A new survey by KACE, a systems management appliance company, suggests that 60 percent of those surveyed have no plans to deploy Microsoft Windows Vista, a 10 percent rise over a similar survey administered by KACE in November 2007. A full 42 percent of these are actively exploring Vista alternatives, with 11 percent having made the leap to alternative platforms like Mac OS X or Linux.
Forrester piles on:
When you buy a new PC today, unless you hunt down a Linux system or you buy a Mac, you’re pretty much stuck with Vista. Sad, but true.
So, when I had to get a new PC in a hurry, after one of my PCs went to the big bit-ranch in the sky with a fried motherboard, the one I bought, a Dell Inspiron 530S from my local Best Buy came pre-infected with Vista Home Premium. Big deal. It took me less than an hour to install Linux Mint 5 Elyssa R1 on it.
Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time. ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:
Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say. Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next operating system will be better. Pinky swear.
Seriously.
In an ITWire tale, Paul Harapin, VMware's managing director for Australia and New Zealand said Windows is already being replaced by virtual appliances running on Linux. In ten-years, there will be no more Windows.
OK. I know people at Red Hat who would say that that's exactly what will happen. That's right out of the new Red Hat KVM-based virtualization playbook. But, someone from VMware saying this? Wow.
It almost feels like covering an old story, so herein we mention only a few new developments and reference the rest at the bottom.
As many have realised before the week ended, Microsoft is not in a good shape. It’s nothing like it used to be, but Microsoft goes out of its way to keep up appearances, even using aggression. Perceptual momentum is essential for growth through customer obedience and investor confidence.
Many people have bought computers with Vista thinking, "It's newer, it must be better, right?" Well, according to popular poll, no, it's not. Or at least you would think so from the grumbles of the public opinion. But I must say that my feelings have mellowed in recent months.
Steve Ballmer is at least willing to talk with the open-source crowd now, as his comments at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 demonstrate. He’s just not willing to actually engage in open source as an appreciable part of his company’s business. Fair enough.
Ballmer lacks the imagination to conceive of a world where Microsoft could open-source code and still make a lot of money (He’s apparently not heard of “Google.”):
No. 1, are our products likely to be open-sourced? No. We do provide our source code in special situations, but open source also implies free, free is inconsistent with paying for lunches at the partner conference. (Applause.)
Recently a blog post entitled “Why Desktop Linux is its own worst enemy has come across my feed-radar a few times. It’s yet another in the long line of “Linux ain’t ready yet” jeremiads and it doesn’t really say anything new yet it got on my nerves. Why?
Unsupported statements
Like many such pieces, this one starts by making a statement as if it were fact while presenting no actual evidence. The “fact” used here goes along the lines of “Microsoft has shot itself in the foot with Vista and the only ones benefiting are Apple”. Even if there were statistical evidence, the premise is mistaken.
THE THREAT OF REPRISALS from Microsoft lawyers has stopped Becta, the UK's technology quango for schools, from publishing the details of the three-year megadeal it agreed with Microsoft in April. Microsoft already forbids Becta from saying how much money UK schools spend on its software. The US multinational has also forbidden the British people from knowing how much it is charging their schools for its software.
After all these years I am willing to admit that Microsoft has won the desktop and server wars. Thanks to VMWare Windows is spreading throughout the datacenter. And, of course, there is only one operating system to use if you are dependent on Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. While I have joined the chorus of security folks who rail against the Microsoft Monoculture I still cannot believe some of the uses for Windows. Some of them are just downright silly, some you may claim are criminally negligent.
Sean Daly has kindly prepared a text version of the EU-LEX notice of Microsoft's complaint against the EU Commission, found in the latest EU Official Journal.
Windows Vista debuted to muffled applause, followed by lackluster sales. Up until June 30, cash-strapped businesses looking to avoid the cost of upgrading to new Vista-compatible hardware could still purchase trusty Windows XP. Now, however, Windows XP is available only as a costly “downgrade” from Windows Vista–if you buy a copy of Vista, you can install the 6-year-old XP operating system using the Vista license.
If that feels like a waste of your small business’s precious IT budget, and you’re still looking for an alternative to Windows Vista, look no further than Linux. The latest distributions are free, easy to install, and highly customizable; they harness your existing hardware without overtaxing it; and they include a wealth of productivity applications and utilities. You may already have a closet Linux expert on staff, but if you don’t, paid support is usually available at rates far less than Microsoft’s.
Dell is actively promoting a Microsoft licensing loophole to channel partners eager to keep selling PCs installed with Windows XP, after Microsoft's official cut off.
The Dell channel blog is pointing resellers to the loophole in the Windows Vista license that enables business customers to downgrade from the unwanted Windows Vista to its dated, but comfortable and better-supported predecessor.
Lots of people are focused on the retirement of Microsoft Founder Bill Gates this weekend. I mean, yes, the man that created the world's most popular computing platform had his "final day" on Friday, June 27. But, are we forgetting that Microsoft is also saying goodbye to one of its all time favorite operating systems next week and replacing it with Vista, one of the most criticized tech products in its history? Is it a coincidence that Gates retires the Friday before Windows XP gets put on life support?
Why pay $650 for Adobe Photoshop when you can have 97 percent of the functionality of Photoshop for free?
That’s a question software developers and distributors plan on addressing at “Lindependence 2008,” a free event in Felton on July 13, promoting the Linux operating system and other free open source software.
The goal is to show people that open-source users have the freedom to copy, change and redistribute their software, which Microsoft Windows users are prohibited from doing.
“We’re trying to get as many people as possible to switch to Linux, because the main thing is most people don’t use computers for fancy things, so they’re wasting money,” said Ken Starks, a Linux advocate and owner of HeliOS Solutions in Austin, Texas, which strives to create technologies and provide cost effective products to its customers.
Read more at http://www.mercurynews.com/
One of India’s 28 states plans to distribute 100,000 Linux laptops to students there. It sounds like Tamil Nadu’s volume purchasing agent decided to use Linux exclusively after being put off by Microsoft’s bundling tactics for academic users.
The laptops will be purchased in volume by Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), which works as a volume purchaser for students in the state. Tamil Nadu is the Southern-most of India’s 28 states, and home to the technology center of Chennai (formerly known as “Madras”). ELCOT says it will purchase more than 100,000 laptops this year, selling them to Indian students for about $800, a considerable mark-down compared to retail value, it says.
A lot of us are focused on Microsoft and Bill Gates this month as Bill’s last day at the company he founded and ran to dominance passed last Friday. I’ve met Bill several times but only really once spoken to him. From a personal aspect, he has mostly been cordial, and he once personally came to my rescue back when my career as an independent analyst first started, something I’ll never forget. Something else I’ll never forget was the Windows 95 launch, which in my mind and evidently his, was the high point for Microsoft.
Intel has decided that it will not upgrade its company's systems to Microsoft Windows Vista, and will instead continue using Windows XP -- reports doing rounds of the Internet seem to suggest.
Will Microsoft become more open to open source with the departure of Bill Gates?
It’s a tough call. Observers from both the open and closed source worlds say the exit of Microsoft’s longtime leader won’t usher in a GPL era at the company but it will likely accelerate what is already a changing attitude in Redmond.
Microsoft yesterday sent customers a letter reaffirming its plans to kill off Windows XP sales at the end of June and that system builders can continue to ship machines loaded with the OS until early 2009.
That widely-known caveat has been viewed by many as a considerable insurance policy for the software giant, which has failed to achieve sparkling sales of Vista, its upto date operating system.
Indeed many major OEMs including big hitters such as Dell have been clambering to throw customers reluctant to adopt Vista an XP lifeline.