Intel says 'no' to Windows Vista Windows Vista is not for Intel, it has been claimed. The chip giant will not be installing the new operating systems on its many thousands of desktop PCs. It has "no compelling case" to do so. So claims an insider cited by the New York Times yesterday. A company spokesman admitted the OS was not being rolled out across the …
That's really quite impressive, because if anyone has a commercial interest in seeing Vista succeed it should be Intel. What is Vista really, really good at, beyond a shadow of doubt or dispute? That's right - consuming hardware resources - which Intel sells!
It's quite reassuring to see that there are still people taking important decisions at Intel based on cost/effectiveness, not what will "look good" to the world at large.
I did spot this survey recently on Steam (Its collected automatically) if you scroll down far enough it will show you what OSes people are using for playing Steam games:
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
80precent using XP compared to 15percent using Vista.
Now if even the gamers who are the people most likely to like the Latest Thing TM are massively chosing XP over Vista then this really demonstrates that Vista is unliked.
I have a brand new laptop with dedicated graphics card sitting on my desk and after experimenting two days with Vista I formatted the drive and installed XP.
I am really thankful, that I have a Dell from its Business Line and all Drivers are available for XP...
I dare to say: No wonder noone wants to upgrade...
"Now if even the gamers who are the people most likely to like the Latest Thing TM are massively chosing XP over Vista then this really demonstrates that Vista is unliked."
In reality, what that means is that Vista is much harder to pirate, and gamers don't buy their operating systems.
One, you forgot the 2.6% who ran Vista 64bit. ;) That bumps the figures up to 17.76% Vista users.
But you also see in that survey that 30% of users had ATI cards. So what it also suggests is that ATI is twice as popular as Vista is.
I don't hear people slating ATI for their poor figures...
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We ain't gonna upgrade our 250,000 desktops either, no matter how much the MS support drones we have here continue to badger us to do so!!
I swear, they're like marketing drones now about Vista, we got rid of most of them just to get some peace.
Maybe in a few years. No-one likes change, least of all the muppet users who only want to run the version of Word they've always had to type a memo, no more.
Possibly at home. Corporations are much different story - software and drivers used by all employees on desktops to do their work have to be tested and verified to work with the new desktop OS. Some programs will require upgrades to run on the new OS, and these upgrades have to be tested too. These programs will also affect other programs that happen to share components or just interact with each other. Programs being upgraded might also interact with servers, like file servers (remember how Vista performs in this area?) or other corp. systems, and this requires testing, too. The cost of such an operation will easily exceed licensing cost of the OS, and this is the actual effort that matters. Migration to Linux is not going to be much more expensive than migration to Vista.
None of the companies I work for bought a job lot of XP to put on all their machines - it was implemented with upgrades only, either OEM with a new computer, or a fresh install if a machine had a major rehaul. There are still some machines I know of running 2000 - because they are fulfilling a specific task which has not changed in years, and the operating system is perfectly adequate for that task.
So saying 'we will not roll out Vista' is a bit of FUD, to be honest. Despite disliking Vista myself, I think it's unfair to assume that because everyone isn't instantly upgrading, it's flawed. Yes, it's a failure in that Microsoft should have made it more desirable and compelling, but no, businesses aren't actively ignoring it, to my knowledge.
On a consumer level though - yes, people are actively ignoring it. Even my girlfriend, who bought a laptop to use Word and IE exclusively, and doesn't have any technical skills or desire beyond that - has dumped the laptop on me, asking to have XP instead of the "slow annoying Vista thing".
s/usually/recently/g "...Service Pack 1, usually the point at which a version of Windows becomes sufficiently stable for serious big business roll-outs."
Damn kids - we never had this "wait for SP1" credo last century. Just because you rookies started in business IT support with Windows XP doesn't mean you can speak for what's 'usual' with Windows. Now get off my lawn!
