It's time to evaluate Bill Gates

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Microsoft OS advancement

I can understand people's views on the Longhorn postponement, but I honestly believe it isn't due to complex coding, feature creep, or project sprawl. Look at the industry of OS deployment in major entities. States and large companies didn't move to Windows XP right away, if at all. I've worked with University and State government systems in several States and many are still based on Windows 2000 for the desktop OS. This wasn't because XP wasn't a good product. It's because major entities don't have budgets to grab every new OS when it ships. Many refuse to update an OS prior to the SECOND service release and set standards to minimize support issues based on mixed environments. I think that Longhorn will be adopted by a vast number of the Windows-based large entities like State governments because they'll have financial planning in place to upgrade from Windows 2000. The technology spiral always shows that software last about 2 years before the innovators prepare a new release. But consumers and professionals don't have the budget to change an OS every 2 years. They can change productivity software, and some can change OS but usually only if they have a licensing agreement that provides it. Consider the issue of procurment then deployment versus just deployment and I think you can understand my point.

Finally, I think there's an excellent chance for OS 10.4 to make a dent in Windows market share. Mac needs to stop showing commercials about how pretty or small their computer is and start making commercials about how easy it is to find something with 'spotlight' or how quickly you can create pretty, well formatted documents with their new iWorks software. The Mac Mini is a move towards reaching the non-premium consumers (most of us) by providing a less expensive box. But the average consumer doesn't understand why Mac's speed and RAM are less than PCs "Why settle for 1.4 GHz and 256MB when you can have 2.8 GHz and 1GB for the same price?" is a statement I've heard many people use.

My very humble opinion is that Microsoft made a business decision to keep Longhorn until their enterprise clients were ready for it. If they are going to be pushed to innovate, it won't come from open source. It will come from a powerful, but simple OS like Mac OS 10.4 which is actually UNIX under the hood.

Posted by: geobrown   Posted on: 01/14/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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