Delay hits Microsoft's WinHEC Software and hardware engineers eager for the low down on the Windows roadmap will have to wait a while next year after Microsoft switched its conference schedules. Microsoft is delaying its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) and pushing the event back from the traditional April or May spot to sometime in "the …
I really cant see any reasons for the delay other than they have something else planned to replace Vista, which is not a bad thing, the amount of customers we have that cant use Vista (yes, even now after almost a year) is growing, and we now simply inform customers either XP or please use another company as we have no intention of wasting time on it.
May be they already have a new OS in line next year, something thats smaller in size, sleeker, faster, more workable to replace Vista...umm.. wait.. why they need to go that distant ? I think they already have something that does that ... surely they must know they also sell Windows XP ?
I read yesterday that Dell will now start selling Ubuntu Server bundled machines, I always thought Linux will one day take over Windows, but the problem are always to do with support and drivers. and until then, no one (home users or new users) will really use it, but until theres a mass market, hardware manufactures wont waste time making/supporting any, its a never ending circle.
Hopefully with Dell's move, things will change.
...the simplest explanation is that conferences are CHEAPER in the Fall than Spring. The beancounters just got done with the costs of all the Spring launches this year and dictated that all future conferences will be held when the end-of-summer discounts hit the convention venues.
Hey, don't laugh. I've seen this happen more than once at FORTUNE 100 companies. Even the BOfH can't beat the BAfH (Bitch Accountant from Hades)!
"I always thought Linux will one day take over Windows, but the problem are always to do with support and drivers"
It's not as dire as it seems. I am working at a computer surplus where we recently started putting Ubuntu onto all machines sold (7.04 until recently, and now 7.10). (see note 1) In short, other than the odd wireless driver, everything seems to work out of the box.
Realistically the only weakness is wireless drivers. Most chips are supported, but unfortunately the ones that are not are pretty common. There IS a "Windows Wireless drivers" choice in the system menu, though, to let you pop in a Windows driver CD and install the driver via ndiswrapper. 7.04 blew up on a couple NetServers and the like (it could be gotten to work with a little command line hackery); 7.10 fixed this. I've thrown this onto a P2-350 through 3.0ghz P4 with hyperthreading; video, sound, and ethernet has worked straight almost every time (see note 2); it supports tons of printers, cameras, and scanners.. I'm shocked so much could be crammed onto one CD.
note 1: We were putting XP onto some systems, if they had the XP license sticker on them. However 1) We couldn't get anything in writing saying MS wouldn't hassle us for this eventually. As a second point, we were concerned about the licenses failing to validate even if we were legally in the right. 1.5) We aren't a used computer store, we're a surplus outlet, and so there's no tech support; despite that, people were breaking WinXP and then trying to get us to support them too much. It was even worse with blank machines; people would ask crap like why their Office CD wouldn't install Windows.... we don't get these questions anymore, I think these people simply don't realize Ubuntu isn't Windows 8-). 2) Everyone where we work now uses FreeBSD or Linux.. the remaining Win2K user found the games he played ran under Wine, and a bit faster at that, so switched recently. So, we wanted to spread the love. 3) TIME! It was taking over 1 hour a machine to run an unattended WinXP install (not including the bit where it stopped in the middle to ask for the license key.) Even when customized for a given model machine, it would not install stuff at times (for instance, wtih *12* sound drivers put on the CD for a given model machine, some would still install without sound support, requiring manual fixing after the fact...) The unattended Ubuntu install takes about 15 minutes on a slower machine, down to about 5 minutes on something quick like a 2.8-3.0ghz machine.
note 2: A few Dells had a BIOS that didn't set up the i865 video properly, causing Ubuntu to freak out. We found a WinXP install on these ALSO freaked out; I have no idea how the previous user was possibly using these machines without working video 8-).
...as in, "Hey, MS, you what would be neat? If you moved HEC back to Oct or Nov so we could use it to hype our products closer to the holiday season. Seriously, our customers have just about 0 long-term memory, except when it comes to showing off what the guy in the red suit 'gave' them", perhaps...?
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