I think some people are stretching things a bit here. Sure, a corporation isn't pursuing Vista, and perhaps that is a good thing if everything is running fine with no compelling need to upgrade. Seeing as how the parts of Intel that would be dealing with modeling and so on would probably be on heavier-duty workstations using more professional cards and driver sets (and perhaps even different operating systems), the old saying applies:
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Nice to have such a blanket comment on gamers Chris.
My pc came with Vista, bought the new pc last summer for Oblivion. Shortly after and I do mean shortly it was wiped and went to XP for a little while until the latest release of Fedora which runs just fine.
All my operating systems I user are legit, so no I don't pirate operating systems, there is no need.
Why spend money you don't have too? Vista has its perks, but if what you have is working just fine with no issues, why change that? A company should only upgrade when they have to, not because something new came out.
To those that hate Vista, I agree. Until you get 4 GB+ of memory. And you really have to tweak it to make it easy to use. Don't skimp on the computer and Vista will be fine.
But there again, most large corporates these days don't actually own their machines either, probably on a 24-36month refresh cycle like we are. With 15,000 machines in use it's not practical to update them to Vista (getting XP SP2 out of the door was difficult enough!).
However, from some point next year (once all the software we use has been tested as working on Vista) new machines will roll out with Vista on them.
Of course, I decided this time around I was going to reasonably max out the hardware so I have the Quad processor, 8G of RAM, the big Raptor hard dive for the OS, the terabyte green drive for data storage, and the big honking dual-PCI ATI graphics card. Not exactly your standard business machine.
Oh, yeah, and I have a second big Raptor drive on which I've installed XP because some of the games I like to play, okay most of the games I like to play, don't easily work well on Vista so dual booting was a good choice for me. When I come home and want to play I don't feel like combing the internet for installers, driver updates, fixes, and hacks to make the game run. I do enough of that at work. And all of the gamers I know have paid for their OSes and games, so it isn't the hackability of VISTA, it's the sucky support.
in Brazil, pirated Vista is already common (for hardware that can cope with it). The last machine I saw with pirated Vista had an activation crack. Of course it wasn't able to install any security updates... thereby perpetuating the easily infected botnet-suckers of the XP era. The fact the people install p2p software to pirate movies doesn't help, of course.
BTW I've seen a fair number of clunkers still in use here - even in businesses - the most pitiful had a Cyrix M2 333MHz / 64MB (miraculously it was not running pirated XP!).
Actually, it is easier to pirate Vista then the pirate XP.
That aside, Vista is not worth it unless you are only looking for DX10.x. And I for one am still play games using DX9 even though I have Vista and DX10 capable GPU.
There is a misconcept that Gamers = Pirates... if so, then who is buying enough games to keep game companies in the business? It must be all those good non-gaming people out there who wish to keep game companies in the business, right? If a game doesn't sale well, then the game developer should take a look at their games, and not simply take the easy path and say "it is due to piracy".
While I am at it, getting a noDVD/noActivation patch is not piracy if you have bought the bloody game. If it is then all those who jailbreaked their iPhones should do the time (while we're at, what about locking up those who lend books to others instead telling them buy their own.... even lending a DVD movie to family and friend is a lose of sale to the studio if you think about it!).
The enterprise is a-changin'.
Vista may be the planning and architectural tipping-point that forced each business to stop and reassess its long-term needs. The reassessment has repeatedly shown no demonstrable motivation in Vista's favor.
Businesses with a few thousand desktops and a few hundred servers must find a strongly-compelling business (read: cost/benefit) reason to make a wholesale O/S migration. Vista actually tipped the see-saw toward its predecessor; it made XP look a whole lot better. If XP goes away and Vista isn't a good alternative, larger enterprise IT managers are thrashing for options. They are, by all accounts, considering a return to the past.
In slow motion, architects and IT managers within the thousand-desktop enterprise are migrating back to mainframes (in the form of terminal and web applications). Vista is not necessary for thin clients running Citrix or browser-based software. (Imagine. The industry discovered another use for which Vista is not well-suited.)
