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.
Never buy a computer with Vista installed on it. It has been nothing but a huge headache. It has the uncanny ability of making a DSL line as slow as a dial-up system, and that’s not what we are paying for. Taking it off is a bigger production than junking the hard drive and starting over.
“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.”
Yup it sucks...and it kinda forces you to upgrade the memory to 2 gig which blows if you’re trying to stay within a budget. XP works just fine with 1 gig of RAM.
You may want to buy a copy of XP off eBay or something and install on your new laptop.
Unfortunately, that 1% must be what I use, because I tried to use it and the first day out, couldn’t do something I use all the time. Didn’t go back.
All kinds of Dell laptops with XP——>>>
Since we have three XP laptops & one PC, could I use one of those OS disks?
I don’t consider Outlook to be a great selling point. I really like it but I really like Big Macs too. Outlook has really burned us. I try to use Thunderbird when I can.
I work for a company that provides network support, desktop support and integration support for small and medium sized businesses. Not a single one of our clients has made the jump to Vista, largely because their business software vendors have nixed it.
If you call a support line for ANYTHING, the first question they ask is “are you running Vista?” Unfortunately, every vendor on the planet is blaming every glitch on Vista.
I think most people are simply waiting on the next OS and are trying to give Vista the big miss.
I think that all people really care is if it works well....XP works....so they don’t want to change. Change costs money, time, frustration.....businesses don’t want to spend any of that on Vista in this environment.
A bunch of my customers have moved to terminal type devices....devices that run a single application or maybe a single application and e-mail. Lower capital cost, lower support cost, lower user cost.
In the Windows 95 days, people were telling me that desktop support would be gone in a few years. Instead its even more intensive. Just keeping up the Windows patches is nearly a full time occupation. Combine that with anti-virus and anti-spam and it is a full time occuption. I can see how a small business would fail to see any “improvement” in the situation as it now stands.
XP is fine. Leave the crap alone. Just say NO TO VISTA.
Also, use Linux for good security.
Make your machine dual-bootable. It’s not difficult, and some of the linux flavors are very easy to use.
Email, browsing and the normal things that connect to the internet (other than gaming) can use Linux with no problem.
Everything else? Use XP.
Too late now.
I was put off Windows Vista by all the negative talk, but I decided bite the bullet with my latest laptop.
If you get 3 or 4 gigs of memory, which isn’t all that expensive these days, it seems to work just fine. It’s actually faster than my second-oldest laptop which is running XP Pro.
Windows was built so the 4th gig was wasted, but the word is that Vista SP1 will be able to use it. I don’t know; I haven’t had time to download the service pack yet.
I don’t think upgrading an old computer makes much sense. The technology changes so fast, it’s more practical just to buy a new computer with the new OS on it.
You can’t run Vista Premium on 1 gig.
Two 1 gig sticks should only cost about $50.
I use Win XP at work, and use Solaris X (linux freeware from SUN) in my x86 and Mac’s at home. Stable, virus free, and full of wonderful features if you need them.
Solaris X is highly recommended.
There are several Linux distributions that do exactly what you want, and will run from a CD, or at most a DVD (more likely the latter if you want games and graphics editing).
And they’re free. Ubuntu or its derivative Kubuntu are probably what you want. This month the new long-term support version comes out. It’ll be supported by the community for the next 3 years for desktop implementations (5 for server), so in May or June, most of the initial-release bugs should be cleaned up, and you can just download a bootable DVD from the Ubuntu Linux website and go to town.
A 32-bit OS cannot reference more than 3.5G of RAM because of the size of the address. You need 64-bit Vista or XP to see 4 gig or more.
What a crock. IF these guys had an inkling, they’d be making that great product to wipe MS off the shelves.
I once tried to migrate a smaller hard drive to a larger harddrive. wasted money on a norton program, tried all the geek advice on the net but the XP clone on the new drive did not work.
The problem is that MS wants their program to be treated like a piece of hardware. You can only buy it “once”.
It would be rather hard for Microsoft to scrap the existing Windows code base and start from scratch.
You have to realize with Apple, the majority of Apple users are sycophants for Jobs, so they’ll gripe, but will do what he says.
Windows has a much larger user based, especially on the corporate side, so changing the whole code base would require all the companies that make software for Windows to develop new software for this new platform.
By doing that companies looking to upgrade are going to be in a costly position since none of their existing apps will not work on the new code base.
Essentially, Microsoft is a victim of their own success.
Not only that, Vista is basically a DRM (Digital Rights Management) platform.
The purpose of Vista was not to deliver more power and performance to the user, but less.
The "improvements" were all for Microsoft's benefit, not their customer's.
Can I add another 1 gig stick to the laptop? They are only $34.99 @ Dell.
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