The People Don’t Like It
This is becoming really embarrassing. The guys in the system software shop have to be depressed.
CNet has an article up: Microsoft extends Windows XP’s stay
Large PC manufacturers were slated to have to stop selling XP after January 31. However, they have successfully lobbied Microsoft to allow them to continue selling PCs with all flavors of Windows XP preloaded until June 30, a further five months. Microsoft also plans to keep XP on retail shelves longer and will allow computer makers in emerging markets to build machines with Windows XP Starter Edition until June 2010.
Manufacturers wouldn’t be asking if there wasn’t a demand for XP. I think the big increase in hardware and the spotty backward compatibility are causing problems for businesses and the demand for computers is already “soft.” From the manufacturers side they may be looking at people saying they will put off buying until they can replace all of their systems, rather than buying machines when the need arises. Sales reps depend on constant sales more than big sales to make their living. A possible future big sale doesn’t pay the mortgage, and in many organizations reduces your commission two ways: the unit price goes down on big sales, and the commission percentage decreases as the dollar value increases.
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Heh. Yeah, I loved Vista so much that when I needed a new laptop and could only find Vista on the models I was interested in, I bought a Macbook, then bought a bigger hard drive and an OEM copy of XP to dual-boot with. The hilarious thing is that Windows started out, way back in the day, as being far faster and more efficient on PC hardware than Unix, but MacOS, which is Unix, blows XP into the weeds on the exact same hardware. It’s more responsive, doesn’t fall over under a heavy load like XP, doesn’t suck up all the CPU time with froufrou (yeah it’s got its own froufrou but its own froufrou is *fast*)… granted the Intel GMA graphics chip is not the world’s fastest, but you can’t tell that under MacOS even when doing dual-screen with a 1600×1050 widescreen monitor, while you can *decidedly* tell that under XP. And Vista is even slower and more bloated? Feh.
Of course that’s not why business is avoiding Vista. They’re avoiding Vista because they can’t run Vista on much of their already-existing hardware and don’t have the budget to replace the non-Vista-compatible hardware just because Microsoft released a new OS. So it goes…
The legacy hardware is the big issue locally. The medium-sized businesses don’t want to change all of their network printers and upgrade what are basically data entry machines because of the demands of Microsoft.
Drivers is the real problem. Inkjets are basically rebuilt with every cartridge purchase, so they last until some plastic bit breaks. There are still people who are using tractor-fed dot-matrix printers for forms, and they don’t want to replace forms as well as printers.
OT, I notice that Apple’s latest iPhone s/w update has “bricked” a lot of iPhones, not only those which users had unlocked to other non-AT&T service providers (in violation of contract) but also some on which users had merely installed 3rd-party s/w.
It’s no skin off my back; I don’t own anything from Apple. But there certainly seems to be an epidemic these days of wealthy executives who haven’t a clue how to wield power to their own advantage. This one is stupid enough on Apple’s part that one could even imagine they had advice from Republicans…
Apple has always assumed that people will use their software and don’t do much compatibility checking. It’s the arrogance of power.
Yeah, the iPhone situation is pretty bad. Part of the problem is AT&T though. It’s AT&T who are scared of what could happen to their network if Apple allows installing 3rd party software onto the iPhone (you have to “unlock” the iPhone to a certain extent to install 3rd party software, otherwise you can only install software signed by Apple). It’s also AT&T who insisted that Apple not implement the DUN Bluetooth profile for fear that people would use the thing as a modem and overwhelm the craptacular Cingular EDGE network (which has one and only one advantage, which is that if you can get a GSM signal anywhere in America, you can get an EDGE connection). They pull the same stunt with many other cell phone providers too. The Big Four cell phone providers here in the U.S. (Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint) pretty much have a monopoly position where they impose things like “locked” phones and 2-year contracts upon the public and there’s nothing we can do about it because new providers can’t come into the field and run them out of business (two reasons — first, building a new network costs tens of billions of dollars, second, there just isn’t enough bandwidth available because the Big 4 and their roaming partners have bought it all up and in many cases just parked it, unused).
It’s a shame, really. I got to see the iPhone in action while I was standing around waiting for the cops to figure out that the bad guy had gotten away (six hours to search, re-search, and search again my apartment complex before they finally figured out that, doh, the dude was *gone*?!). Lady I was standing next to worked at Apple, and she and her husband were passing their iPhone back and forth getting updates from both people inside the complex who were locked in, and from the news services. That is one slick phone. But frankly, until a CDMA/EVDO version comes out on the Sprint network, ain’t a chance in hell I’m going to buy one. (Sprint right now has the fastest cellular broadband and the least restrictive policies for its use, though it’s not available everywhere that AT&T’s EDGE network is available).
I’ve tried to find good reviews on Vista and the best even CNet can say is that it’s stable enough for everyday use. Which is not a heck of a lot more than I can say about my toaster. It’s Millennium Edition all over again.
Proprietary systems always lead to problems in the end. I understand the need to recover R&D costs, but after a while more effort and energy is expended keeping them locked than improving them.
Apple has done some good things, and is certainly capable of doing more, but this is the sort of thing that makes early adopters nervous, and the “next big thing” from Apple may flop as a result. this is going to hit the forums and it won’t be forgotten.
Apple should release OSX for the masses and Microsoft should sell Office for Linux. They would be major products, but the corporate paranoia won’t let it happen.
I don’t have to worry about the iPhone because you can’t buy or use much of anything built in the 21st century here.
It isn’t very nice bringing up ME, Whig. I tried to get a client to dump it from his home machine and go back to Windows 98 a week after he installed it and started calling me. The worst thing it did, was after you fixed something it would automatically revert to the broken version.
What a disaster. Some things really are best forgotten.