The question is not whether business should ever migrate to Vista. The question is whether the night manager at BooBoo Burger should hire anyone who ever worked for Microsoft on the Vista project. I don't think I would. I don't have an important job like night manager at BooBoo Burger, though.
Just because something is crap it dosnt mean you have to buy it, or is it supposed to be the other way round, Im never sure with Microsoft now?
If only the morons realised, people want an operating system that works & not some fisher price activity centre that dosnt do what its supposed to & runs like a slug.
The Steam games are very difficult to pirate, as they are tied to single use product activation keys. It is possible to install them on more than one computer, but if you are connecting to the Steam servers for multi-player games, then you have to log on, and each activation key is registered against a single sign-on ID. It won't allow you to register a key against two accounts.
If you try to set up a LAN game with the same copy on two PC's, again they will tell you, and the second one won't start.
The only games I've had problems with are
1) DOS games. Vista x64, thus no 16 bit subsystem.
2) Oblivion in 2GB RAM. It's not enough under Vista and grinds to a halt after 10 minutes. That's rather annoying. 4GB ECC FTW.
Otherwise, I've had everything from Grim Fandango to Freedom Force working without an issue (well, Freedom Force is buggy, but it's buggy under XP too..)
Then again, in only the second real upset I've had with Vista it refused to load my user profile last night meaning I had to resort to safe mode and roll back prior to the last hotfix. The only real current niggle is the dropping of tape support in the backup app for Vista and Server 2008..
THey have no idea what will happen if they install Vista on on thier IBM laptops.
A year ago when I worked there, they found out that any laptop that had an intel wireless network card would not work with Cisco wireless access point. Dont ask me why. The fix was to get the drivers from Intel not IBM.
If you click on the update from IBM it would override the the new Intel drivers you just installed. SO you see it more than no benefit, they have no idea how it will behave. Also some of their custom software through fits on XP but worked in 2000.. That was do to bad coding. The soft would not run on 95/98 so the installer only worked if it saw w2k. Any other version of windows and it quit.
I made an observation yesterday. In a comment I likened the relationship between Microsoft and it's users as 'symbiotic', both existing for mutual benefit but at the expense of everyone else.
Suffice to say the moderators took exception and did not print it.
Vista has become the product to break this mutual benefit scenario. Even bought and paid for partners are eschewing Vista for XP.
Even Intel, the hardware company with the most to gain from Vista adoption, says it will have only a limited install base within the company. How many others will follow suit?
Does Microsoft eat it's own dog food? Do they use Vista internally?
Will this comment even be printed?
Guys, I'm planning to buy a new Dell but the machine I want won't come with XP unless I buy a seperate XP Pro licence and install that. Considering it will be a 4GB beastie used for home use, team fortress 2, iTunes, a bit of PotatoShop and office stuff is it worth spending money to go back to XP?
I don't really want Vista but if it's the only choice and I don't want support headaches in about 3 years should I just grin and bear it?
and before you start... no linux based answers for me please. Just XP vs Vista.
I left the MS camp long ago hence tux, but i have used Vista on friend's laptops that came with whichever OEM version it was.
Although I like to slate MS, it doesn't seem that bad... if only it didn't crawl at doing it.
New Toshiba laptop (so not a cheap piece of low spec rubbish), with an OEM OS, should perform at least as fast as its predecessor.
This was not the case. Its just another example of having to upgrade your hardware by a factor of 100 just to get the same speed.
And as for the 'improved security' line as some kind of justification, that should be taken for granted as i do on both linux and mac and they don't sacrifice performance.
Great name by the way.
I read on one of the pages of Microsoft's sprawling web property a while back that allegedly Microsoft's IT department (yup they have one, with a BOFH too no doubt) deploys the products internally before they are released and provides feedback to the development teams.
SO, this begs the question of how much load was placed on the OS when it was tested internally and what hardware was it run on?
I assuming that an MS staffer in an appropriate position can simply whip out a Green/Gold/Black Ameican Express card and get any hardware they desire even if it isn't released yet.
