Surface Computing, as Microsoft is showing it is a gimick, to give the impression that Microsoft in innovating. You'd never see Apple (or many other companies) announce a product that is so impractical...

"On hardware, 600,000 devices have been certified in the six months since launch, now making Windows Vista compatible with 2.1 million devices."

And the punishment is yet not enough. We had deployed a fantastic OS2, and it was killed by a lack of driver support. And Microsoft was laughing all the way to the bank.

Later, adopting FOSS was in principle only hindered by games (due to lack of adoptation), MSOffice (due to widespread adoptation of Windows) and lack of drivers which hindered exactly that further adoptation by the general public to make game developers develop for FOSS and prevented other de-facto standards then MSOffice.

Now, finally, they get to taste of their own poison: 2.1 million devices is an insane number of existing devices. And this number is a result only of Microsoft encouraging this number, since any device not support by FOSS is a potential client for them.

Now this cancer has grown beyond reason and even the behemoth Microsoft starts to choke on its own medicine against FOSS.

Personally, I think they'd deserve to suffocate on it. Would be just fair, also w.r.t. the millions out there who have suffered from software inferior to the better solution (think OS2) for the last 10+ years.

I think the single lesson for Microsoft here is that one OS is not the solution to all challenges. Microsoft needs to re-think the concept of one platform for all.

After all, Microsoft already has server and mobile "platforms". Even though these share a common code base (sort of), the implementations are significantly different in target and final content.

It is my opinion that MS needs to do more, rather than less, fragmentation of the OS to better address the areas it now encompasses.

This would provide many benefits to both the user community and Microsoft. For one, each target release could operate asynchronously from the others, decoupling problems specific to one platform from others that do not share the code another, while making the component inventory more complex, it would allow for each target platform to incorporate only the components it really needs. And, by diversifying the product base, Microsoft could better define specific market segments, providing sales focus on a market by market basis rather than trying to cover all at once.

Samples of places MS could segment: business desktop systems (a thin client implementation that would focus around served applications); business application servers (remove things like the web browser and all the .NET junk to allow the system to focus on just delivering applications to thin clients); business process servers (VM machines that focus solely on providing back-end services like SQL Server or IIS); entertainment systems (a "locked down" OS that does the things that video and audio need); home storage servers (a locked-down disk farm for home use that ties into other home systems using a limited number of secure protocols); home workstations (browser based systems that can execute fully certified applications downloaded from the internet or use SaaS delivered applications, with limited peripheral capability - but able to share, via an enhanced browser interface, entertainment from the home entertainment server); smart phones (remove 70% of the stupid applications and focus strictly on phone, SMS, email, an intelligent browser and a clean efficient multimedia application); "not-so-smart" phones (same as above, but remove the multimedia stuff)...you get the picture.

Yes, this promotes even more lock-in to a Microsoft world. But, if we must live under the giant's foot, let us live in peace, not in fear. By removing a lot of the "junk" in Windows and focusing on locking the remaining applications against exploitation, the business and home communities would be better served and might just start trusting MS again.

Cost, you say? Complexity? We think nothing of the fact that our homes have multiple appliances that do a limited number of functions well (heaters, air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, televisions, telephones, lights, toilets, sinks, washers...). Today most entertainment is consumed from a cluster of devices wired together - look at the uptake of HDMI to eliminate the cabling nightmare that faces most consumer entertainment systems. Providing information resources along the same model, with guaranteed compatibility (because the interfaces would be simplified and standardized - albeit MS standardized) would surely be better than what we have today.

And the same holds true for the business environment: think of how much help(less) desk this would eliminate. You need a new application? Throw up a new piece of hardware with the correct platform already installed and locked down, add the software and go.

I'm not a MS fan boy: I personally detest what they've become. But they've painted themselves into a really bad corner, and this may be the only way out.

"We came out with compatibility around applications and devices in better shape than when launched with [Windows] XP... there's more device complexity in the market place then as now."

If this is Microsoft's idea of English remind me not to use their grammar checker.

The key word here is *certified* - I expect there are millions of unofficial or XP drivers that work fine.

There are already many versions of windows - the last thing we need is more nerfed versions - the beauty of Windows is its flexibility.

Vista isn't perfect, but I think part of the problem is that XP is such a tough act to follow.

What MS needs (and will never have) is a properly designed OS with components decoupled from each other, rather than "integrated".

