Linux Format forums

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

emyr42 — Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:46 pm

Author: emyr42

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:46 pm

Not really... Schools using RM often take years to upgrade; I know my old school will probably still be going through XP-rollout for more of its workstations when Vista arrives.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

linuxgirlie — Sun Aug 27, 2006 7:50 pm

Author: linuxgirlie

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 7:50 pm

True....and in schools also, who use the likes of RM, they will find a way of pushing Vista in asap...

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

wyliecoyoteuk — Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:28 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:28 pm

M-Saunders wrote:

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

Windows Vista is dead in the water. Microsoft are going to struggle to sell it.

Maybe on shop shelves, but AFAIK Microsoft makes most of their money from pre-loaded OSes with new PCs. Once all the major PC vendors start including Vista, they'll be raking in the moolah as per usual!

M

Yeah, probably.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

M-Saunders — Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:27 am

Author: M-Saunders

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:27 am

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

Windows Vista is dead in the water. Microsoft are going to struggle to sell it.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

Rhakios — Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:12 am

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:12 am

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

Windows Vista is dead in the water. Microsoft are going to struggle to sell it.

Perhaps they could give away free copies at a Linux expo? I understand it's quite a popular way of getting attention for your new distro

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

wyliecoyoteuk — Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:41 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:41 pm

The thng is, the aero desktop is OTT.
And it is seriously overspecced.
I can run compiz and openGL or far lower spec hardware.

Windows Vista is dead in the water. Microsoft are going to struggle to sell it.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

Diagmato — Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:01 pm

Author: Diagmato

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:01 pm

To the original point of this topic - it is very unlikely that MS will only allow Vista to be bought as an OEM on a new pc. For a start, pc's are shipping with "Vista compatible" logo's. Either they expect you to buy some horrible OEM installation disc from the place you bought your pc (if you didnt custom-build it) or its just a heads up that youll be able to 'upgrade' to the next version of windows. Plus there is the different versions which theyve previewed - the home basic edition, the home power user, and all the rest, whatever each version is called.

MS will lose alot of fans to people who get one of the lower versions expecting the 'seriously cool' Aero glass, only to find a message telling them to purchase a more proffessional version. Its inevitable that a large number of people will get smacked by that.

It seems, most computer users are so fussed over a good looking desktop that nothing else matters to them - security, stability - sure, they complain when these issues arise, but tell these people that there are better solutions, and the arguement that 'it looks cheap' comes along. I dont know if others have this problem, but so many people ive tried reccomending Linux to (in a suitable manner - not to a pc gamer for example) seem to think that the XP desktop looks more proffessional, and completely blank out the fact that Linux desktops are extremely customize-able).

Vista will get people very excited because it looks generations better than XP, and from what it seems, most the population of general home users think that there is nothing but Windows out there. I do pretty much believe that if Linux is to trully impress users over to its side of the fence, then kde and gnome especially need to look the biz, by default. For those who plan to install on weaker hardware, a gnome-minimal option could be provided.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

TheDoctor — Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:33 pm

Author: TheDoctor

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:33 pm

Nigel wrote:

that would leave them with no customers

And your point is?

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

Nigel — Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:06 pm

Author: Nigel

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:06 pm

TheDoctor wrote:

Surely they should tell you whether your PC will run the software or not before you buy it?

Don't be silly - that would leave them with no customers

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

TheDoctor — Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:03 pm

Author: TheDoctor

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:03 pm

Karti wrote:

They plan to market software in the future with a score so that you will know if your machine will be able to run it.

And if not, they'll provide an upgrade for free? Or refund your money?

Surely they should tell you whether your PC will run the software or not before you buy it?

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

Karti — Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:21 pm

Author: Karti

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:21 pm

Hi all,

Just thought I would add my two pennies worth, though that will not be much in a pertol station!

Having installed Vista and Office 2007 on my test machine which I run linux variants on, it tells me that my machine is only rated as a 2 out of 5.

They plan to market software in the future with a score so that you will know if your machine will be able to run it.

My stats are: AMD 2400, GeForce 5900 with 128Mb and 2Gb mem.

2 out of 5? ................... Suppose I should just throw it in the bin then!

My gaming machine is faster and I get the software as part of the MS action pack, but if I am like any other 40 year old (OK 41) pc gaming geeks (I use the word lightly), I would not pay to change it. I would just hope that gaming companies would port their wares across sooner!

Ahh well....

K

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

atomic1fire — Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:38 am

Author: atomic1fire

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:38 am

with the many distros of linux i doubt cost will be a problem since theres many ways you can use the money going to it

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

TheDoctor — Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:24 am

Author: TheDoctor

Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:24 am

ollie wrote:

Not many businesses can afford to have $2500 tied up on systems doing Internet, e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets, which is all most office systems do really

Which is why a strpped-down distro offering only these (plus, perhaps, an upgrade path to another, more complex, distro) would probabaly do well in the market place in terms of number of installations. Whether it would do well in terms of profit is another matter altogether.

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

Hello — Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:56 pm

Author: Hello

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:56 pm

ollie wrote:

Microsoft are starting to have problems with Vista/Office 2007 already - they have had to add Open Document Format support to Office 2007 at the request of governments and large corporations (only read support so far I think) and it is not released. In late 2005 a Microosft exec stated that to effectively run Vista and Office with all the bells you would need 2 GB of RAM, SATA-II HDD, dedicated graphics card with 256 MB memory and he didn't mention having any other applications running. Recent costings with these specs put the system at $2500+ in Australia without Office (assuming Vista is the same price as XP Pro).

Not many businesses can afford to have $2500 tied up on systems doing Internet, e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets, which is all most office systems do really , so cheaper alternatives with these features become more attractive all the time. The current versions of Apple's iMacs are also looking good for these tasks with better multimedia support and security (due to the FreeBSD background) and with Bootcamp making the installation of Windows easy market share will increase.

IMHO, Linux needs a single place to configure installed components, preferably with a GUI interface, to make skills truly transferable between distributions. I use OpenSUSE with YaST which makes a great start but really it needs to be much more "intelligent" - if I don't have a DNS server installed why do I need the configuration icon.

Actually useful. Although I know about dns I dont know about whats the best dns server and for linux there are quite a few a click on that button and it will install the package I will need and configure it for me with no confusion

Re: MS pushing themselves out of the market?

ollie — Thu Jul 20, 2006 11:51 am

Author: ollie

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 11:51 am

Microsoft are starting to have problems with Vista/Office 2007 already - they have had to add Open Document Format support to Office 2007 at the request of governments and large corporations (only read support so far I think) and it is not released. In late 2005 a Microosft exec stated that to effectively run Vista and Office with all the bells you would need 2 GB of RAM, SATA-II HDD, dedicated graphics card with 256 MB memory and he didn't mention having any other applications running. Recent costings with these specs put the system at $2500+ in Australia without Office (assuming Vista is the same price as XP Pro).

Not many businesses can afford to have $2500 tied up on systems doing Internet, e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets, which is all most office systems do really , so cheaper alternatives with these features become more attractive all the time. The current versions of Apple's iMacs are also looking good for these tasks with better multimedia support and security (due to the FreeBSD background) and with Bootcamp making the installation of Windows easy market share will increase.

IMHO, Linux needs a single place to configure installed components, preferably with a GUI interface, to make skills truly transferable between distributions. I use OpenSUSE with YaST which makes a great start but really it needs to be much more "intelligent" - if I don't have a DNS server installed why do I need the configuration icon.