Hasta la Vista, part 1: Microsofts final death march

A very good read.

But the article he cites is also very, very up-beat about Microsoft's change of habit.

I just love all of these profound proclamations. None of this really means diddly... Every technical person in the world knows that MS products are buggy, and bloated, and insecure.

Bill's & the MS genius is in 'marketing'. Convincing the world and it's users that MS is the one true choice by any means necessary. Essentially, that shit is gold. Crazy? Well, look at the MS 'Empire' and tell me it hasn't worked, and, continues to work.

Just because we know that MS deserves to be put out of its misery has nothing to do with how the general public, or business, or the world for that matter responds to the MS machine's machinations. If this is the MS death march, it will likely be a long and profitable one.

I know I'm not the first person to use the analogy of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Time after time after time, Microsoft makes grand promises that it never keeps. But people keep buying it.

> But people keep buying it.

It's the old 'some of the people all of the time' tuxchick. The scary thing is that amounts to an awful lot of people.

For me the biggest achievement of Microsoft is convincing people that "computer == Windows". Right now it's modified a bit to include "sure, there are other operating systems, but you have to be a computer genius to use them", but it's just a detail. People seem to think "oh, if such a great company like Microsoft can't make Windows less buggy, insecure and bloated then how buggy, insecure and bloated the others must be!"

I'm all for a programme of fighting computer illiteracy.

Quoting:A day late and a dollar short, the software giant's new Vista operating system won't have anyone standing on line to buy the first copy. ...................... So here's a modest proposal: Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one. That's the only way we have to let Microsoft know Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP - a perfectly fine operating system.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/07/technology/Reality_check_Vis...

Quoting:Virtualisation is the Next Big Thing in computing, and the lesson of Vista is that Microsoft will have to embrace it to survive in the operating system market. The trouble (for Microsoft) is that the leader in the technology is Xensource, a spin-out from Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory. And here's where the delicious ironies begin.

For not only is the lab housed in the William Gates Building (in recognition of a donation by the Microsoft boss), but Xen's core technology is - wait for it! - open source, which in Redmond is still viewed as the spawn of the communist devil. In due course, an accommodation will be reached - and Xensource will go through the roof. If you were thinking of investing, however, I'm afraid you've missed the boat. John Doerr, the world's greatest venture capitalist (Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Lotus, Intuit, Genentech, Millennium, Netscape, Amazon and Google, inter alia), got there before you. In this business, you have to get up early if you want to get into bed.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200609091840.htm

> Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP - a perfectly fine operating system.

If you can stand product activation that is. Personally I stick to Windows 2000 as the last version of Windows to use.

> The trouble (for Microsoft) is that the leader in the technology is Xensource

The leader in virtualization is VMWare, not Xensource. Xensource only wishes they were the leader.

My guess is that the first OS to support virtualization out of the box with the home user in mind is going to leap ahead of the others, whether they're proprietary or not. The last time I used Xen it wasn't all that easy to get up and running.

I don't understand why MS didn't integrate virtualization into Vista and tout it as a key feature. It sure as hell would have solved their backwards-compatibility problems that have plagued them for years. They didn't think far enough ahead.

If Apple can put out Rosetta to run PPC binaries on OSX-Intel, MS could surely have created a protected virtual environment where Win2k/XP programs could run without modification on Vista.

And it's not like MS is a stranger to the concept. You can run old Intel Xbox games on the PPC Xbox360. Seems like MS drops the ball at every turn.

> Personally I stick to Windows 2000 as the last version of Windows to use.

I'd say that was the last version of Windows to have any validity as a working OS. Anything after that has real problems, and the people testing the latest prerelease seem to think Vista has even more problems. I'll take their word for it.

I keep reading about this "Vista" thing. Is that an upgrade for Notepad?

ROFL... Good one Don.

> My guess is that the first OS to support virtualization out of the box with the home user in mind is going to leap ahead of the others, whether they're proprietary or not.

Well, with both VMWare Player and VMWare Server available free of charge, there's no reason for one of the commercial Linux's not to offer it. There's no reason for Microsoft not too either, but I suspect Microsoft is a bit leery of crossing swords with EMC, and a crossing of swords is the inevitable result of a partnership with Microsoft.

>I keep reading about this "Vista" thing. Is that an upgrade for Notepad?

As I remember, Vista was a big ugly Oldsmobile so heavy that the humongoloid V-8 under the hood still wasn't enough to make it dance.

Wait...it all makes sense now.

Vista also means "chicken" in Lithuanian... Or so I read somewhere :)

This is going to be a great death march! Probably as good as the XP death march. Now that Microsoft is going to release new updates and versions faster... we'll have more frequent death marches.

Death march rulez