This would surely aid development, stability and bug fixing. And maybe it would allow them to create one damned driver model and stick to it! Didn't they promise that the XP model would be used in perpetuity?

Why did they need yet another driver model? Was it just to add DRM? Was the old model badly broken? (i.e. Did they cock up when writing it?) Or is it because the model is so poorly decoupled from the rest of the OS that they had to change it when the rest of the OS changed?

If they'd simply imported a properly-designed model from XP, they wouldn't have had to update any drivers, except maybe video, for the new iterface, and re-certifying all the old hardware would have been a mere formality.

I accidentally installed a checked (==self-sanity checking) build of Windows the other day; I couldn't even get to Internet Exploder without a blue screen. Microsoft's release strategy is simple: the developers just remove the sanity-checking code before they ship insane software.

A perfect motto for Microsoft.

As long as it looks like it works on the surface...

*I* think it's the perfect description: Microsoft sold XP and now sells Vista to a great extent on how pretty the interface looks.

Hey Bret,

I agree that this should be M$'s last monolithic OS, but can they be trusted to segment off the various usage catergories, for any reason other than to build new eco systems?

I, as I'm sure most of the Tech Addicts/Early Addopters that view this site genuinely use my Vista PC for a number of functions. Primarily it's a games machine, I also use it as a Media Centre, a workstation when working from home, a file server for the other machines in my home, and a web server so I can access my stuff when I'm on the road. Will the effective annexing of these usages not mean I will be forced into buying yet more MS software and devices whilst giving away most of the freedoms that I enjoy with my PC?

For example Vista Media Centre is a great program, loads better than anything else I've come across for this purpose, but no Divx (.avi, Xvid etc call it what you like) support out of the box, so my collection of movies I have *ahem* aquired over the years is no longer supported. No problem you say, download the codec, but correct me if I'm wrong, I would be locked into a MS Home Cinema "Platform" and would either have to convert to their proprietry file formats or lose my media.

No doubt this would also apply to any MS Home automation products, In Car platforms and whatever Windows Mobiles becomes.

Standardisation is a good thing, as this brings interopability, and your right about the tangle of wires behind my TV, but this isn't solved any by the fact that the tangle behind my PC, are nearly all USB's. I say leave MS to do what they do best and leave the innovation and specialisation to Linux's and Nokia's of this world.

Doesn't that show clearly the dampening effect of Microsoft's monopoly bundling?

Devices outnumber apps by 1000:1

And look at the piss poor number of Vista certified apps.

The complexity has been built in from the start of Dos, through shoddy workmanship, you make a fundamental error at the real mode level, and from then on, every time you want to exploit a related feature, you have to program your way around the cock-up. By the time you get to Vista, you have turned a one line cock-up, into 30,000 lines of code. Vista has been so long in the making, and is far from ready yet, because M$ themselves, cannot work out what is going on, let alone anyone else. I believe that the boss of M$ stated that Vista would probably be the last "completely new" Windows, which sort of illustrates my point, it is too difficult, even with thousands of developers at hand.

The driver issue is a bit odd, why should every piece of hardware have a unique driver? There are only so many features that a piece of hardware can have.

Brett's idea is a good one, but I just do not think that M$ is capable of doing this. I have heard that there are other systems in the pipeline that do work in the way that he suggests; hopefully the initial release is not too far around the corner.

Ok, so how does 26th July 2007 - 25th October 2001 equal seven years?

Apple is the KING of OS Updates, ALL usually buggy and every iteration of a new version of OS X CUTS OFF half of the Applications that worked on previous versions! All to make Apple tiny legion of idiot fanatics to spend MORE money each version $149. plus plus plus plus plus .....

After 10 years of Macs mostly and some Windows boxes occationally, I needed to replace my aging 1GHz TiBook ... I bought an HP 15.4" DV6000 series notebook with Windows Vista Premium instead of another over-priced Mac (Book Pro) that undoubtedly would be as buggy as my TiBook was. The HP is twice the elegant machine a MacBook Pro is and only cost 2/5ths the price. It has a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and came with 2GB of RAM, and everything and more that a top of the line MacBook Pro has for $3000!

Vista? Vista makes OS X look and act like OS 9. Ancient and simpleton, while Vista is elegant and fast. Oh, I'll still occationally use my TiBook, but with the HP I ain't looking back ... buh bye over-priced Apple. See ya Spinning Beach Ball of Wait n Wait n Wait n Wait .......

