Posted on 04/11/2008 6:50:11 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The researchers damn Windows in current form, urge radical changes
Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.
In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.
"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve."
Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft -- frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating -- hit the "reset" button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.
"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."
Other analysts, including those at Gartner rival Forrester Research Inc., have highlighted the slow move toward Vista. Last month, Forrester said that by the end of 2007 only 6.3% of 50,000 enterprise computer users it surveyed were working with Vista. What gains Vista made during its first year, added Forrester, appeared to be at the expense of Windows 2000; Windows XP's share hardly budged.
The monolithic nature of Windows -- although Microsoft talks about Vista's modularity, Silver and MacDonald said it doesn't go nearly far enough -- not only makes it tough to deliver a worthwhile upgrade, but threatens Microsoft in the mid- and long-term.
Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced -- and low-powered -- hardware. And increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications," the two analysts said in their presentation. It takes too long for Microsoft to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the innovation arena, and in the future -- perhaps as soon as the next three years -- it's going to have trouble competing with Web applications and small, specialized devices.
"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.
"Windows as we know it must be replaced," they said in their presentation.
Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization -- specifically a hypervisor -- is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.
"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."
Backward compatibility with older applications should also be supported via virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not, as needed."
Silver and MacDonald also called on Microsoft to make it easier to move to newer versions of Windows, re-think how it licenses Windows and come up with a truly modular operating system that can grow or shrink as needed.
Microsoft has taken some new steps with Windows, although they don't necessarily match what the Gartner analysts recommended. For instance, the company recently granted Windows XP Home a reprieve from its June 30 OEM cut-off, saying it would let computer makers install the older, smaller operating system on ultra-cheap laptops through the middle of 2010.
It will also add a hypervisor to Windows -- albeit the server version -- in August, and there are signs that it will launch Windows 7, the follow-on to Vista, late next year rather than early 2010.
Having tried Office 2007, I would call it a jump backwards. It does nothing I desire better than 97 or 2003, and many things worse.
MS’s problem, as you said, is that most of us are happy with XP and Office 2003 at the latest. My computer already does everything I want it to, and does it well - so why do I need to upgrade to anything?
Furthermore, I would pay a premium to NOT upgrade. I’d cheerfully pay more for my next computer so I could have it running XP/2003 and save myself the hassle of trying to figure out where MS hid the ‘save as’ command!
Maybe the solution is for MS to act like Coca-cola, and offer Windows/Office Classic...a bundle with XP/Office 97. Since it is older software, they could sell it licensed for 5 machines. Their only problem is that almost no one would buy anything else!
That is what I have now. It is interesting, and free. I am still getting started with it.
The only reason I’m still running Windows on my home boxen is for gaming. A good Linux distro, Firefox, and OpenOffice (which I use under Windows anyway) would cover me otherwise.
I’m building new machines next month, and unfortunately, they’ll be running Vista 64-bit Home Premium...simply because I don’t trust Microsquish to not yank the carpet out from under XP at some point and leave me hanging a year down the road. But you can bet I’ll be stripping it down as much as possible and turning off every “feature” I can.
I don’t want an OS to make me coffee, fluff my pillows, and turn my impending new Core 2 Duo E8400 into a Pentium III. I want the OS to keep the computer running and get the hell out of my way while I run the apps I want, that’s it.
}:-)4
Ahhh, whatever OS you are using for the self-righteous holier than thou masturbator...
Actually, the only reason I don’t use OpenOffice is that it takes about 3 times as long to start up on my computer as MS Word. And since I use Word about 80% of the time I use Office, with PowerPoint making up most of the remainder, I’d be happy if OpenOffice would keep the core running in the background and let me bring up word processing quickly.
If I could find a good word processor that was compatible with Word format, I’d be content.
Thus far, that 1% includes the unavailability of Evolution in the Windows version. It comes with the Linux version for Ubuntu, but not for Windows.
I still use Office 2000 mainly for the integration of Outlook. If Evolution was integrated in OpenOffice, I'd jump immediately.
Such as? Seriously. What radical changes are they urging?
What is it that they think Microsoft needs to do in order to make Windows dramatically better.
The simple fact is that most people are at least satisfied if not happy with Windows XP.
