Comments on: Does Vista's stunted growth hint at the death of the desktop?
Is the desktop metaphor dead? Or is Vista just really bad?
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One more thing, this isn't the first time Steve Jobs has released something perceived to be a superior product. Each time that lasted for just a few years and then Apple imploded on itself. One thing you can say with MS is that they just don't quit, and with behemoths like HP/Dell and most of Asia selling Windows based packages, you can bet that the OS war has just begun.
In any case, whom ever wins, competition is a good thing. Prices drop, consumers benefit.
However, that being said most of VISTA features are under the covers and remain to be unlocked, and upgrades for low end machines is difficult. I think once enough new machines are out there using VISTA the new features will get used in apps and the usual course will take place.
In any case, there is no real threat right now to change this- Apple doesn't have the distribution to fight HP/Dell and basically everyone else. Linux is 1000x more obscure to use for the ordinary person and can't seem to do better than Open Office for software.
Vista isn't so much an operating system as it is a business model. Redmond has gone the way of the auto industry by marketing a half dozen models of the same line. Basic transportation? Go for the DX. Want power windows and a bigger stereo? Try the ES. And if leather seats are what you need, the go whole hog and snap up the LSi.
Vista is at best a transitional product, meant to span the time between two truly relevant OS releases. The problem for Microsoft is, the same public that that had to fight its way through Patch Tuesdays, driver signing issues and quirky network settings have got themselves edumacated in the ways of computers and is no longer a pushover for shiny chrome and faux walnut trim. Many individuals have finally gotten a system they know and one that works just as they expect it work. And after an arduous few years, there's no reason to toss that effort away for an Aero Glass hussy.
And corporate IT spent gawd-only-knows how much of its annual budget to not only secure XP, but to tweak legacy code to work together with XP to keep important core operations on the front lines...that investment will take time to pay for itself. Except for the gadget-lusting executives who want all the latest tinsel and crepe, no one in corporate American wants to go through another seven years of hair-pulling to get Vista to interface with the corporate infrastructure.
Vista may well be irrelevant...xBox 360s, PS3s and the Wii all do eye-candy and games better. Office 2007 is, in my experience, a train wreck. In the end Microsoft will have to move on and come up with something better than XP. And while XP struggled in its infancy, it now comes in ony two flavors: Patched, and hacked.
I later bought a second Mac - an iMac which I upgraded to run OS/X "Leopard."
I still have an older Pentium III homebuilt desktop running XP flawlessly, but its getting used less frequently. I will probably retire that this year.
I don't think the question is whether Vista is bad or whether the whole "fat client" model is dead. Maybe the Vista "problem" is simply other credible options exist so that upgrading to a newer version of Windows is not the automatic must-buy as it was previously (especially for the consumer.) The strong Mac sales over the past few quarters seem to indicate this is happening.
I think businesses are just waiting for service packs and some of the bugs to be worked out before they invest thousands of dollars in new Vista machines. It's just going to take some time, more time than Microsoft is comfortable with.
Almost all the users / comments here are from people who seem to think there is nothing wrong with Vista but they've still spent a day or two tweaking an OS to finally fit their "satisfaction". Let me tell you my experience - I bought a brand new HP Core2Duo machine running at (then top of line nearly) 2 Ghz processor with 1 GB RAM and a very fast 120GB hard disk - I was upgrading from my previous Centrino 1.7 Ghz machine with 1GB RAM and 100GB hard disk so anyway I was expecting a much better experience from my new laptop which came packed with Windows Vista Home Premium (most of the laptops are / were offering only Home Basic (which I'm pretty sure sucks even more!). All said, the laptop that was "Optimized and Designed for Win Vista" started booting ever slowly after a few days of usage and processes such as copying took far too long than expected from such a fast machine !! I tried tweaks and tricks and lots of hints from Microsoft and other Tech sites to try to speed up the machine to an acceptable level. I was even having many problems with using some of my older programs (some of them less than 1 or 2 years old) and no upgrades were available. Anyway i am the type that usually does not give up - and persisted even though Vista was trying to tell me from day one that my brand new laptop needed even more memory (and oh not to mention the painful constant usage of the hard disk which seemed to screw up the entire system's performance even further. BTW have you guys noticed how the modern SATA drives on laptops seem to completely choke up the system while data is being accessed / written (sometimes by programs like svchost.exe in a constant stream of data that literally renders the system unusable until it has finished doing whatever it is that it is doing - seems like only the processes have the control of the system and not the user anymore).
Finally one day Vista crashed and wouldn't boot up ! oh thanks to my manufacturer who did not give me a VISTA disc but only a recovery partition (and subsequently i created the recovery disc) i could no longer recover forcing me to do what i should have done the first day itself - downgrade to Windows XP - and oh the joys of using XP on this fast machine are tremendous !! it works 60-70 % faster than when Vista was on this machine - i startup faster, shutdown faster and even hibernate faster, as well as run ALL my programs and hardware which is the only thing i probably need more than all that hype about MS "security" and user experience. Now for the last 3 months i'm finally a satisfied user of my computer. Many of my friends have had similar experiences and downgraded to XP again.
I have even advised many of my friends not to buy new computers with Vista but to choose XP if the vendor offers it or to buy it separately and install XP rather than suffer the terrible slowness and pain that is Vista. I'm sure MS will improve it or come out with a better and more functional product. and if they keep pushing the limits for everyone to upgrade without choice then I (and my friends) will just have to start using Ubuntu full time (now we use it occasionally and its a breezer !!)