Market Segmentation <> More Vista Versions... doing so would be insane and unworkable.

Instead, they should do what any *sane* software manufacturer would do and make the damn thing properly modular. This would greatly improve their chances of ever releasing something that actuallt worked, would make producing targetted versions a doddle and, if done properly, each module of the operating system could be updated as required.

Users (including the more technical users that grace El Reg) need to get the MS mantra out of their head that an "Operating System" must be a nebulous mess of closely interweaved interdependent privately linked code modules. This mantra of stupidity is highlighted in the problem that installing many MS applications frequently changes the operating system at a fundamental level - it's *impossible* to produce a stable OS or any other software product if you don't have the first clue as to the state of its own configuration.

Here's just two examples of the crass stupidity that comes from just MS, other vendors are not perfect in this regard either:

* Installing MS office changes the software underpinning MS tablet edition (frequently hosing vendor support)

* Installing MS Internet Explorer (an *application*) fundamentally changes the operating system's user interface shell and a slew of underlying support libraries

With just these two examples, MS have already quadrupled the configurations that need to be supported (this is a simplistic figure, it doesn't take into account the 100's of configuration options available within MS Office, etc). When you take into account the installing MS Office also alters MS Internet Explorer then the situation just becomes laughable...

"His complaints follow an earlier decision by Dell - the industry's second largest PC manufacturer - to recommit to selling Windows XP on PCs following customer requests, reversing the earlier decision to ship Windows Vista."

In what way is Dell allowing its customers to have a choice of what operating system they use, worthy of complaint? Its just a reaction to the fact that when customers do have the choice, the majority are not choosing Vista.

Surely something like this should prompt Microsoft to go out and ask Dell WHY its customers aren't choosing Vista, so that they can address the issues people have. Not just ask them to stop offering the choice.

I generally enjoy reading the (usually) informed opinions of the Reg readership. However, this enjoyment is often blighted by the (often capitalised) ramblings of a mad man. Step forward, please, Mr Webster Phreaky.

What have Apple done to you? Why the need to turn everything into a rant about how awful their products are, or how they constantly lie to everyone? Frankly, it's getting tiresome. Why don't you just sod off back to /. or wherever it was you were dragged up from?

Richard

I suspect he was dragged up from Microsoft's marketing department

This is simple guys... Thou shalt not deploy into a production an environment any OS that is not Service Pack 1 plus 3 months and for which every application required or requested has been certified on since the service pack.

This is the reason so many shops STILL run on Windows 2000. Home users who only use the bundled applications are the test bed for new OS. Even then, the new OS should be optional to users from day 1, and not even the default option for a good 3-6 months.

We all forget that back in 2001, when XP rolled out, if you bought a PC in a store it came with BOTH OS installed, and when you turned it on, you picked one and it took 30 minutes to install it from the hidden partition then wiped out the other option so it could not be used. Even then, XP was just a face lift for 2000, and almost every App on 2000 worked on XP without changes.

What planet did you come from?

Go back.. they miss their idiot!

Seriously... that has to be the most "out of context" "off topic" comment i've seen yet!

Ths is about vista... not OS-X

Speaking of which... I'm preatty damn sure the so called bugs your refering too pale in comparsion... not to mention in numbers... to windows vista.

Come to think of it...every even numbered version of OS-X is better than the previous attempt by far... and as for half the applicatons? Just what applications are you talking about?

Surely you don't mean OS9.... thats like... how many years ago?

Is it just me or do people go blindy forth without a thought or care?

To Michael C:

- Windows 2000? Most of my friends who are not computer-literate are still using W98SE. None seem to be plagued by viruses or other hack attempts (perhaps W98 is too dumb to run the latest?), and are smart enough to recognize phishing attempts (though most prefer to keep their CC #'s off the internet anyway, so there's little risk). They can browse fine. Email works fine. Word 97 still works fine. They don't need anything else. If it ain't broke...

Apparently not.

"Surely something like this should prompt Microsoft to go out and ask Dell WHY its customers aren't choosing Vista, so that they can address the issues people have. Not just ask them to stop offering the choice."

Of course they don't actually FIX anything when they address the issues. As in politics, the proper way to deal with issues today is to get the spinmeisters out. Rather than fix problems, it's so much better to convince people that what they think is wrong. What they are getting is what they want, they just don't know it yet. That bug you found is a feature! Aren't you glad?

