Re: XP Death Watch
On Jun 14, 1:19 am, Nick Ballard <nrball...@gmail.com> wrote:
> cheley_bonstel...@live.com wrote:
> > XP Death Watch
> >http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/27/XP-deathwatch-T-minus-five-...
>
> > Even though it has had its own problems of late, Windows XP remains
> > the most-used version of Windows. The newest data from Web metrics
> > vendor Net Applications, for example,
More importantly, as a percentage of the total market, Vista is even a
bigger "bomb" than Windows NT 3.x launched in 1994. Remember that
that release was so bad that Microsoft announced "Chicago" (later
known as Windows 95) almost immediately, largely to keep OEMs and
Corporate customers from opting for OS/2, UnixWare, or Linux.
After 18 months, Vista is still having trouble keeping up with Mac and
Linux, who combined, have captured more market than Vista. In fact,
if Microsoft had to report the number of "Vista Business Edition"
licenses that were actually shipped as XP Professional "downgrades" -
as the actual XP licenses, it would show that XP is the majority of
the market.
> > pegs XP as driving 73 percent of the personal computers that went
> > online last month,
Which means that 3 out of 4 PCs sold are being sold as "XP
Professional" and being reported by Microsoft in their SEC filings as
"Vista Business Edition".
> > five times the nearest competitor, Microsoft's own Windows Vista.
Meanwhile, people are paying premium prices for Macs, while Vista
desktop machines have fallen below the $200 "floor" - many OEMs are
loosing a fortune on the unpopularity of Vista. Retailers have pretty
much thrown in the towel. CompUSA closed all of it's retail stores in
the northeast, along with most of their retail stores in the rest of
the country because the Vista market was such a loser market.
People were going into the showroom, looking at vista, low resolution
wide screen displays, and insufficient memory - then ordering the
computers online, with higher resolution screens, extra memory, 7200
RPM drives, and XP instead of Vista as the operating system.
> > Which is why an impending deadline five weeks from today is important.
>
> > According to Microsoft, June 30 is the last day it will permit
> > retailers and OEMs to sell
> > the nearly seven-year-old operating system.
Microsoft might have been able to pull this off if they had a really
hot product that everybody was crazy about. Windows 95 and Windows 98
were that kind of product. Microsoft attempted to "Force Feed" XP to
the market, and many companies seriously considered pulling the plug
on Microsoft altogether.
Corporate executives, especially the CEO, COO, and CFO have seen this
coming for almost 2 years now, and any CIO who thinks that they will
be able to go to the board and demand huge sums of money for Vista
upgrades will probably find himself unemployed very quickly.
Other companies have announced official "sunset" policies, pushing the
transition from Microsoft proprietary products and formats to Open
Document Format, Open Source Software, Platform Independent
applications, and Linux ready computers. As a result, they are
prepared to make the transition to Linux or Mac.
Microsoft is very likely overplaying a weak hand, and they have bet
the farm on a huge bluff that too many corporate customers are
prepared to call.
Remember that many corporations have already purchased enough XP
licenses for every employee, up to the maximum number of employees
they've ever employed from 1999 to 2008, and these licenses ARE
transferrable. Furthermore, because Microsoft got greedy and sold
these companies licenses instead of upgrades, these licenses can be
installed on machines sold with Linux, as VM appliances.
Microsoft's greed and arrogance has finally put them in the position
for a really big problem. If they actually hold to their "death
watch" date, it could be that Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer, the top 5
OEMs, will be putting Linux boxes on the retail shelves, complete with
fully configured Linux, and a nice collection of hundreds of
applications that would have to be purchased separately for Vista
machines.
If Microsoft attempts to strong-arm them again, there is a good chance
that the OEMs will be dragging Microsoft through the federal courts,
and pushing for further extensions to the DOJ remedy oversight.
The one thing that is crystal clear is that if Microsoft tries to
force the Industry to transition to Vista, the industry is very likely
to cut Microsoft out of it's future migration plans.
> > <SNIP>
>
> Great. Let them shoot themselves in the foot.
Seems to be the attitude of lots of people these days. Microsoft has
lost most of the "good will" equity they have held for years. More
and more companies and end-users are installing open source
technologies including FireFox, OpenOffice, and multiplatform Java
applications. Many have rolled out desktop virtualization as well.
And if Microsoft tries to kill XP in hopes of forcing them to Vista,
it's highly likely that a substantial portion - perhaps 1/2 or even
3/4 of those XP desktop users will be switched over to Linux or Mac.