Or more likely, hardware vendors are falling over themselves to give hardware to MS to test for free so that they can stick the certified sticker on it.
Bill G with a halo because he's spending his gigantic pile of cash on worthwhile stuff, good on him
(did think about a Hilton gag related to hardware and above mentioned card but I'll leave that to your imagination)
I recently switched to Vista x64 Enterprise (courtesy of work) from XP Pro, my primary driver was the additional RAM I could use for VMware, I now have 8GB and it's all hunky dory. There was no way I was going to try the mess that is XP x64.
However, I do like to play the occasional game and a lot of my old titles simply won't work (the Rockstar and id packs from Steam comes to mind) and I've had other little issues, like span mode on my nvidia 7950GX2 ceasing to work and my X-FI sound card giving me shit when trying to use VoIP.
I find on the whole though that it's a nice upgrade from XP, the new driver and security model is finally a step in the right direction and the networking center is great.
But saying that, I didn't have to pay for it and considering that Vista Ultimate is nearly 300 quid retail (the OEM one is tied to the mobo, which I change quite frequently), I'm not sure I'd have upgraded if it was on my own tab.
"gamers don't buy their operating systems"
Please don't talk bollocks. I'm typing this on a machine with a fully legit copy of XP Pro, which is used mainly for gaming. Most serious PC gamers build their own high spec machines, which are not cheap. These are the kind of people who can afford (and thus do pay for) the OS. It's actually one of the cheaper components of the build.
The reason I don't want Vista is simple - I don't need it. The only game I have which can use DX10 is Crysis, and having seen it running under DX10, I can't see enough of a difference to make it worth buying a new OS for (especially not at the ridiculously inflated price of Vista in the UK).
To the subject of the article :
My (very large) employers use XP. They have no intention of upgrading to Vista unless there is a damn good business benefit to it. There isn't, so they'll probably keep XP for a very long time indeed.
I was recently required to use a client's system with Fista on it. It was a beefy machine with 4GB and no slacker. But Fista made it a slug.
I installed VMWare and used an XP Pro VM instance within it. My development environment and database worked fine. My network and FTP performance was superior inside the VMWare XP instance, compared to the same data transfer within Fista (on which the VM was running ... odd...).
In some cases, the Remote Desktop connections that were unstable and unworkable within Fista were rock-solid and highly responsive within the XP instance inside the VM running on Fista. Everything worked fine in my VMWare instances. I actually had more than one VM running at any given time and was fine.
Try that. I have also used VPC (Microsoft's free virtual platform) doing the same thing and the XP VPCs worked better than the native Fista. This is even more unusual since those XP virtual machines would most certainly be using far less memory and only indirect access to devices. Yet, even in this context, XP runs faster (perceptually, of course, I have no metrics) than running the same applications an utilities inside Fista.
Then again, if you are looking for simplicity, buy the XP (you'll need it for the VMWare anyway) and upgrade from Fista to XP Pro.
Somebody ask Bill why folks who want to work inside his O/S's have to resort to contortions and machinations just to do so.
I'm sure there are thousands, if not millions of people using iffy 'Volume license' copies of XP.
However IMHO the low uptake of Vista has nothing to do with piratability.
Case in point: No doubt plenty of people (including XP pirates arrrrrrr) have since bought new PC's/hardware with legally licensed OEM Vista included... and swiftly wiped their licensed Vista off in favour of a XP install, some of these will be legit, others won't. So what?
If Vista was anywhere near as popular at launch as XP, these nice legal OEM installs would all still be there. But they're not. So: A significant number of people prefer Pirated copies of XP to legal copies of Vista, while others prefer legal copies of XP to legal copies of Vista.
Do you see the pattern?
IMHO, Vista simply fails because the user experience is worse than XP. XP works reasonably well with games, apps etc., Vista often don't. But it looks good.
Mines the warm and comfy old coat, next to the expensive looking one with leaky stitching and a zip that constantly sticks.