As for wanting Windows on smaller devices, Microsoft has Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Windows Embedded. Windows Embedded is a slimed down version of Windows. CE and Mobile are made to run on different processor types, but still allow developers to use many of the same tools and libraries.
It's no surprise that most Windows users didn't run out and upgrade to Vista. That's pretty consistent with past releases as well. It's nothing new. If anything people are slower to move towards Vista simply because XP has been a good, solid, and reliable product. It's not perfect of course, but it was a big step up from past versions and really satisfied the needs of most users.
It's hard to get people to pay upgrade and migration costs when what they have suits their needs.
So these brilliant researchers are suggesting that Microsoft needs to make radical changes, but they didn't seem to have much in the way of suggestions for radical changes.
I'm guessing that they are pretty much as much at a loss as everyone else as to what Microsoft should do next with their PC OS.
Microsoft's problem is that their products have finally matured to the point where the to do list has shrunk to minor things, and they are having a hard time finding ways to add significant amounts of value to new versions.
That's good for consumers, but not good news for Microsoft's continued growth.
They are evolving their products in relatively minor ways as slightly different hardware becomes available, and as the market changes slightly.
However, unless there are radical changes in hardware, I have a hard time understanding what radical changes Microsoft is going to make that are going to add lots of value for consumers.
“ah, Windows. The OS for stupid people.”
I’m primarily a gamer and don’t consider myself stupid. Most of the games I play require Windows exclusively and won’t play on Linux or an emulator without a lot of tweaking. Why go through all that?
I’m not defending Windows, just pointing out that your statement is too general.
I’m still babystting a Windows 2000 server. It scares me to death. The older the version of Windows, the more likely you will be stung by a virus.
I’m building the kids a box with Vista 64-bit just to irritate them. I’ll dual-boot Ubuntu which will REALLY irritate them.
Making it secure would be a good start.
I’m going to take a look at it too....in a dual boot situation.
I'm already thinking about going back to Windows XP. It's slow on our home network, my Excell spreadsheet program won't work on it. Now I have to get Office 2007 and it's way toooo pricey!
I'm ticked!!
If I were Microsoft I would produce a legacy free operating system. For those who want legacy they can use XP and Vista
But M$ should start anew on a whole new base. Or steal from Unix (was it BSD) like Apple did. MS is going through some serious Apple envy here. Make a legacy free OS for at least some consumers. Give software and hardware manufacturers plenty of lead time to develop new products that can mesh with the new OS
Yeah, Vista is particularly lethargic on laptops...you gotta make sure you get AT LEAST 2 gig of RAM.
That said, there are a couple of places you can still get laptops with XP...Dell is one, though the selection is limited.
go to openoffice.org. It’s free.
I’ve been doing a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP for several months. Ubuntu 7.10 loads a lot slower than 7.04, but has better hardware integration so I suppose that’s the reason. But I still find myself in XP far more often because of applications I need to run, and don’t want to go the Windows shell thing in Ubuntu.
I hope to upgrade to another laptop sometime in the future. If before 2010 it’ll be XP. If after, I’ll decide whether to go strictly Linux. I have no intention of staying with Windows, even if the PC comes with it installed.
As soon as you started loading software, you'd end up loading tons of libraries and DLLs containing legacy code to support that software.
There are tools to build a slimmed down Windows distribution (at least for XP, not sure about Vista). You can remove a lot of the useless crap.
Then people load on crappy, bloated anti-virus software, and tons of mostly useless utilities that run in the background. After a rather short time, their computers become more and more sluggish, and uninstalling crappy software doesn't seem to fix the problem, and eventually they go and buy a new computer because the one they have is too slow.
Of course reloading the OS and just the software they need will make the computer they have work fine once again, which is one of the main reasons I think computer vendors quit providing software media with new computers. They don't want people to be able to restore their computers to usefulness. They want you to buy a new one.
One of Steve Jobs’ smartest decisions was to start fresh with OSX as an entirely new OS. A lot of users grumbled at the time but no longer. Is it possible for Microsoft to do the same?
I have: 1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm....DARN!
When I purchased a Dell laptop last last June, for my daughter, I was given the choice of XP or Vista. She chose XP. This time I wasn’t given a choice.
You make some very astute observations.
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