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Mr. Cyberlord's bias is showing. Breathless dialog in what's supposed to be a technical article is the giveaway.
LMAO, wanna bet?
That is a very good thing for everybody but Microsoft.
Microsoft can still thrive, but not with their current approach.
Vista will have a lower adoption rate then XP. XP was lower then 2Ks. There have simply been no new killer apps that require OS upgrades.
As far as making an active effort to convert, IMO they both lose - whether Vista is "good" or not, there's no compelling reason to upgrade from XP, and Linux is too big of a pain to try to migrate to for marginal if any benefit (for typical home/small business networks, anyway), so why buy anything when there's XP now?
Eventually Vista will "win" by default because a copy will be included on every new PC. Unless someone figures out how to market a Linux distro as the default OS for a major PC manufacturer, MS will continue to control 90+% of the OS market without really having to try.
I finally broke down and paid $35 for tech help from Microsoft . . . via India, of course.
The techs were earnest.
The phone connection was good up until the connection with the tech. The tech's volume was quite low--even with my volume turned up high. That coupled with the fellow's typical Indian accent and particularly of machine gun rapid fire syllables with the key beginnings and endings of his words were very quick, short, choppy and even lower in volume in spite of my trying to get him repeatedly to modify such . . . all conspired to require him to repeat things 4-7 times to be understood. And that's with me being used to Indian accents.
My phone ran the battery out after 4 hours of frustration.
The 2nd tech, in spite of my insisting that the problem was not caused by spy-ware or viruses as I scan my system multiple times/day with several programs . . . insisted I do it yet again and call him back if the problem persisted.
And, when I replied to their emails, they would return with UNDELIVERABLE whether I hit reply button or copied and pasted their addy's accurately.
In the end, I got essentially no effective help from Microsoft; HOURS AND HOURS OF SHEER FRUSTRATION AND EXASPERATION; AND $35 poorer. Thankfully we were all patient and kindly tempered.
I ended up solving the problem myself by finally finding a SYSTEM RESTORE point which worked.
The 2nd tech asked for feedback re Microsoft. I gave him an earful.
Sorry, but Windows doesn't rule because it's a superior platform. It rules because there's one vendor, with powerful finances, that has OEM relationships with all major manufacturers. Even Apple is now delivering Macs with Windows pre-installed. Linux, with dozens of competing distros and weak OEM support will never match that. And I'm a Debian user, folks. The same thing that makes Linux such a success among developers and enthusiasts is the very thing that will prevent it from every being packaged as an OEM system...freedom to do whatever the hell you want with it, freedom to make as many versions as possible. Vendors don't want to support dozens of distros. They want one, single business to deal with, one single standard. Not multiple desktop managers, distros, or toolsets. Microsoft and Apple have the benefit of absolutely controlling their platforms. That's what OEM's want. When Red Hat decided to focus exclusively on the business server market, any hope of corporate supported mass market Linux died.
15 gigs? This is getting ridiculous.