't have 95% of the market, but 94%...
Dell = No Bluetooth, No DVD Burner, No Gigabit Ethernet, 20GB less HD space, No built in webcam & much worse graphics.
Yes, but Joe average will not use Bluetooth (I barely use it), nor will he make use of the Gigabit ether. The HD space perhaps will matter, but HDDs are so cheap now he could buy an external and it'll be more worth it. Similarly with the last one - I don't own a webcam and live just fine, and for most activities high end graphics aren't really used.
I'm not saying it doesn't make any difference, but it might not be worth it for someone who never uses them.
P.S. My laptop is an iBook, I had a choice between that and a Dell, and they were both priced similarly, I went with the iBook because I wanted to play with OSX.
In other words if you install Vista, Microsoft can come in, snoop around your computer see if you are doing anything illegal and delete it.
This was an issue since Windows 2000 SP2 actually. This clause was removed with Windows XP due to complaints from companies and such.
Also, unless the Vista EULA includes this clause again, Oklahoma's law doesn't affect me whatsoever since I don't live there. And if more states pass laws with a similar clause, or they make it a federal law (doubtful), then companies and people will again complain and they'll take it out.
Expect to see announcements from us in that area in the next 12 months
10 months from now: We will innovate like you've never seen innovation before. In just one more month!
11 months from now: In order to ensure maximum innovation, we had to delay the release by a few months, just 4, not that much.
15 months from now: We are getting back into the game. We're going to release the device of them all, expect too see it in the store in another 2 months or so.
17 months from now: Next month we will be releasing the app. Expect to see it in stores at around $XXX
18 months from now, MS releases the concept of a MSpod
30 months from now, stores have brand new shiny MSpods, but there's one problem: it's at the level iPods were over 2 years ago...
why the hell do we need scroolsbars in the search window!!
I guess it's so they don't do the pages anymore. I agree I dislike the next page stuff, and this is one way of solving the problem without having 100+ results/page
South Korea comes in right behind them. #4 is so far below, there isn't much reason to even consider it.
Yes, but out of all the people in SK using MS, how many of them have _legal_ installations of their software?
While China and other Asian countries are very advanced in the use of computers and Internet technology (and if they're not advanced they have the numbers to make it count), how many are legal?
If the market in SK would have, say 1mil customers (totally random number), and out of those only 200k have legal copies, it doesn't weight so heavy on MS...
Just a thought..
I do agree tho that this whole going-after-MS crap is beginning to be ridiculous. IM client??? They're not even in the top 2 companies of IM! Don't want IE? Use something else? God knows people are, and it's not like you're paying for IE (that would probably be a crime:-p). The whole media player discussion I think is also bull - I think you'll find that people use QT more than they use WMP, yet Apple is selling _their_ computers with it, and it's pretty integrated in their system (I don't mind it, so no pun intended).
Now if they would bundle Office with Windows, that's where it'd be wrong...but all these small components...would you buy and OS that comes with a kernel only? (And yes, I use gentoo too;) )
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I don't understand how eBay can say a type of payment can not accepted.
If a store tells you they don't take Amex do you sue them? No, the most you can do is not purchase from them.
Same goes for eBay.
this move will probably anger the hardware companies that were convinced to use Microsoft's software. Now Microsoft is turning around and competing with them.
That's because those products were total crap. I played around with a couple of them, and the most "famous" of them all, the Creative Zen is a piece of shit.
Is it really that hard to make a good MP3 player like the iPod?
We'll see what MS comes up with.
And if they're really smart (aka learn from Apple's mistake/feature) they'll have it so that you can mount it as a drive in Linux, and you can put your songs on it, w/o using the software.
It's not worth it for them to target Mac users, you can't beat the intergration that comes with iTunes, but Windows users def, and this is one area where they'd "use" linux against their competition.
As for free downloads of iTunes purchases, does Microsoft think people use iPods because of the iTunes Music Store?
No, but that is one thing keeping them using ITMS. If you have ITMS, and have purchased songs and such, would you want to re-buy them so you can not use ITMS?
I think this strategy is brilliant.
Who is going to really remember Microsoft and their business practices 50 years from now
:))
You're assuming MS will not be around in the next 50 years
According to MS get the facts, their products are cheaper.
In this case, it's not Win vs. Linux, but the company offerings. For MS, Windows would be free, but for the company who will actually install and maintain the routers, it's not.
MS is not an ISP, so they don't just put windows on some routers and install/maintain them. They hired a company, and they're paying them for a _service_.
Or is it really that they are UPGRADING the existing one...???
The article says "replacing current Cisco routers", so I'm assuming upgrade.