"In reality, what that means is that Vista is much harder to pirate..."
*snerk*
Bwah hah hah hah hah!
"...and gamers don't buy their operating systems."
Nice assertion. Care to back that with facts?
No? Didn't think so.
I expect that we gamers probably buy our operating systems in approximately the same proportions as you humans.
BTW, Microsoft has no reason to improve the security of Vista regarding its theft. Every system that is running a Microsoft OS isn't running something else. (I'll allow exceptions for dual booting and VM, though the dual boot argument is splitting hairs.) Microsoft would like nothing more than for people to steal Vista RATHER THAN running *nix or buying a Mac. Even if they don't make money directly, it increases their market penetration.
JFTR I have no figures to back that up, just hearsay and speculation.
Why do all you nooblets slate vista ? , i can remember the same cries from people when upgrading from windows 3.11 to windows 95.
Vista is a far better o/s than what xp is, but a little more hungry on ram.
Never base your true experience with vista with a dodgy hacked copy as they all run slow as hell.
Spend £60 and get yourself a genuine copy and see if you still have the biased view on it. And do a little digging around and you will see that vista sp1 runs faster than xp sp3.
Chris,
The 32bit version of XP (*any* version of VP) is only going to reliably handle the first 3Gb of RAM.
Unless you dedicate 1Gb to VRam in the BIOS, or make use of it as a RamDrive, XP can't see/use the memory addressing space above 3Gb.
(It's a limitation of all 32bit software, not just XP.)
If you get a 64bit version of XP, or of Vista, then the limit is much higher (64Gb, IIRC).
Between XP & Vista, go with XP - the headaches you encounter won't be NEARLY as mind-numbingly-stupid.
Sure, MS claims they're stopping XP sales, but *support* for XP will be another decade.
Considering what software writers aim for, programs that will run on XP will continue to be made for at least another decade.
And, last but not least, MS has claimed that they'll be releasing "Windows 7" as early as Q4 2009.
If, by some means of temporal displacement, they actually manage to DO that, Vista gets cut off at the knees before it ever gets a chance to start.
Even if MS is delayed a year or two (in getting Win7 out the door), all the business' & software writers will be "waiting for Windows 7" in order to determine what they may need to change in order to use THAT (instead of Vista).
Either way, Vista's a dead horse.
So go with XP and save yourself from tearing your hair out in frustration. =)
As for Intel not wanting to upgrade to Vista, they're not alone.
When the company you work for has over 100K computer systems located around the globe, there is one thing you absolutely DO NOT DO, and that's fail to test, test, & re-test EVERYTHING about a new OS before deploying it to your employees.
Everything has to run together like a well-oiled machine.
The payroll system has to mesh gears with the HR vacation/sick time system, which has to mesh with the Health Care systems, which meshes with the Accounting systems, whiich meshes with the Research & Development systems, which meshes with the...
All it takes is ONE of those to come to a screeching hault, and ALL of them suddenly do.
If you think for one second that any business with a brain in their head is going to entrust their entire livelihood to an OS that hasn't had the bugs worked out, stomped flat, burned out, patched over, & made as stable as humanly possible, then you're delusional.
You test it extensively on a test server(s), making sure everything works perfectly, and IF, *IF*, everything runs without a hitch six months from now, THEN you think about transitioning to the new OS.
But, as anyone who's ever done such a transition knows, it NEVER goes smoothly, the new OS *never* works right with everything, and there's literally THOUSANDS of "man hours" spent trying to track down the bugs, much less getting them fixed.
So Intel doesn't see the wisdom in upgrading to Vista?
Neither does anyone with a brain.
=)
Yes Vista is a resource hog, yes vista needs a "decent spec" but so what? get over yourself.
I have a P4 3.0ghz, 1GB of ram and piss poor graphics card yet i still run Vista because despite what i am told to belive by all the super cool techy people, who tell me you need 4GB of ram and a quad core processor, Vista does a job for me which i am happy with and to be honest despite its resource hunger it is a lot better then XP IMO.