Web apps are hot now, until people find out that their privacy has been invaded with their personal information being stored on web sites, that other people have access to as well. Then there will be a move back to desktop applications for privacy sake. Google, for example, sells information to third parties based on the contents of your GMail account, image what they do with Word processor and spreadsheet files you stored with their Google web apps? If you think Google provides these services for free, you are naive, as Google has to find a way to get paid for those services somehow. Just like Google sells your search history to the highest bidder, so that spammers can target your email, your personal files will trigger the same sort of privacy invasion.
Oh yeah I am guessing in two to three years from now, most video game makers will support Vista only for their video games. Forcing Game Heads to convert to Vista, in order to get their gaming fixes on. This is why Windows has such a large support gathering with gamers, because game companies do not write the games for Mac OSX, Linux, OS/2, but write them for Windows XP right now. Once game companies convert to DirectX 10 technology, which only Vista delivers on, then game heads will be locked into Vista.
I also think that it's a little premature to be calling for the death of the desktop. Hardware improvements seem to come faster than ever. We're starting the true age of multicore processing and are now seeing the next generation of memory: DDR3. PC game sales are still relatively solid, and few businesses are keen to moving to full web services.
I don't think that there will ever be a time that web services will truly replace the desktop. I think there is still a lot of apprehension with the overall security of the Internet amongst the general populace. I doubt that most people are willing to have their data and personal information stored in cyberspace. However, I'm sure that there is a paradigm shift in the works. I don't think the desktop will ever die, but how we will use it will continue to change. The hardware improvements made quarterly are giving horsepower to these systems in ways that we never dreamed. Desktops are able to do a lot more than personal financing and word processing these days.
No matter what route personal computing takes in the near future, one thing is clear: Neither Apple nor Microsoft appear to be fully prepared. No one can truly claim that either company has a truly innovative system prepared to take the next big step. If the role of the operating system is truly changing, I think both companies will find themselves off guard.
Maybe as compared to XP. (Also an MS product.)
Compared to OSX? Please.
Compared to Linux? Puhlease.
Say, that would be a MacNux (gag, gag, gag) fanboy.
Emphasis on "boy".
And Matt, you really did want to elicite an emotional response. Here you go.
Vista makes it possible to set up the computer for different users and actually have it work - in XP you have to log off one user before you can switch to another, (unless you want to lock the computer up), and you close half your programs while doing it. After one or two switches it starts acting weird.
Vista also detects new hardware and loads drivers for it automatically, where with XP you have to hunt up the driver online and download and install it first before it will detect the hardware.
Vista was harder to set up if you want to customize it - if I hadn't had experience with Ubuntu I would have found it much more difficult, but they seem to have borrowed a lot of features from Linux. I didn't like the new file system, but found it is possible to set it up exactly like XP if you want to go to the effort.
I don't think the desktop is on the way out yet - for the almost half of the country that still has dial-up, it would be impossible to go to web based programming. Just downloading Microsoft's massive updates is a challenge. And I personally will be stuck with dial-up for the foreseeable future - the only other option here is satellite, which is out of reach financially.
First of all, Vista does not offer compelling reasons to upgrade. The issue is not a stability nor a compatibility issue, Microsoft Windows users have been willing to work through those in the past. Vista simply has failed to provide sufficient reasons to suffer these pains.
Secondly, Microsoft has alienated a lot of customers (both home users and businesses) via their past actions. For example, WGA pissed off lots of people.
However, the biggest issue is that the desktop market is changing. The core set of functionality required by most desktop users can be met by competing OS's. All will let users browse the web, read/write email, listen to music, watch videos, and so on via a similar graphical desktop.
Apple has captured the high-end of this new market, where users are willing to pay extra for enhanced features.
Linux has grabbed the low-end of the market via the OLPC, ASUS Eee PC, Walmart/Everex PC, etc.
That leaves Microsoft in the middle, which will continuously shrink as Apple and Linux continue to expand their share by delivering products that make customers happy. This is a concept that Microsoft has failed to grasp.
Microsoft either needs to decide to beat Apple on the high-end (not likely), to beat Linux on the low-end (there's not margin here), or offer compelling features to keep the rest of the market from jumping ship.
In any event, Microsoft as it exists today cannot persist. It will be interesting to watch it evolve.
P.S exscuse my spelling I have been up all night programing and have had two spike shooter drinks....(about 600mg of caffine) and am far to blah to spell check ha!
- by hardware4ever January 3, 2008 8:06 AM PST
- I disagree with ignorant people who say vista is garbage and that we don't need new hardware. Vista when it first came out the gate did have alot of issues, however as of now even before the new SP1 coming out soon it has become a very stable OS. It offers some very awesome features for both the work enviroment and home use. Sure it is abit bloated and does use up more ram but who really cares with ram being cheap thats not an issue. The biggest reason I see people not changing over is the requirement to run the monolithic OS. Zerdos you have to understand speed is everything. With todays technology getting faster research into new cures, and technology is opening up. With IBM's new super processor 100 cores on a single chip will open the doors to things we never imagined. your comments only show how narrow minded people can be vs the real world. Another big invoating feature people over look is Vista fully supports Mulitply Cores where XP is limited in threading functions.
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