MS also has a linux lab, with people running lots of flavors of linux, not to mention they have the second largest Mac lab, for their Mac:Office team.
This whole article is crap. It's old news, and MS didn't go and say "we're going to replace our routers with linux", but had offers from different wireless companies, and decided this is the best one. They couldn't, and shouldn't care less what the company runs, as long as the customer (MS in this case) is happy with the delivery.
Congrats Microsoft for finally making it to 1998
... you can probably thank AOL for that.
Give me a break, Google counts this as a major feature also, and while ICQ had some nice features in the 90s, they've presented nothing interestring in the last (probably) 10 years
Still, this is good for the competition, thus good for the customer.
So, my household could be counted as 100 percent IE.
No, these stats are not based on computers sold and firefox downloads made, but what the user-agent string is. So unless you changed your firefox/opera (btw the default is IE) to show up as IE, you will not be counted as IE.
The only inaccuracy is the dynamism of this: I have more than one machine, more than one OS, each having a different browser. On my Mac for example, I switched from Safari to Firefox to Camino back to Safari to Opera back to Firefox.
As long as the websites I visit are functional from all broswers I use, I really don't give a crap who has what percent of the market.
wiped the floor with Netscape 4 in terms of speed and stability. It didn't stop me using Netscape, but even at the time I admitted it was shit, but "at least it's not IE".
But this is exactly the opposite mentality of today. You were using a worse product because of personal beliefs, users do it because it's what they're used to.
IMHO this is hypocrisy. If one product is better, why not use it?? I use Linux, OSX and Windows, each have their good things and bad ones, but saying I'll use one only regardless of what everyone else is doing doesn't make much sense.
We blame users for using MS products although they're inferior, but when they're better we still refuse to use them because of ideologies...
The EU is saying MS should ship an OS without WMP.
:-p)
Microsoft says it's part of the Windows core, that it is part of the underalying video engine and the API is tied with the OS.
EU says that's BS, that WMP is just an app that can be removed.
Apple says Quicktime is part of the underlaying video engine and the API is tied with the OS.
So either call BS on Apple or on the EU, and while I agree MS gets special "care" becuse it's got 95% of the market, that "care" only goes so far.
k
If MS would be selling Windows without WMP, IE, Notepad, Outloo etc, it'd be like people buying Darwin.
You don't want to use WMP, IE, Outlook? Don't...If your computer would come without IE, how would you go get Firefox or Opera? (w/o booting on a live CD and installing a linux distro
For MS it would be much more profitable to sell all thost apps instead of bundling them with Windows, but it jus doesn't make sense, and right now I feel the EU doesn't make sense with some of the things they ask.
Special treatment because you're a monopoly != double standards
Microsoft was not found a monopoly in EU. They do have a monopoly, but legally that remains to be proven outside the US
Quicktime is much more than the Player. It is a very rich API that lets you do some great things
So if Apple uses this excuse it's supposed to be all good, but in the case of MS and the EU, it's bullshit?!
Wait, I thought we were going to be living on other planets starting 2001...
On another note, are people that confident we'll still be here in 2000 years?
The stripped down 360 costs $399, the higher-end costs $499
Nope.
The core is $299, the "regular" is $399. There are bundles that go even for $800+, but that's not the point.
and that's without the HD-DVD.
For now. MS is already losing money on the XBOX hardware, they'll add an HD-DVD player when the time comes, right now most people don't even have HD-TV, why would you need the HD-DVD? Not to mention games will also be more expensive for HD-DVD since the disks cost more.
Plus, Sony's online play is free,
Sony has an online play? I wouldn't compare the fact that it's free compared to $50, but how much you actually get for it. Given XBOX Live already has built a large community, and is rapidly increasing, the $50 are worth it. Plus Sony is _announcing_ it's free, given the greedy bastards they are we'll see. They'll have a free sign-up but get very little and probably charge the same or more for the equivalent.
All Sony has to do is throw in a couple games and they'd have MS beat already.
Wrong...all Sony has to do is release a console, and then they can actually start playing catch-up
I tend to agree with the article. PS3 has so far nothing to offer me the XBOX360 doesn't. The people who buy Nintendo consoles do it cause they're huge SmashBros et. al fans. The market targeted by Nintendo is different than the one MS/Sony is going after.
is what Dvorak is...MS is a _software_ company...of course they'll write the software, why the heck would they use _other_ software??
Microsoft is dying, losing marketshare...yea sure...with the chance of being trolled - they have _90%+_ of the market in dekstop, they have about 99% of the business dekstop market and even in the server world, while they don't have a lead, they're in the fight.
Quiet or not, MS will have a major switch in the next year and a bit with a new Windows coming out, a new office, new API, new IE, new webapps...and while for most people here it's a big MEH, for the sheer majority of users using MS products it will be a _huge_ thing.
