Microsoft's Future: as a Games Company

News that for probably the first time Microsoft would be making significant numbers of its workforce redundant has inevitably been picked up and chewed over widely. In truth, the net numbers of job losses are low – a couple of thousand, allowing for new intakes. What's really noteworthy is the underlying reason for those losses: that the cracks in the Microsoft empire are finally becoming evident to even the most myopic of observers.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Outlook for Vista Gets Even Worse

As someone who has been following Microsoft for over 25 years, I remain staggered by the completeness of the Vista fiasco. Microsoft's constant backtracking on the phasing out of Windows XP is perhaps the most evident proof of the fact that people do not want to be forced to “upgrade” to something that has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system. But this story suggests an even greater aversion....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft's Future

This is something that I predicted would happen:

The company's Windows client business grew by half its anticipated target - two percent instead of four compared to last year. Microsoft said fewer traditional PCs and more netbooks had shipped than expected. Also, revenue from OEMs was down as they shifted to sell cheaper netbooks.

Netbooks running Windows mean growth but relatively low income as they do not run money spinning versions of Windows, like Windows Vista Premium Edition. Microsoft said it was too early to say how much netbooks are cannibalizing traditional sales.

It will be interesting to see how steep the dive is.

The True Value of Nothing

How much is GNU/Linux worth? Well, its price is zero, but it's clearly incredibly valuable: what to do? Here's what a new paper from the Linux Foundation did....

On Open Enterprise blog.

What Comes After the Windows Era?

On Linux Journal.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Good, Vista Bad

Oh look, yet another reason *not* to upgrade to Vista:

The third service pack for XP gives you all the Windows XP performance updates, security updates and hotfixes that have been released since Service Pack 2 came out way back in August 2004. While Service Pack 3 may not be as big of a change as Service Pack 2 was, there are some noteworthy features from Vista that have been included in this release. Namely, NAP, a policy enforcement platform for limiting network access to secure machines, “Black Hole” Router Detection, a cryptographic module for the kernel and a new Product Activation module allows you to install XP without a product key.

Vista's Geek Tragedy

Nice framing of the train-wreck that is Microsoft Vista by Randall Stross in the NYT:

Act 1: In 2005, Microsoft plans to say that only PCs that are properly equipped to handle the heavy graphics demands of Vista are “Vista Ready.”

Act 2: In early 2006, Microsoft decides to drop the graphics-related hardware requirement in order to avoid hurting Windows XP sales on low-end machines while Vista is readied. (A customer could reasonably conclude that Microsoft is saying, Buy Now, Upgrade Later.) A semantic adjustment is made: Instead of saying that a PC is “Vista Ready,” which might convey the idea that, well, it is ready to run Vista, a PC will be described as “Vista Capable,” which supposedly signals that no promises are made about which version of Vista will actually work.

The decision to drop the original hardware requirements is accompanied by considerable internal protest. The minimum hardware configuration was set so low that “even a piece of junk will qualify,” Anantha Kancherla, a Microsoft program manager, said in an internal e-mail message among those recently unsealed, adding, “It will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it.”

Act 3: In 2007, Vista is released in multiple versions, including “Home Basic,” which lacks Vista’s distinctive graphics. This placed Microsoft’s partners in an embarrassing position. Dell, which gave Microsoft a postmortem report that was also included among court documents, dryly remarked: “Customers did not understand what ‘Capable’ meant and expected more than could/would be delivered.”

When the Microsoft Train hits the Brooksian Wall

For a long time enthusiasts of the open source development methodology have predicted that the traditional method will sink in the sand sooner or later. And since, as far as we can tell, Microsoft still employs such methods, the expectation is that one day its operating system upgrade would be a downgrade.

It's hard to tell from all the noise in the comments, but preliminary results seem to suggest Vista is that downgrade:

Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.

And here's some corroboration that people are beginning to realise that the Microsoft train has hit the Brooksian wall:

Ninety percent of 961 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half said they have no plans to deploy Vista.

A Different View of Vista

Andrew Watson has done the maths for some of O’Reilly’s books for programmers:

* Windows Vista Annoyances: 704.
* Windows Vista Pocket Reference: 192
* Windows Vista in a Nutshell: 750.
* Linux Kernel in a Nutshell: 198.

That's 704 pages of Vista annoyances, a couple of months after launch: says it all, really.