Microsoft has a long and discreditable track record of bad OS design. In DOS days, they had the (then amusing) mantra for new releases "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run", which in hindsight points up a totally irresponsible attitude toward both customers and the industry at large. Deliberately break the function of a widely-used, highly respected program? How childish!

Later, under Win3.<something> one read of Excel using private, undocumented trap doors into the OS because Windows memory management was so bad you couldn't get good performance with it. An intelligent, *responsible* company would have realized that this meant something was seriously wrong with their OS fundamentals.

And in an updated Win95, you suddently had the web browser become an extension of the OS. Of course, this vastly increased the size of "OS code" with obvious effects on reliability, security, and much else. This kind of integration, though it may lock your customers in ever more tightly, means that Windows has become an unmaintainable behemoth. I offer Vista as proof of concept. :)

At a more microscopic level, Windows APIs are famous for exceedingly long parameter lists. Anyone who has ever programmed anything serious recognizes this as a symptom of bad modularization of the guts of the system.

The end of result of decades of this kind of clowning around (and, yes, I chose that verb after some thought) is that Microsoft is simply unable to write a decent OS. The MS corporate culture lacks the expertise necessary for proper OS design. Or else the marketing wonks, MBA bean counters, spin doctors, and uninformed megalomaniac senior managers are in charge of technical design of MS OSes

Linux, I'm sorry to say, is probably a better OS in terms of internals, but is a failure from the other direction: no one person is in control of the user interface for applications, with the result that the learning curve for new Linux users is unpleasantly steep. (In saying that, maybe what I'm really saying is that I've already traversed the Windows learning curve and simply hate having to use my brain.)

Keith: I used to cling to Windows *95* OSR2 up until 2001. Reason? My Starcraft CD didn't like w2000, SoftICE barfed with it, and back then I had *tons* of stuff that still ran under DOS. And when MS originally touted out w2000, it was a "business only" OS, and it said there would NEVER be DirectX support for it. Then came Windows ME, and that was the crappiest windows ever to walk the face of the earth. Eventually w2000 got DirectX, but my replacement laptop came with XP, so I made the long jump.

Still, there is the matter that w2000 was actually more secure than w9x, but that I learned later, when I started monkeying around with the OS. Thing is, I had already chosen Linux as my main platform, and to this day it still is. Though I use XP for games ;)

Vista does not appeal to me, for the same reason win98 never appealed to me: win98 was actually win95+OSR2, just more buggy. (fat32, a "feature" of win98, was already there with win95!) Vista seems to be XP+SP2 with eye-candy, blatant OSX ripoffs *and* buggy. Why should I switch?

Isn't this the same company that demoed XP's BSOD during its product announcement?

Had 1 (one) issue with OS X updates, one app was not 10.4 ready when that version was released. Apart from that, no problems with updates and I don't even bother with the hyper-paranoid stuff (backup->install update->fix perms->etc).

With regards to notebook prices, did a little research on Apple and HP sites and found the following 'similar' models.

HP Compaq 6710b - £799+VAT

Base MacBookPro - ££1,105.53+VAT

Major Differences

Mac has 2.2GHz cpu compared to 2GHz in HP

Mac has 2Gb compared to HP's 1

Mac has 1440 x 900 compared to 1280 x 800

So the HP is hardly 40% the price of the Mac, although HP might allow deeper discounting than Apple (none)...

MS wants my employer to "upgrade" all our existing Windows servers to the latest version (Windows Server 2003? Whatever it may be).

The so-called upgrade process is painful, error-prone, and dangerous to business-critical data and applications. Why? Because Microsoft has not developed nor deployed a simple migration application, such that I can:

1. Build (re: buy from Dell) a new server with the latest Windows Server version pre-installed.

2. Run the migration app on the new and old servers, tell them to talk to each other, and migrate my applications, data, and settings from the old server to the new server.

In order for this to work, the new server would have to be named to match the old server and added to the domain; and, of course, the old server would have to be renamed (perhaps to $servername.old) nad probably need a new IP address, since the existing IP should be assigned to the new server.

I can do all this easily on Linux. Why can't Microsoft steal, er, "innovate" this too?