Vista is not just XP SP3 - I've tried out the beta and I like it much better than XP: it's more stable, you're not running as admin, it's improved security a lot - and this might actually make regular users dislike it since it asks your everytime it needs to do something "unusual", Joe user just wants it to work, no clicks, even if it trashes his machine.
Office might not bring a lot of technical improvements (yay for Save as PDF after years with OO), but it will bring a huge UI change which will make users more productive.
IE7, although arguably inferior to Firefox, is much better than IE6, and for people who have not user Firefox/Opera it will be great. The rendering is better, it's more standards compliant.
Live has some neat ideas, they still have lots of work, but it's playing decent catch-up. They have the data that google has, MSN has been crawling the web for years, they just have to improve the way to get that data.
MS has been lazy in the past years, but they work the best when they have clear competition, and with Google, Firefox, Linux/OSX, OO they have clear targets.
You can't honestely think the largest software company in the world that has LOTS of smart people working there and has virtually unlimited resources will go away because they now don't have 95% of the market, but 94%...
Dell = No Bluetooth, No DVD Burner, No Gigabit Ethernet, 20GB less HD space, No built in webcam & much worse graphics.
Yes, but Joe average will not use Bluetooth (I barely use it), nor will he make use of the Gigabit ether. The HD space perhaps will matter, but HDDs are so cheap now he could buy an external and it'll be more worth it. Similarly with the last one - I don't own a webcam and live just fine, and for most activities high end graphics aren't really used.
I'm not saying it doesn't make any difference, but it might not be worth it for someone who never uses them.
P.S. My laptop is an iBook, I had a choice between that and a Dell, and they were both priced similarly, I went with the iBook because I wanted to play with OSX.
From TFA:
In other words if you install Vista, Microsoft can come in, snoop around your computer see if you are doing anything illegal and delete it.
This was an issue since Windows 2000 SP2 actually. This clause was removed with Windows XP due to complaints from companies and such.
Also, unless the Vista EULA includes this clause again, Oklahoma's law doesn't affect me whatsoever since I don't live there. And if more states pass laws with a similar clause, or they make it a federal law (doubtful), then companies and people will again complain and they'll take it out.
Just another conspiracy theory in the making...
From TFA:
Expect to see announcements from us in that area in the next 12 months
10 months from now: We will innovate like you've never seen innovation before. In just one more month!
11 months from now: In order to ensure maximum innovation, we had to delay the release by a few months, just 4, not that much.
15 months from now: We are getting back into the game. We're going to release the device of them all, expect too see it in the store in another 2 months or so.
17 months from now: Next month we will be releasing the app. Expect to see it in stores at around $XXX
18 months from now, MS releases the concept of a MSpod
30 months from now, stores have brand new shiny MSpods, but there's one problem: it's at the level iPods were over 2 years ago...
Remember the line from Pirates of Silicon Valley?
Jobs: "We have better stuff!"
Gates: "It doesn't matter."
Actually I think the quote was more like (in ref to Icons and the concept of a Desktop):
Jobs: But ours is better!
Gates: It doesn't matter, we were first.
Is there a good reason Google doesn't just delete all the records and go OOPS ?
sweet, good job guys! Keep it up!
why the hell do we need scroolsbars in the search window!!
I guess it's so they don't do the pages anymore. I agree I dislike the next page stuff, and this is one way of solving the problem without having 100+ results/page
My scroll works fine tho..
And upgrading to XP is a dumb idea if you really have any intentions of moving to Linux soon.
:)
Especially when the next version is also coming out later in the year
South Korea comes in right behind them. #4 is so far below, there isn't much reason to even consider it.
:-p). The whole media player discussion I think is also bull - I think you'll find that people use QT more than they use WMP, yet Apple is selling _their_ computers with it, and it's pretty integrated in their system (I don't mind it, so no pun intended).
;) )
Yes, but out of all the people in SK using MS, how many of them have _legal_ installations of their software?
While China and other Asian countries are very advanced in the use of computers and Internet technology (and if they're not advanced they have the numbers to make it count), how many are legal?
If the market in SK would have, say 1mil customers (totally random number), and out of those only 200k have legal copies, it doesn't weight so heavy on MS...
Just a thought..
I do agree tho that this whole going-after-MS crap is beginning to be ridiculous. IM client??? They're not even in the top 2 companies of IM! Don't want IE? Use something else? God knows people are, and it's not like you're paying for IE (that would probably be a crime
Now if they would bundle Office with Windows, that's where it'd be wrong...but all these small components...would you buy and OS that comes with a kernel only? (And yes, I use gentoo too