I just built a new computer. I make Windows programs for consulting and sale. I didn't want to buy another copy of XP (already have 2 for other computers) and Vista is a bloated mess that offers nothing to the end user (even if the kernel and memory management are better, you can't see that). I also didn't want to fork out the ~$180+ for Vista Ultimate.
I had just one day earlier spent an hour on the phone with a customer because a program I wrote actually uses the correct ProgramData location, but the program hadn't been added to the User Account Control (UAC) yet so Vista was preventing it from writing some files. Once added, it worked perfectly. Who wants to deal with that crap?
Long story short: Ubuntu costs me $0, it works with my dual monitors, it was easy to install, the second hard drive got mounted easily, and I'm switching to web programming. I'd also like to say I am in love with Ubuntu. It's like rekindling a flame with a previous lover (Linux).
Excellent article. I think he hit the nail pretty much on the head with the Ashton Tate comparison. Interestingly the problem doesn't stem from one person, or group of people - rather it is a direct consequence of size, marketshare, and success. This means that noone is responsible for the current sad status quo at Microsoft, it just happened.
To get out of their quagmire they need someone that sees the problem for what it is, and responds vigilantly to drive the company out of the mud and back to innovation and great products. It is a really hard job, and I think the only one at Microsoft that could make it succeed is Ray Ozzie.
It isn't impossible, IBM suffered the exact same problems in the late 80's and they came back. It is just very very hard.
I actually like Vista. I'm a Mac user (so maybe it's the pretty interface I like...) and I probably wouldn't have paid for it, but I won it in a programming contest so I figured why not install it on my 3 year old mediocre PC with 512MB of RAM... bad idea. It was ridiculous slow, so I picked up another 2GB of RAM and it runs great now. When they say 1GB RAM minimum they mean it.
Of course I wouldn't switch from Mac OS X to Vista, but as far as Windows goes, Vista seems alright.
> "When they talk about things that are new, the list is almost laughable, consisting of "Tablet PC versions"
I think this author overlooks some of the newer features of vista. there actually have been a lot of kernel improvements, especially in memory management and scheduling, as well as lots of security and UI improvements.
> "They're adding, but they're not removing."
True for vista, but I believe Microsoft is trying to simplify the dependency structure of the next version with minwin.
I had just one day earlier spent an hour on the phone with a customer because a program I wrote actually uses the correct ProgramData location, but the program hadn't been added to the User Account Control (UAC) yet so Vista was preventing it from writing some files. Once added, it worked perfectly. Who wants to deal with that crap?
Long story short: Ubuntu costs me $0, it works with my dual monitors, it was easy to install, the second hard drive got mounted easily, and I'm switching to web programming. I'd also like to say I am in love with Ubuntu. It's like rekindling a flame with a previous lover (Linux).