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.
I have never met a user who was remotely interested in the workings of their computer. If they ask me what time it is, they don’t want me to tell them how to build a wristwatch.
Actually I’m a mainframe guy. I don’t do Tech Support. I retired from that a decade ago. And my users loved me and gave me good cigars when I left.
No, but by helping them learn what’s screwing up the computer and how not to do it can make your job far easier.
That’s like the doctor telling you how not to break your foot so it doesn’t happen again.
Congrats to you.
But telling people that they’re too dumb to own a computer is rather elitist and ignorant.
It’s people that don’t know computers that keep most IT people employed.
You don’t need to explain to them how it works, just what not to do to make it stop working.
By educating them a bit it makes your job allot easier.
“By educating them a bit it makes your job allot easier.”
LOL.
This is a very interesting discussion. It is timely for me as I have a new quad machine with vista sitting in a box waiting for me to unpack so that I can give my current machine to a software developer that needs to run XP. I also have my macbook pro sitting on my desk so that I can uninstall parallels in order to get boot camp to work properly. Being very new to the mac world, I don’t know how to best run IE which is required program for one of our aps. Two things I know for certain, macs are much more expensive than Windows equivalents and “allot” means to distribute.
But it can be accurate.
The irony is delicious. For years Microsoft has been telling people that Windows is so easy that you don't need to be a computer admin to run it.
Then when it gets filled with malware a bunch of dweebs will cry out, "You just need to properly admin your machine!"
Well, which is it?
The truth is, if you don't understand how a computer operates you are a danger to your own and other people's data.
This isn't elitist any more than saying that you need a minimum level of training to operate a motor vehicle.
It's not my fault that Microsoft has been lying about the requirements of it's products for years. And I'm not an elitist when I point out that you can't just go barreling down the highway flipping every switch and pushing every button.
Just like you don't need to be Mario Andretti to drive on the highway, you don't need to be a computer expert to use a computer. But you do need to know some basic principles no matter what the manufacturer of the software fraudulently tells you.
I absolutely agree that users need to be educated. I don't agree that it's my or any other IT person's job to teach them. How about Microsoft send every user a coupon for a computer training class?
“But telling people that they’re too dumb to own a computer is rather elitist and ignorant.”
But they really are too ignorant to have a computer. When a person calls me and asks “I am trying to run this program and it keeps asking me if I want to run it. What do I say?”, they are an idiot.
We had a Diversity newsletter that was posted every month. Everytime it was posted, people would call us “I got a vius alert”. We tried to tell the person who created the newsletter but he would always respond “I am the Head of Computer Security. I have “scan ned” (how he pronounced it) my computer. I do not have a virus”. He kept the template on a diskette. That’s just idiocy.
The VP of Finance never learned hoe to enter his password. If his machine rebooted, the Controller went to the executive suite and signed him in. The password was his child’s name. He asked for a laptop but waved it off when he found out he had to learn to “put it together”.
I could go on forever.
“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.
Why dual boot? Run it on a virtual machine.”
Not all apps like the virtual machine. Best to let them run natively whenever possible.
“which is required program for one of our aps.”
Someone needs to be killed for that. Demanding a specific browser is a ticket to trouble.
“Someone needs to be killed for that.”
Good luck killin IBM.
Many have tried over the years, sometimes I wish they would have succeeded.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
I don’t know about photo editing, but the above will do the rest of what you want.
You are one automatic update from seeing that fail. We fought that battle with Oracle. “IE doesn’t work now. Try Netscape. Turn off Java Update. It only works with 1.41. Netscape 8 doesn’t work now. Try Firefox. Everyone go back to IE”
I think the *nix geeks just do that to jiggle the switch on the electric chair.
Well yeah, you seen the advice given here, if after spending $500-$1000 on a new computer, if you are not willing to spend several hundred more dollars and many days/weeks of your free time taking apart your computer to install the latest hardware/software then you simply don't deserve to use one.
What? You expected to buy a computer and it have an OS that allows you immediately play games, do word processing, serf the internet, run software more then 3 years old, search for a file or just plain ole be productive? Get real!
Is it the job of the phone company to teach employees how to use a phone? Is it the job of the maintenance department to teach a an employee how to use a light switch? You would say that these are such basic tasks that any person should know how to do them to be employable in the first place.
Well, I've personally seen people who are that ignorant when it comes to computers. I've seen people who were hired as a receptionist and they didn't even know how to double click with a mouse. I've seen other people who didn't know how to copy and paste. I once told someone to reboot their machine, and they promptly turned off their monitor and turned it back on, and YES, I DO attempt to teach people when I encounter such deficiencies. When a job asks for "computer skills" as a requirement, all of my above examples should make someone unemployable.
re: chips, any differences between the duo and quad-core intels as the specs seem very similar?
These aren’t really identical. To start..
Your L2 cache isn’t the same and does that 64 bit processor power come with 64 bit OS to use it? How much more for one that does?
I also don’t believe you added two powered FireWire ports yet?
The graphics cards aren’t the same..
The screens aren’t the same quality...
Not sure if you’ve included bluetooth and wireless card.
Or whether the burner can do double-layer DVD..
Also, these bundled all-in-ones aren’t really possible to compare precisely, the included screens alone make exact product comparisons difficult at best.
LOL. No what's inconsiderate is an OS that can't read all formats so users don't have to think about it. Notice, she's not the one having trouble seeing it. :)
I really don't know what's going on here. I forward stuff, never had a complaint, there's no reason for the email client to change the format of an attachment.
I don't know what could be happening here. If I think of what it could be, I'll be sure and ping ya...
Windows has file level security and doesn’t require every user to run as an admin, in fact MS advises users IN the OS to use the security and do their normal usage under low powered accounts. Windows don’t because Windows user don’t want to bother. Windows users are like a world where you just sit down and go, if they want to install apps they want to install apps they don’t want to have to login as an admin to install the apps and then log back in as a normal user to use them. There’s absolutely nothing about Windows that forces them to run as admins, they just do it. And really even if they weren’t running as admins they’d still find ways to hose the machine, they’d just login as a different account to do it.
Check out Newegg.com. They have a link to find the proper memory that is needed for your specific model, and tell you how many slots you have as well. They also sell Crucial memory cheaper than Crucial does on their website.
Of course the punchline on whose cheaper is that if you actually want to save money don’t go to Dell or Mac or any of the other name brands, because they ALL make you pay for their spiffy logo. Use the Dell site to spec it out then go to your local nerd shop and have THEM do it (sure you could do it yourself, but I do that at work, don’t want to at home). Saved me 600 bucks.
I've never had any problems w/ VMWARE running (relatively) high-availablility production apps. Various Windows and Linux distros.
Dual booting sucks.
(Hey, have I mentioned on this thread that you can change users in Vista (eg. to correctly manage UAC, you really have to) and still listen to the audio from the original? I'm really getting to like Vista!!!)
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