No i don't play games on my PC thanks to my Wii and Xbox 360 but i do everything else without any issues.
Mac OSX fanboys can go look at their apple for longer if they like although lets be honest with the 25% premium you have paid for that shiny apple, you could have bought a better processor and twice the ram.
As for those who love their linux distro's, excellent! good for you, i don't need to tell you how much better you are then me because you use open source software.
Whilst the business case for upgrading to Vista may not be there, i remember it wasn't there when XP came out and it took maybe 3 years before all of our machines were "migrated" although none were really migrated as much as dumped when new ones came in with XP OEM.
XP before SP1 was crap and SP2 certainly made it the OS it is today so is it any surprise given microsoft's obvious business case to release a new OS every few years, ($$$$) that they end up releasing an OS that isn't excactly "finished" along with the fact that the hardware manufacturers have to spend a few years making drivers etc.
Now bring on the flame throwers!!
Thanks
Matt
It puzzles me to read so many people saying how 'slow' Vista is, in their opinion. My own experience is completely the opposite. I upgraded a (then 2 year old) Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook right after Vista was released to the public, back in Feb 07. Went from XP Pro to Vista Business and the system was way faster, both at booting and loading & running apps and far more stable with no systme lockups or crashes and BSODs, under Vista than it had been under XP Pro. The system felt like a new system after the change over! And this was despite Dell's website saying that that particular model wasn't 'Vista Ready'!!!!
BUT then I'm not a gamer, just an IT support bod for several NGO's, providing support services to 'regular' users, most of whom don't waste hours of their time playing pointless games.
I happen to be based in a country where the piracy of Windows OS's is rampant and almost institutionalised, and where the OS of choice for that is XP. Trying to 'fight' that is an uphill struggle that involves education as much as enforcement and isn't something that is going to change overnight. I don't see Vista being pirated here anywhere near as much as XP is and that I think is down to it's stricter activation as much as it is down to it's perceived inadequacies.
Personally I like Vista and would recommend it to anyone buying a new system today. Upgrading old hardware is another story. I would only recomend that if someone's system was purchased within the last 2yrs, from now, within 1yr prior to Vista's original launch.
Of course businesses are not going to rush out and buy a new OS as soon as it appears, they have far more to consider in the cost/benefit equation than just the fact that it's new so we've got to have it! If Microsoft have failed with Vista, then it's because of it's rediculous pricing, especially in the UK, but elsewhere also. They have over priced it for what it is, and don't seem to understand that the current pricing just makes them look greedy and actually helps to give both Vista and MS itself a bad name.
JRP.
And don't forget some people say there is a recession on.
If I were CIO of a large business, I might think twice about investing in time and effort to upgrade the IT infrastructure this year. No doubt a shed load of old PCs would have to be replaced at the same time. Why spend the CAPEX if we could continue to sweat the old systems for a while?
If the ROI is marginal, then that will be one of the first projects to be axed.
The flip side of it is that in about 18 months time the IT budgets will get restored. Just in time for Windows 7 to be considered as the target...
Steve, Vista does not come "free" via software assurance. It has already been paid in the assurance fees. The only people that are getting Vista "free" are the pirates, everybody else is paying for it, either by way of "subscription" program, buying the box or the price being added to the HW quote.
The very measurement of the degree of the success of any paid-for software is how much it is being pirated. And even pirates are rejecting Vista. Go figure.
"All you need to pirate XP is a XP Pro and a valid VLK. How much easier do you want?"
Ummm... How about a bootable disk which lets you click once, go for a beer, and come back to a fully installed machine? For both XP and Vista, that's how easy it is nowadays - even if you have a legit licence, the 'arrrrrrrr' media are easier to use since you don't need to type in the key, click through the EULA, etc.
Gave Vista a trial, hated it. We still have XP on less than 20% of our machines ('just in case') but have Ubuntu Linux on the rest. We're finding that it runs lightning fast even on older PCs that were a bit sluggish with XP.
