HP's 'End Run' Around Windows

Business Week ^ | September 5th | by Aaron Ricadela

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

The carefully crafted ecosystem of tech companies built around Microsoft's Windows operating system is showing signs of strain. Hewlett-Packard, a longtime Microsoft ally, has quietly assembled a group of engineers to develop software that would make Windows Vista easier to use, or bypass some of its more onerous features. A Skunk Works of engineers at the company is even angling to replace Windows with an HP-assembled operating system, sources say.

[mikrofon]

LOL ... I didn’t think anybody else ran that ;)

[Dogbert41]

Mostly because of MSNBC and Olbermann, I’m going back to Mac. That, and I how messed up wireless is using Microsoft.

[Dogbert41]

Oh, and I’m browsing with CHROME:)

[Conan the Librarian]

I still don’t see the problem with Vista. It works great for me.

It’s fast, easy to use and runs everything I want it to.

For the record, I am running a Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop with 2 1.8 gig duel core and 2 gig of memory.

Running equipment made for Vista does help!

[Redcitizen]

I’m burning chrome... ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome

[neb52]

“HP might just be stepping up the driver development in linux”

Which is badly needed. That and hopefully a slick OSX like Windows Manager. Just think how much more palatable Linux would be if it got the Apple treatment.

[neb52]

“Running equipment made for Vista does help!”

That is correct, but people are getting tired of having to upgrade every 1,2 or 3 years. Even Mac people normally go 5 years in between hardware upgrades. Businesses really hate upgraing that often, especially when current or even past workstations did everything they needed. Only reason to upgrade is due to MS coming out with a hog of new OS. The need for more horsepower is not application driven. The only time a new verison of OS needs to come out is when there becomes to many Service Packs to download for new installs or something other Earth shattering change in design.

[Conan the Librarian]

XP came out in 2001. Vista came out in 2006. That’s 5 years.

Time for a upgrade, or, stick with XP. (I like XP also. I have it on several of my systems. I also have a Linux box).

But, Vista, when run on a system designed to run Vista, works very fine.

Don’t use the word ‘Mac’ and ‘people’ in the same sentence. It seems dirty somehow.

[ShadowAce]

[NCjim]

It was/is a great OS which did amazingly well given IBM’s efforts to keep it from being successful.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I still don’t see the problem with Vista. It works great for me.

Yeah - I don't understand the beef with Vista, either.

They did some dumb things, like moving

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu

to

C:\programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu

And moving

C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Start Menu

to

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Which means that it takes maybe a day or so to figure out what's going on.

But once you get over a few glitches like that, it seems to work great for me.

You even get the choice of five or six different Look-n-Feel's to the desktop - Vista Aero, Vista, XP, Classic [Windows 2000], and I think maybe even Win98/Win95.

I went with just plain "Vista" - Aero was a little too snazzy for me, but it works just fine if I were to want to use it.

[KoRn]

"Be a man and build it yourself."

Best thing I've read here so far. I built my own PC from the ground up last year, and it has be the best, most reliable computer I've ever owned.

Just go to http://www.newegg.com , and be set free of premanufactured junk.

[webschooner]

I would not buy anything with Visduh on it, but I also would NOT buy another HP machine ever. I had a nice HP laptop, very well equipped. I didn’t buy extendeds, as that is not my habit. The mother board died after a year and a half, so I sold it for parts on ebay. Well, interestingly enough, way over 25% of that model that were for sale on ebay also were dead in the water — being sold for parts, just like mine.

No more HP laptops for me, ever ...

[fanfan]

Can this be added to my current HP with vista?

[TiberiusClaudius]

The Snipping Tool alone is worth the price of Vista!

UAC works fine.

My biggest complaint right now is that the start menu search feature sends me to IIS (Internet Information Services) when I type "services" when clearly I want it to find Services first. Big whoopie.

Speaking of UAC, I currently have a weird issue where the first time I invoke a third-party (zip utility) in one of my .NET applications, the DEP (Data Execution Protection) is invoked and generating an exception. Oddly, subsequent invokations to the DLL (same application instance) work just fine. Easy fix, so I taken the time to look into it.

[Dinsdale]

I still miss OS/2.

Then I stab myself in the groin with rusty knife and I'm reminded of the details.

I still miss netmare.

[mysterio]

Good. The more operating systems, the better. I was thinking of switching to mac next computer, but apple fanboys have once again totally turned me off on that idea. Go HP.

[zeugma]

Don’t forget MPE, which I had the unfortunate experience with administering :)

Don't you be talking bad about MPE around me. :-)

The HP-3000 systems I worked on were always rock solid. We had zero downtime in our shop for our hundreds of users and yet did full backups every night using Orbit's backup software on our turboImage databases. 

[zeugma]

I still miss netmare.

Is that like a dream about Netware?

[markman46]

os/2 is still around... getting a make over