I realize this thread is about Vista, and can establish my lack of WinLove easily (My one Windows box dual-boots WinME and FreeBSD :-), but seriously, the person who stated that even numbered OS X versions are trouble-free needs to send me some of his luck.

10.4 on a new machine just flat refused to migrate my files and settings from the iMac it was replacing (first time that has happened to me, in 8+ upgrades over the years), and neither Office 98 nor Pagemaker 7.0 would work when I tried to manually move them from the old (10.3.9) machine. Yes, the new box is PPC, BTW. I won't be "upgrading" the old box any time soon, and not just because I'm too cheap. :-)

Dragging it back to Windows, the reason the WinME box is still WinME is that it came that way, and while it had a Win2K-ready sticker on it, and XP is mostly Win2K meets Teletubbies, it was not XP-ready without a BIOS "upgrade" that warned it might brick the machine.

Pioneers? They're the ones with arrows in their backs.

Too true, the problem with Windows is that they try to make the application fit the OS, not the other way around, which is why Windows smartphones are so difficult to use.

But somebody did it already.

Every time you make a photocopy, view a web page, listen to an MP3, play a DVD, record a TV program with a PVR, etc,etc.

You are probably using one or other flavour of *nix.

Most Manufacturers of MFPs and many other devices use NetBSD, Linux, or some other *nix variant, because they have the one thing that Windows really struggles to provide - flexibility.

A friend had the hard disk on his home theatre PC fail, I replaced the hard disk, and the recovery CDs installed - Linux, which was used to play DVDs, radio, TV etc. without booting Windows, then XP.

My external FTP server runs on a 50MB CD based linux distro.

My router uses NetBSD

The last time I saw a Windows at work OS on a copier was 1997.

*nix of one kind or another quietly sits on the following devices:

copiers, scanners, printers, routers, wifi APs, PDas, Mobile phones, telephone exchanges, HTPCs, PVRs, DVD players, Set-top boxes, MP3 players, etc, etc.

No device drivers and no vendor support.. I think Microsoft maybe trying the emulate the enviroment of those shtty alternatives. That means you Linux and mac.

@Webster Phreaky - 799 on a similar spec machine you are being ripped off I wouldn't pay over 400 for a mac spec laptop.

When will people learn?? Microsoft may not do things right sometimes and you all love to hate them, but they are here to stay and are the only company I would ever trust to run business critical applications and solutions.

SpitefulGOD Wrote:

> When will people learn?? Microsoft may not do things right sometimes and you

> all love to hate them, but they are here to stay and are the only company I

> would ever trust to run business critical applications and solutions.

Actually, in the industry I work in (telecoms) I'd say more business critical apps

get run under Solaris, with MS being used as the presentation layer. I've always found the notion of using MS machines as servers a little scarey... And if you consider your online presence business critical, you're likely not running MS (http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?tn=june_2007).

Anyway, this is digressing from the the thread somewhat... sorry ;)

-

Grant

You are Microsoft's Marketing Department, And I Claim My £5.

Seriously, I have had zero problems with OS X updates, endless problems with Windows updates, and total bloody nightmares every time Microsoft do a major new OS release.

You refer to spending $3000 on a MacBook Pro. Sure, the high-end 17" model costs $2799, but MacBook Pro's start at $1999. I've kitted my two boys out with Mac minis ($599 a throw) and very happy they are too. Historically, Apple kit was overpriced. It isn't overpriced any more, and when you factor in the lost productivity and grief that you get by going the Microsoft route, Apple are virtually giving the stuff away...

Vista fast and elegant? LOL^10 !

Dave

>What planet did you come from?

>Go back.. they miss their idiot!

Don't worry, I don't think he's ever owned a Mac. Just another MS fanboy troll.

Look at the number of updates that have caused major problems on XP lately. There was one for .NET which caused problems, another which caused a system service to use up all the CPU power.

I've had no problems on OSX at all.

I recently bought a Dell just BECAUSE it could be purchased with XP. Took me a day to remove the bloatware, but at least the OS was what I wanted.

"Microsoft may not do things right sometimes and you all love to hate them, but they are here to stay and are the only company I would ever trust to run business critical applications and solutions."

SpitefulGOD,

Microsoft will not appreciate you spilling the beans on their stealth operation. The idea surely expected from business is that MS supply the software which allows businesses to run their own applications and solutions and not just give MS a window on their operations so that they can run away with their innovations and solutions...... and then step into the breech to offer the solution that they needed/were planning.

