So you think in just 13 months Vista will no longer be the default install on most PC systems shipped with Microsoft OS’s? Seriously? Based on what, other than your own personal dislike of it, and a few other random articles that don’t exceed typical complaints of new Microsoft operating systems? Have you forgotten how long it took Microsoft to build, beta test, and deliver Vista? Do you realize they are seeing record profits following their current plan? They’ve already equaled the installed base of the competitors in just one year, my prediction is 13 months from now they will have nearly doubled it. And why not, despite the doomsayers they are currently right on that track.
MicroSoft can use its current market position to ram quite a few sales through, but Vista’s lack of backwards compatibility, slow speed, and bugginess limit its overall potential and make it a bad candidate for MicroSoft to force onto businesses and consumers.
Frankly, the key complaints today being aired are from retail consumers...but the core Vista problems will run into an eventual corporate brickwall.
For one thing, Vista is too bulky for pocket devices. For another thing, corporations have a Trillion Dollars invested in legacy software that simply won’t run on Vista.
Throw in Vista’s bugginess and slower speed (e.g. Vista blew multi-tasking) and you’ve got yourself an inevitable market crash of that OS.
Right now, today, IBM can buy licensed copies of Windows XP, for instance, each with its own processor, and make XP available for sharing online (rent an OS or have full IBM compatibility available for anyone with xyz’s OS).
Now, IBM isn’t so mercenary as to shop that outside of their firm in such a way as to make a competing OS like Linux or Mac more IBM-compatible than Vista...but someone out there *could* and most likely *will* if MicroSoft pushes Vista for too long.
MicroSoft could be beaten by their own OS. Because XP offers superior functionality, a competitor could make XP available to users of an entirely different OS...and said competitor would comply with more of MicroSoft’s own design rules than would Vista...and would be faster...and would have fewer bugs...and would run the Trillion Dollars of legacy corporate proprietary, in-house software that makes businesses tick.
Just sayin’...