T
Tiberius
Before anyone tries to blast me again.. this is NOT my article..
Thats WHY I provide the LINK along with the TEXT so you can see the original
source, yet you can read the contents of the article in your newsreader.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2190228,00.asp
Opinion: Vista has turned into the desktop operating system no one wants,
and even Microsoft is beginning to get it.
Today, I think of Vista as the zombie operating system. It stumbles around,
and from a distance you might think it's alive, but close up it's the
walking dead.
The first sign that Vista was in real trouble was when major vendors started
to offer XP again on new machines. In February, Microsoft insisted it had
already sold more than 20 million copies of Windows Vista. Oh yeah, like
there were actually 20 million copies of Vista already out there and
running.
If Vista was doing great, then why did Dell break ranks with the other major
OEMs to start offering XP again and become the first top-tier vendor to
offer XP in replacement for Vista in April? Adding insult to injury, Dell
actually had the effrontery to offer desktop Linux to its customers.
Click here to read more about Microsoft keeping Windows XP in play.
Other OEMs followed Dell's lead, or to be more precise, its customers'
demands. Lenovo, for example, when it rolled out its revamped high-end
ThinkPad T61p workstation notebooks in July, made a point of offering not
just Vista but XP Pro and, yes, several Linux distributions, including
Novell's SUSE, Red Hat and Turbo Linux.
So it came as no surprise at all to me when Mike Nash, Microsoft's corporate
vice president for Windows product management, announced that, due to OEM
demand, Microsoft will keep selling XP until June 2008. Of course, he also
claims there is little chance the June 30 date will be extended.
Want to bet?
Nash and Microsoft apologist Rob Enderle claim that it's no fault with Vista
that's causing customers to stay away from it. Indeed, Nash insists that
Vista is on track to become the fastest-selling operating system of all
time. Really? Then why in the world is Microsoft continuing to offer
in-house competition?
At the same time, Enderle, an analyst who counts Microsoft as a customer,
said, "Vista adoption is well below where I thought it would be by
now...Corporations aren't even close to being ready for Vista, and many of
us have been expecting this move. The biggest issue is that most don't seem
to see the value in the product. Right now the majority of the comments I'm
getting would indicate the people [who] don't want Vista right now are in
the majority."
Enderle, mind you, is about as pro-Microsoft an analyst there is in the
business today. If he's saying that people don't want Vista, and the OEMs,
which at the end of the day are all about selling units, don't want to sell
it, the only conclusion you can come to is that Vista is failing to win the
market.
There are many reasons why Vista is doing the zombie stumble. Microsoft has
and continues to mislead customers about how much PC is really needed to run
Vista. Even some of Windows' most loyal users are finding that its poor
performance, lousy software support and pathetic driver support is too much
to stomach. People who wouldn't touch any Microsoft product until the first
service patch appears. And, last but never ever least, if XP isn't broke,
why "fix" it with Vista?
Now you might think some of this is legacy backlash. People don't like
change. They'd rather use Windows 2000 than XP, Windows 98 SE than 2000,and
Windows ME more than...well, OK, no one liked ME. But I've been through
these cycles many times before. This is different.
XP SP2, with XP SP3 finally due to show up soon, is not only the best
Windows to date, I can't think of a single reason to switch from XP to
Vista. I'm not talking a good reason, I really mean any reason.
If you want a better operating system than XP, may I recommend Xandros as
the most painless way for an XP user to give Linux a try, or if the idea of
installing Linux gives you hives, you can just buy an Ubuntu-powered Dell
1420 laptop, which is a very sweet machine. Or just bite the bullet and go
ahead and buy, say, the new MacBook Pro 15-inch to give Mac OS a try.
Whatever you do, even if it's just sticking with XP, you'll be doing better
than moving to Vista. Vista is the walking dead of the operating-system
world.
Thats WHY I provide the LINK along with the TEXT so you can see the original
source, yet you can read the contents of the article in your newsreader.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2190228,00.asp
Opinion: Vista has turned into the desktop operating system no one wants,
and even Microsoft is beginning to get it.
Today, I think of Vista as the zombie operating system. It stumbles around,
and from a distance you might think it's alive, but close up it's the
walking dead.
The first sign that Vista was in real trouble was when major vendors started
to offer XP again on new machines. In February, Microsoft insisted it had
already sold more than 20 million copies of Windows Vista. Oh yeah, like
there were actually 20 million copies of Vista already out there and
running.
If Vista was doing great, then why did Dell break ranks with the other major
OEMs to start offering XP again and become the first top-tier vendor to
offer XP in replacement for Vista in April? Adding insult to injury, Dell
actually had the effrontery to offer desktop Linux to its customers.
Click here to read more about Microsoft keeping Windows XP in play.
Other OEMs followed Dell's lead, or to be more precise, its customers'
demands. Lenovo, for example, when it rolled out its revamped high-end
ThinkPad T61p workstation notebooks in July, made a point of offering not
just Vista but XP Pro and, yes, several Linux distributions, including
Novell's SUSE, Red Hat and Turbo Linux.
So it came as no surprise at all to me when Mike Nash, Microsoft's corporate
vice president for Windows product management, announced that, due to OEM
demand, Microsoft will keep selling XP until June 2008. Of course, he also
claims there is little chance the June 30 date will be extended.
Want to bet?
Nash and Microsoft apologist Rob Enderle claim that it's no fault with Vista
that's causing customers to stay away from it. Indeed, Nash insists that
Vista is on track to become the fastest-selling operating system of all
time. Really? Then why in the world is Microsoft continuing to offer
in-house competition?
At the same time, Enderle, an analyst who counts Microsoft as a customer,
said, "Vista adoption is well below where I thought it would be by
now...Corporations aren't even close to being ready for Vista, and many of
us have been expecting this move. The biggest issue is that most don't seem
to see the value in the product. Right now the majority of the comments I'm
getting would indicate the people [who] don't want Vista right now are in
the majority."
Enderle, mind you, is about as pro-Microsoft an analyst there is in the
business today. If he's saying that people don't want Vista, and the OEMs,
which at the end of the day are all about selling units, don't want to sell
it, the only conclusion you can come to is that Vista is failing to win the
market.
There are many reasons why Vista is doing the zombie stumble. Microsoft has
and continues to mislead customers about how much PC is really needed to run
Vista. Even some of Windows' most loyal users are finding that its poor
performance, lousy software support and pathetic driver support is too much
to stomach. People who wouldn't touch any Microsoft product until the first
service patch appears. And, last but never ever least, if XP isn't broke,
why "fix" it with Vista?
Now you might think some of this is legacy backlash. People don't like
change. They'd rather use Windows 2000 than XP, Windows 98 SE than 2000,and
Windows ME more than...well, OK, no one liked ME. But I've been through
these cycles many times before. This is different.
XP SP2, with XP SP3 finally due to show up soon, is not only the best
Windows to date, I can't think of a single reason to switch from XP to
Vista. I'm not talking a good reason, I really mean any reason.
If you want a better operating system than XP, may I recommend Xandros as
the most painless way for an XP user to give Linux a try, or if the idea of
installing Linux gives you hives, you can just buy an Ubuntu-powered Dell
1420 laptop, which is a very sweet machine. Or just bite the bullet and go
ahead and buy, say, the new MacBook Pro 15-inch to give Mac OS a try.
Whatever you do, even if it's just sticking with XP, you'll be doing better
than moving to Vista. Vista is the walking dead of the operating-system
world.