I wonder how many have thought ...Wow, that is exactly what we were thinking of doing and good ole Microsoft have just beaten us to the punch.

And now rather than evangelising about assisting with providing for business needs, they've grown a bit brasher and are now providing the MS Vista in "Ve haf vays off making you do things our way" because of course there is apparently not a lot of customiseable control in Vista for why on earth would they want you to be able to fine tune the OS to suit your needs rather than Server theirs.

Monopoly positions which earn a pile can make abuse such an attraction as actions and judgements against such a position can be easily stalled and/or made extremely expensive to litigate against and thus further entrenching the monopoly abuse. And what matter a negative result... appeal it and start all over again... it is only money which others may struggle to earn whilst M$ keep rolling in.

Do Microsoft innovate, or have they always imitated/cloned other ideas? Are they a stealthy scouting unit to be plausibly denied, of IBM? A hand in glove, global computer conspiracy thing, with one taking the Desktops and the other, the Servers?

They certainly have only themselves praising themselves whilst everyone else complains of bugs and viruses and trojans and and and .....

You want to split off windows version (OSX) into MORE versions? The umpteen they have now isn't enough? That's what will save them alright, 50 more versions of incomplete operating system. Look, i don't give a fXXX about HOW an OS works, and I don't want to have to program anything. The calculus, physics, and chemistry that I had to learn to get a job was enough. It just needs to do what is says it is supposed to do people. PANTHER and G4 forever!

Actually my wife's still using Win98 on her desktop, its no joke, it just trundles along doing the stuff that she does. It really is a case of "If it aint broke, don't fix it". I can't help feeling that a lot of Vista is really about getting control over a user's computer, regulating content, metering use and so on. Understandable from a business model but it sucks having to pay extra so someone can police your computer use.

Personally, I think Microsoft is learning about the meaning of the term 'unmaintainability', or why we learned to design modular software years and years ago back when Bill & friends were still messing with hand-entered machine code. Its got to the state where I now describe Windows as 'idosyncratic' or 'oddball' -- OK for desktop use but not to be trusted for mission critical applications. Microsoft have always made things more complicated than they need to be, its fundamental to their business model, but they've now got to that point where they're never going to get anything to work -- provably, at least.

Most people avoid Vista as it is a relatively unexplored (by the populace at large) Operating System, and most have good reason to be weary - Microsoft have a very poor track record when it comes to releasing decent and fairly stable new Operating Systems.

It is not helped either by the large number of complaints about compatibility, which is surprising, given Microsoft were the users of 'Plug n Play'. Compatibility issues are what kill off a lot of operating systems (despite most people's insistance they are superior, better etc), as they usually lack the ability to use many of features people want, for example, development kits, games, professional software applications to name a few.

It's an even more surprising turn of events when you consider that XP had very good compatibility. They must of gone out of their way to screw that up / remove the neccessary coding for it. They haven't exactly built from the ground up either.

Wow, a whole new shiny interface that demands that you buy even more stuff to keep it running! Just what everyone really wanted! I know I'll be absolutely distracted from all the glaring security holes and exploits if I ever have the insanity to go out and buy this package.

Knowing anything, they are hoping that the operating system becomes widespread, making many of the older devices redundant, thus making it so you have to buy all these nice, new shiny expensive devices from companies that probably wanted (should I say 'influenced' with a transfer of a few digits into Bill's account) Vista to be incompatible with older technology in the first place!

I had my first Vista experience recently, which ate my client's accounting data. Since it was a nonprofit, this data is worth its weight in gold. In the process of the famous format and reload, the OS gave me almost no customization options. Furthermore, a load of Office 2007 minus certain features meant a full install and then later an uninstall of the undesired items. Windows has always had a severe set of limitations compared to *NIX and other systems when it comes to a user's control of the system environment and behavior.

As a technician, I fight Windows problems on the job, and enjoy coming home to my own system with the sane, easily controllable and configurable FreeBSD.

vista should be making a huge impact on microsoft's revenues, if it were truly successful. vista is selling for 2x to 3x the price point of xp. Seems like microsoft would be hooten and holleran alot more. I hear the next version of Apple's Mac OSX will not follow the pricing trend of microsoft, rather Apple will continue to sell OSX for the same price previous versions have sold for.

Cheers!