You don't win by being "good". You win by being outstanding. MS died and stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago.
What features does vista have that XP doesn't that are worthwhile? What is pushing people to upgrade? Nothing as far as I can see.
Now you can buy PCs without an OS, and some very cool portables like the asus eeepc using linux, I'd expect MS dominance to take a major bashing over the next years on PCs. Not to mention the march of Apple.
You can't really start an article with "As Apple fanboyism has spread throughout the tech publications" and expect to be taken seriously. Especially when you then churn out obvious Microsoft fanboyism.
I think to be honest the whole point is becoming moot. The operating system is becoming irrelevent. Everything is moving onto the web (Despite ms trying hard to stop it by adding bugs and incompatibilites into IE ;) ). Luckily though IE is nose diving in usage.
Add to that the new motherboards that ship with linux for a fast startup into a browser, and what is the reason for most people to boot into a full blown monolithic beast such as vista?
"MS died and stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago"
Is this 2020? It must be the future because MS has not died and is still very relevant.
"Now you can buy PCs without an OS,"
How many non geeks do you know that bought one of these? I know 0.
"The operating system is becoming irrelevent"
Again this must be 2020 because the OS is still essential to almost 100% of computer users.
"IE is nose diving in usage"
Any stats to back up this claim? I'm not seeing it, in fact IE7 usage is now higher than Firefox on hundreds of my managed websites.
I'm sorry but you live in fantasy tech-geek world where Linux and browser based operating systems are the norm. Do me favor and do some work for real "users" and then re-evaluate your opinions about where MS is and is heading.
--Is this 2020? It must be the future because MS has not died and is still very relevant.
My point, as has been made in the past, is that MS has not innovated for a good many years. No one is scared by MS any more. No one cares what they do. They aren't leading anything. They are simply trying to eke out their monopoly for all its worth.
No startup thinks "Oh no what if ms are developing a similar thing", because we all know they aren't.
I expect they could still turn it around, but they'd have to actually make things people want which isn't what they are used to. They are used to a monopoly.
I found last year when I worked an Ajax project that when I replace DOM that contains images, IE 6/7 will load images twice. While Safari, Firefox and Opera all just load those images once. So if your managed servers have any program that replaces DOM on the fly that contains images, IE's usage in server log will be higher because IE wastes the bandwidth twice.
What features does vista have that XP doesn't that are worthwhile? What is pushing people to upgrade? Nothing as far as I can see.
Now you can buy PCs without an OS, and some very cool portables like the asus eeepc using linux, I'd expect MS dominance to take a major bashing over the next years on PCs. Not to mention the march of Apple.
You can't really start an article with "As Apple fanboyism has spread throughout the tech publications" and expect to be taken seriously. Especially when you then churn out obvious Microsoft fanboyism.
I think to be honest the whole point is becoming moot. The operating system is becoming irrelevent. Everything is moving onto the web (Despite ms trying hard to stop it by adding bugs and incompatibilites into IE ;) ). Luckily though IE is nose diving in usage.
Add to that the new motherboards that ship with linux for a fast startup into a browser, and what is the reason for most people to boot into a full blown monolithic beast such as vista?