Worse, corporate customers may put a moratorium on new PCs until they
can make the full transition, or they will require any employee who
wants to purchase a Vista machine to purchase it with their own funds,
or will be deducted from their bonuses, while those who are willing to
accept Linux machines will have their new machines fully funded by the
company.
> Vista is a crippled, DRM-infested piece of crap that makes a dual-core
> AMD64 machine perform like a Pentium II.
It's ironic that all of the "Linux hostile" tactics and "features"
that were intended to "lock in" the market may be the very features
that have resulted in the most aggressive rejection of Microsoft since
1994.
In 1994, Linux was very young. Red Hat was willing to offer Linux to
OEMs for $2/copy on a nonexclusive basis (the OEMs could install BOTH
Linux and Windows). It was Microsoft who decided to play "hardball",
reformatting hard drives before installing Windows 95, mandating to
OEMs and IHVs that Microsoft assign the PCI vendor and device code and
that the codes be kept seccret. Few people knew about Linux, and it's
likely that if they had seen Linux on PCs displayed on Retail Shelves,
that Linux would have blown Windows NT 3.1 AND Windows 3.1 completely
out of the water in 1994-5, it might have even blown away Windows 95
in 1995-1997.
Microsoft did everything they could to keep Linux off the retail
shelves, but the genie is out of the bottle. About 4 blocks from Wall
Street, J&R has ASUS EEE machines on display, running Linux, and it's
clear that Linux can do the most popular functions of a PC on a
machine that is 1/2 the memory, disk, and CPU speed of an XP system
and about 1/4 the hardware of a Vista machine.
Users see that Linux can boot up and be fully functional in less time
than it takes for XP or Vista to just get to the "splash screen".
Several Motherboard manufacturers are now including Linux core
functionality in their motherboards, meaning that even if Microsoft
wanted to they couldn't lock Linux out of the machine since the core
OS calls are actually being carried out by Linux.
OEMs are becoming more and more aware that desktop virtualization is
the "next big thing" and Vista is too much of a resource pig to be the
primary operating system. Furthermore, if users see that applications
launched by Linux are faster than the ones launched in the Vista
Virtual machine, then it's likely that Vista will be launched only
when absolutely necessary rather than as the "preferred" operating
system.
> If MSFT seriously thinks that
> it's somehow advantageous to push this sorry excuse for an OS onto the
> general public, they deserve to go out of business.
Microsoft won't be going out of business any time soon, but revenues
from Vista and Microsoft Office will make up a smaller and smaller
portion of their revenue as they look elsewhere for revenue sources.
Microsoft has been able to gradually reduce their dependence on
Windows license revenue, windows support revenue, and even office
revenue. They have moved more aggressively into the game market with
Xbox, they have expanded their services offerings and are gaining more
revenue from web sites. They also hold substantial interest in 3rd
party sites, which pay them royalties equivalent to as much as 1/2
their commissions or profits.
> Windows XP isn't the only option if you're trying to avoid Vista. There
> are Linux, BSD, OS X, and Solaris...all of which have been gaining
> serious application support in the form of native 3rd-party apps and
> compatibility libraries such as WINE.
For the last 10 years, there has been a very agressive move away from
the "Microsoft-only" development languages and libraries, and a more
aggressive move toward the "Multiplatform" tools, libraries, and
APIs. Even before the Clinton Administration pressed the Antitrust
case, Microsoft's attempt to subvert Netscape from the market became a
clear warning to software vendors that nothing was sacred, and that
they needed to be prepared to support multiple markets. Microsoft
could easily "lock them out" of the Windows market with shovelware
from a third-rate competitor making a knock-off, but by supporting
multiplatform, they could still maintain a sizable chunk of revenue
selling support and services, especially to corporate customers, by
supporting Linux and Unix as well as Windows.
Throughout most of the industry, the revenue model for software has
shifted from the "license and royalties" paradigm to the "consulting
and support" model. Ironically, Microsoft tried this model, but never
really figured it out. The result has been that huge companies like
IBM, Accenture, and CSC have been able to provide outstanding support
for OSS and UNIX software while the support for Windows software has
been gradually degrading into the "5 Rs" (restart, reboot, reinstall
app, reinstall windows, rebuild everything), with very little ability
to reliably recover from virus attacks, or even misguided patches that
trashed 3rd party software.
P.S. You're doing a great job of posting Nick, keep up the good work.
(Nick is my son).
Rex Ballard