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.
That’s hot.
Maybe you can help me. My MOBO is DDR2 533. These will work, but at 533? Or must I match the ratings?
Back in the day, as long as the ram was faster than the motherboard required, it would work. But I don’t know if that’s still true.
That's not what I'm doing. I'm using it for mailing labels and such. Christmas lists, envelope labels, that type of thing. I send nothing via email from an office application (other than Outlook).
But I do want to import contact information when using Word, for the purposes outlined above. If Thunderbird integrated with OpenOffice, and had all the features of Outlook, I'd be interested.
Microsoft bloatware - using up all your RAM, so you don't have to...
;-)
There's always a trade off between security and usability.
If you want a perfectly secure system, don't connect it to the Internet and don't load any software from unknown sources.
Windows is reasonably secure. There will always be some bugs and security holes, and Microsoft works to find and plug such holes.
You're not going to get a lot more secure OS without making a number of sacrifices.
There are also relatively few security holes in Windows that can't be avoided by a little caution on the part of the user.
However, people would rather complain that Windows is to blame when they download and run some cool program that someone they have never heard of before emailed to them despite all the warnings that such programs might be harmful.
Gartner has to sell subscriptions to its service and makes these kinds of pronouncements every so often to get attention. They used to have the inside scoop, but the internet has put them on the road to obsolescence.
” There are also relatively few security holes in Windows that can’t be avoided by a little caution on the part of the user.
However, people would rather complain that Windows is to blame when they download and run some cool program that someone they have never heard of before emailed to them despite all the warnings that such programs might be harmful. “
DING DING DING...we have a winner.
Vista cost the school where I work a ton of money.
The computers we used worked great for internet research, office 2003 (documents and spreadsheets), learning games, and keyboarding teaching software. They had small hard drives, but anything we saved would go on our server. When Vista came out, the windows updates were so large that they filled our hard drives and made most of our computers un-usable.
Thanks...I know how to import/export which I do all the time. I should of been more spefic. I want to save emails in text or word format to read.
It should throttle down but where did you find a DDR2 533?
.
That’s the old way. Now they get an email from Aunt Susie that says “Chck this owt!!” and they click on the link. Or PayPal theatens to cancel their account. Pwn3d!
Open an email, then go to File\Save As\. The two options that would interest you in the Save As Type window would be Text Only or HTML.
Ebay, about 18 months ago.
I wouldn’t put Windows in the “simple to use” category.
And the FUD goes on....:
I have the feeling XP is going to be a nightmare. I actually can say that I've already seen it kill someone's computer! (a friend bought a new Compaq laptop with XP installed...yesterday, it booted with the fun phrase "Operating system not found")
FR, October 25, 2001
“Or PayPal theatens to cancel their account.”
I have to say that that one looked the most authentic of the phishing ones I’ve gotten. It was when you run your cursor over the link to click that you get this generic IP address rather than a worded URL that would be a dead giveaway to most. But some people still will click it.
That’s because you put Vista on an old machine. You can’t buy a hard drive that small anymore and it’s been several years since 20 gig was the norm.
Perhaps the drives were partioned with a small systems partition.
File, Save As will save the email as a text document.
You want to play games that companies only make to run on Windows, so you still have a choice it’s either Windows or no games.
It’s not the best choice, but is still is a choice.
And you can buy machines with no OS on them, so there’s always a choice, it’s just not choices you like.
but how can it be done “in bulk” to save all the emails all at once.
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