I've completely removed all traces of Vista for now. Well on my rather slow machine was not exactly running that fast under Vista (AMD 3200, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb GeForce). I guess when the base operating system needs about 400-500Mb of RAM just for itself, it leaves very little for other apps. It does slow down once you have a few apps running at the same time ... [iTunes, Eclipse, Tomcat, Firefox, Office, PDF Viewer]. The weird part is that the same set of apps. all co-exist quite happily on XP, and under Ubuntu you almost forget how many apps. you really are running.
As a whole, Vista does have a nicer UI compared to XP, Explorer took a while getting used to. IE7 is actually usable (the only weird bit was having to endure ads. on the internet -- Firefox+Adblock ensures a practically ad-free browsing experience). I'll certainly give it a go once they are out of Beta and into the final releases. Assuming I do not have to upgrade my hardware to get the Vista experience.
After having fiddled with it for a few weeks, most sys. admin. types will need to spend quite a few months getting into this O/S. Given the number of changes and issues that are likely to crop up, the uptake in the corporate (managed) environment will be very slow. My guess is that it will get a solid uptake around 2008 by which time most of the hardware companies would have caught up, SP1 will be out, training material/books will be available. So, if you work in a corporate environments where they love SOEs (Standard operating environments), then be very patient .. this is not a roll-out that they will be willing to undertake very fast. Bottom-line: Vista does not offer a lot of new features that are 'needed', then again it has the best looking Solitaire I've ever played -- so you never know... they may just have the killer app. to convince most management.
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Here is my predictions for the O/S land:
1. Vista will be released in Dec/Jan timeframe to the world, with SP1 in around middle of 2007. (Yes, I'm probably in the 0.00000001% of the population that belives that M$ can pull this off)
2. Linux will gain popularity slowly and probably will get about 10-15% of the O/S market over the next 3-4 years. I'd love for Linux to be 20-30%, but sadly Windows is what most people know and like -- that kinda builds up a massive resistance to change. The one strong upside for Linux is the fact that the $100 PC project is using Linux and a lot of device makers are using Linux in their product lines. If you count these into the picture.....
3. OSX will continue to gain market share as well. They may be able to get upto 10% or so as well over the next few years. My confidence is not that high for this one though.
4. Vista will be about 30% of the O/S market in the next 3 year timespan. So this will really mean that in 2009/10 .. XP will most likely still be the dominant O/S. Sad, but that is the most likely outcome. Ultimately, this means that the funky new technologies that Microsoft has built into Vista will not take off very fast.
For good or bad, the future looks very fragmented indeed.
2 comments:
Fragmented isn't necessarily bad. Consistency is good, but Microsoft has been plenty accused of quashing inovation from having such a dominant position in the market.
Perahaps now we will see a new wave of inovative ideas sweep the PC world.
Yeah, innovation is what we really need now.
I'm constantly astounded as to the development that gets done on Xgl and Compiz technologies for linux. I didn't ahve the time during the semester, but you could re-sync your repository every week to receive new updates. It was just amazing how quickly features were being brought to the table.
Most of the 'eye candy' innovations made in Xgl and Compiz are actually quite nice to use. That is, they actually have a use other then looking attractive. Which is more than what I can say about Vista. Look at expose' (tiling thing on Macs). That is a really nice way to quickly switch between programs. Flip3D on Vista is aweful. You still have to flip through each window to find what you want.
I'm a little bit bias towards linux but its only because I see the development first hand. Then look at Microsoft (who have some of the most talented people in the world i'm sure) and look at, or the absence there of, of there development efforts.
Xgl and Compiz are by no means mainstream. BUT the desktop (XServer in general, Gnome, KDE desktop environments etc) are maturing significantly. Apple has a fantastic OS (if you're into that sort of thing) and now that they can run XP apple users have the best of both worlds.
So what is Microsoft doing?
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