The result is that some proposed hardware updates aren't necessary after all - which is nice - and when XP is no longer viable we'll probably move away from Microsoft totally.
I never thought *that* would happen.
Over cooked Pasta. A stodgy gooey mess. Over cooked Vista. Installed on a minimum spec PC, purchased for pennies, that then can't cope with the Anti this that and the other requirements as well as running the operating system. God forbid you should want to word process or work a spreadsheet. You got it, another stodgy gooey mess.
Who in their right mind spends nearly £200 on Vista Ultimate? why is there a cut down version and a premium version anyway?
Apple sells their OS for under £100 and there's one edition of the OS with all the features.
In fact, Apple's software on the whole is pretty well priced. £329 for Logic Studio (competitors music software is £500-600). Final Cut Pro took the video editing market by storm as well.
So to me the problem is simple, Microsoft charges too much.
£400 for an Office suite? simply stupid!
Intel took a commercial decision that Vista offered no benefit worth spending acres of cash on.This is not just for an OS, MS will probably give them that, but a whole bunch of porting costs.
Truth is most business organisations don't need Windows for anything except specific applications. Linux will cater for most of their needs and give added life to ageing hardware. Businesses are about bottom line not 'keeping up with Jones'.
The 'home market' is a completely different animal with the majority of the population clueless about computing. They just use the box whatever is on it. I've yet to figure out who these 'Gamers' are and why they need two grands worth of hardware. A third of that will probably achieve 99% of the performance so one assumes they have more money than sense.
There is no point whatever in downgrading to Vista, unless your company derives the majority of its income from very long-term investment in MSFT or CNET (though that last might have been a challenge when it went from $60 to $0.85... now remember: who's been MSFT's biggest fan and how have they been rewarded?)
Vista has been the best thing that ever happened to my business (which revolves around transforming IT to support business processes rather than the usual other way round). I have hard data from several clients showing that per-user costs for Vista for the first year are over ten times the costs for Mac OS X, and six to eight times those for Linux in an office environment. (One of these companies also says that Mac people are 74% more productive than Windows usees.) People buy PCs preloaded with Vista, find it sucks with a perfect vacuum, can't always get XP upgrades supported (less available in Asia than North America), and get VERY hot under the collar. XP was the third and last great OS that MSFT ever put out (the first two being NT 3.51 and W2K), and not being able to get it is starting to give the competition significant traction. I've got systems here running XP, Vista, three Linuxes and an iMac; the latter is what I spend 90% of my own time on. It's even a much better XP machine than my year-old Acer laptop (which I otherwise think is a fine machine).
Between Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft have a lot of urgent damage control to deal with, and throwing chairs and spreading FUD are proven counterproductive methods of dealing with same. I've got a soft spot in my heart for MS; they were good for my career for 25 years... but to tie yourself to the boiler aboard Titanic requires a soft spot in the head, and I hope I don't have any of those in stock. Maybe MSFT have a SKU for it...
What's in a name (albeit a deliberately obtuse typo)... bulky, inefficient, top heavy, cumbersome, underpowered, unwieldy, unstable and insecure. But HEYYYYYY... look at all those pretty bits you can get to go with it.
My heartfelt congratulations to Intel for having the intelligence, foresight and balls to tell UncleBill to Zark Off! Happy retirement UncleBill.
We'll MISS you.... NOT.
There is no justifiable reason to upgrade. Word doesnt run any faster, my virus scanner isnt out of date, my applications still run fast. Microsoft fail to be able to give us marketing junk of WHY we should upgrade. By upgrading you have to buy new hardware, whats the point of such a big cost in the credit crunch and the hours wasted downloading and installing hundreds of drivers. My PC with PCIe 1.x runs PCIe 2.x cards no problem so for me a cheap upgrade is all I need for latest games. MS can't give me a reason to change so therefore I wont. However, I will be looking into Windows 2008 which is where the real fun seems to be.
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