| Compatibility issues will loom larger in the future. Longhorn is unlikely to co-exist peaceably with existing software that sits atop the operating system. Mr. Enderle said that gaining enhanced security necessitates making a break with the complementary software of the past, which means "compatibility is going to suffer."
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As I understand it, Longhorn is a 64 bit OS. Apps will has to be ported to a 64 code or CPU needs 32bit co processor. Does intel have a 64bit CPU? AMD does and apps run ok on it.
I can. They've been having huge problems with the fact that most people see no particular reason to upgrade their software. Take a poll and see how many folks are still running MSOffice-97, as oposed to the newer XP version. Upgrades are a big deal for microsoft.
Check out the number of people on this thread who have not upgraded since Win98. MS considers this money lost.
I really hope they break backwards compatability even more than they did with XP (not to mention SP2). It will get more people to look at alternatives to the defective products marketed out of Redmond.
I think they'll see the upgrade revenue potential as more of a monetary incentive to them than the hit they may take from people switching. They are probably right in this, as I can't tell you how many times I've seen people yelling and screaming about how messed up windows is, and how it had thrashed itself and needs to be reloaded, along with the anti-virus/anti-spyware programs and everything else, yet they still go ahead and reload rather than consider anything else that might actually work better for them.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. I think many MS users are, by definition, insane, thus they'll continue on the treadmill because they are too frightened at the thought of stepping off.
This is a big deal if it's true. If in addition to buying BumSteer, you also have to upgrade Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and a hundred other things you've collected over the years, it could turn into a thousand-dollar software upgrade. That's a serious impediment to adoption. I can't believe Microsoft would shoot themselves that way.