could vista be the proverbial straw (that breaks the camel's back)?
MS charge ridiculous prices for their operating system(s) - given their complete market dominance.
MS have developed total paranoia over piracy - how long before WGA runs into a major legal battle with another large corporation (or 2)?
Having touted below par o/s for years (windows 3, 95, 98, ME), they belatedly developed their NT flavour - and got it reasonably right with XP (all the 'security' issues are only there because they are so successful). The operating system serves most people reasonably well. So why replace it. One word - revenue.
Complications. XP comes in Home and Pro - basically so they could charge a premium for Pro. This also increases support issues. Vista is at least doubling this (same reason again - revenue). No benefit to the customer. One version is a lot easier to support - but they can't charge premium rates for it. What are the development costs to hobble the basic o/s (which is what they do). We, the customers pay for that.
What are the development costs for 'activation' (which immediately kick-started a whole new piracy operation which wasn't there previously - Newton, he say, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) and WGA? Who pays for this - the customer of course.
I fix PCs in peoples homes. Virtually nobody is interested in the 'interface' (other than it doesn't change too much, so the little technical expertise already gained isn't lost), but look at Aero. People mainly want machines that will surf their favourite sites, send & receive email, do some word processing, let their kids run games/messenger, working at a reasonable speed.
There is no reasonable alternative (ubuntu is best linux I've tried in years, but its still not an alternative), and Vista will go on new PCs of course, so it will probably be business as usual. But having beta tested Vista for a year or so now, all I can see is it need lots more resources and gives very little extra. And has more annoying things that need turning off (another observation - people mainly are not impressed with constant 'should this be run' type questions, which Vista seems to abound in).
Sounds like a rant - oh well, its been a while!
MS charge ridiculous prices for their operating system(s) - given their complete market dominance.
MS have developed total paranoia over piracy - how long before WGA runs into a major legal battle with another large corporation (or 2)?
Having touted below par o/s for years (windows 3, 95, 98, ME), they belatedly developed their NT flavour - and got it reasonably right with XP (all the 'security' issues are only there because they are so successful). The operating system serves most people reasonably well. So why replace it. One word - revenue.
Complications. XP comes in Home and Pro - basically so they could charge a premium for Pro. This also increases support issues. Vista is at least doubling this (same reason again - revenue). No benefit to the customer. One version is a lot easier to support - but they can't charge premium rates for it. What are the development costs to hobble the basic o/s (which is what they do). We, the customers pay for that.
What are the development costs for 'activation' (which immediately kick-started a whole new piracy operation which wasn't there previously - Newton, he say, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) and WGA? Who pays for this - the customer of course.
I fix PCs in peoples homes. Virtually nobody is interested in the 'interface' (other than it doesn't change too much, so the little technical expertise already gained isn't lost), but look at Aero. People mainly want machines that will surf their favourite sites, send & receive email, do some word processing, let their kids run games/messenger, working at a reasonable speed.
There is no reasonable alternative (ubuntu is best linux I've tried in years, but its still not an alternative), and Vista will go on new PCs of course, so it will probably be business as usual. But having beta tested Vista for a year or so now, all I can see is it need lots more resources and gives very little extra. And has more annoying things that need turning off (another observation - people mainly are not impressed with constant 'should this be run' type questions, which Vista seems to abound in).
Sounds like a rant - oh well, its been a while!
