by Playfuls Staff |
22nd January 2007
Yup, it’s time for some serious Vista-kicking: in this article we’ll discuss the competition Windows Vista is getting this year and what are the odds for success or failure.[more]
Let me remind you first some of the ambitions Microsoft has concerning Windows Vista and what others should expect from it:
- MS hopes to have at least 200 million PCs with their next-generation OS installed by the end of 2008
- to drive the world and American economy towards huge profits (according to press releases from Redmond, Windows Vista operating system will have a $7 billion impact on New York state's economy, while seventeen percent of the state's information technology employment will be Vista-related- creating more than 16,000 new IT jobs; MS also hopes that Windows Vista will provide a foundation for the information technology market moving forward, creating more than 100,000 new jobs and driving $70 billion or more in revenues for Microsoft’s partners and the industry at large
- according to IDC, Vista's impact on the IT market will go far beyond Microsoft, driving revenues and growth for more than 1 million IT companies worldwide that sell hardware, write software, provide IT services, or serve as IT distribution channels
- Within its first year of shipment, MS expects Windows Vista to be installed on more than 90 million computers worldwide. More than 35 million computers in the U.S. are expected to run one of Vista’s many flavors.
- In the U.S., Windows Vista-related employment will reach 18% of IT employment in its first year of shipment.
- Within the U.S., in 2007 as many as 200,000 IT companies that produce, sell, or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista will employ over 660,000 people; another 1.15 million will be employed at IT using firms.
- While much of this employment will shift from Windows XP-related employment, over 60% of the growth in Windows-related employment will be driven by Windows Vista.
- For every dollar of Microsoft revenue from Windows Vista in 2007 in the U.S., the ecosystem beyond Microsoft will reap $18 in revenues. In 2007 this ecosystem should sell about $70 billion in products and services revolving around Windows Vista.
- Microsoft partners are expected to invest in the vicinity of $10 billion between now and the end of 2007, readying their products and services around Windows Vista and then rolling them out.
- In the U.S. that means more than 35 million units should be shipped, driving nearly $4 billion in revenue to Microsoft. In the scheme of total IT spending, Microsoft's Windows Vista revenue will be small- about 1% of total IT spending in the U.S.
Ok, enough with statistics and expectations. Now let’s see what Vista has to overcome in order to achieve (at least) some of these objectives.
First of all, Windows Vista has to overcome its own predecessor. Windows XP is by far the most powerful “enemy” of Vista, because it is installed on more than 80% of world’s PCs. With the launch of Service Pack 2, XP has become more stable and only then one could say it reached its “maturity” (but no, we didn’t get rid of BSODs, I know…). Vista’s source code, on the other side, which has been completely written from scratch, makes it the perfect candidate for instability in the first year (or probably the first two years) thus indicating that XP is still a better choice.
Another rival for Vista, intrinsically linked to XP, is the famous hardware upgrade. You all know by now that in order to run Vista at full capacity (Aero, DirectX 10, etc.) you need a state-of-the-art PC, with at least 2GB of RAM, a 64-bit CPU (Vista is optimized for this type of processing) and a video card with at least 256 video memory. The question posed by many industry analysts and end-users is: is the hardware upgrade worth it? Are Aero and DirectX10 enough reasons to upgrade, considering the free XGL or Java 3D Desktop alternatives, and the fact that DX10 applications are not yet available (and they will not be a long time from now on)? Consider also the fact that Vista comes in many flavors, and that only users of Home Premium or Ultimate will have access to Aero or Ultimate Extras (a collection of security and eye-candy features like videos running in the background-instead of wallpapers).
Don’t let yourselves fooled: the $6 billion Vista was built
with and
for hardware resellers and components manufacturers, because they get their profits from selling more powerful systems/components. By contrast, Linux runs on 6 year old PCs and its XGL interface (more advanced than Aero) runs smoothly on 3 year-old configurations.
Unfortunately, one of Vista’s major improvements from the early stages of development, the WinFS, was buried some time ago, and this could be another argument for Vista not being adopted.
Plans for WinFS have been made since Windows Vista was known as Longhorn. Since the beginning it was meant to become one of Longhorn’s strong points in the battle against Linux and/or MacOSX. Everyone would appreciate a Windows OS with a strong file system, object-oriented, with a lot of search capabilities that would ease day-to-day routines.
In 2003, Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates said:
“WinFS-this is unified storage. Some of you here have heard me talk about unified storage for more than a decade. The idea of taking the XML flexibility, database technology, getting it into the file system: that's been a Holy Grail for me for quite some time. And here it is. Thank goodness we have got the powerful systems to be able to do this thing. Thank goodness we have the evolution around XML and user interface capabilities, so that this can all come together."Well, it was a beautiful dream and only a thing of the past. Or maybe we might just get lucky to see it in some sort of uncompromised new version of Microsoft SQL Server or ADO.NET. All we know for now is that the next version of SQL Server would support unstructured data and that entities from WinFS got adopted in ADO.NET.
Windows XP, with all its problems and deficiencies, has nevertheless stood up to all challenges during these past five years. At the present moment, there is almost no hardware or software that is not compatible with Windows XP. With Vista, things are on the exact opposite side.
And consider Linux too. Although the discussion is much more complex, you should know that Linux (unlike Vista) has an advanced file storage system that makes it look “fresh” even after years of intense utilization. It’s free, it’s got a UI much more advanced than Vista’s Aero and you can modify it according to your needs. There are no licensing problems and you beneficiate from instantaneous support from the ever-increasing open-source community. Doesn’t require upgrading your hardware and it’s a reliable platform to work on in every occasion (no spyware, no viruses, no BSOD).
The Macintosh platform is also a thing to consider. We all know by now that Apple switched to Intel-based Macs and that this allowed the parallel booting of Mac OS X and XP (and now Vista) on the good ol’ Mac. This made the platform even more attractive to users and since the majority of software applications are now available for XP, not Vista, this could also be a setback for MS’s next-generation OS. Mac users will most likely prefer XP instead of Vista.
Think also of what Steve Jobs has been preparing until now: the OS X Leopard. At WWDC 2006 messages like “Leopard- Hasta la vista, Vista!”, “Welcome to the right platform” or “Welcome to Vista 2.0” were “shamelessly” posted everywhere at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Leopard is said to be “years ahead of Vista” and here are just a few of its traits (as previewed at WWDC):
- with the new Screen Sharing feature, you and a colleague can share the same desktop
- Leopard improves the way you manage and access information on your Mac. For starters, with Spaces, you can organize your windows into different groups — work, play, communication, creation — and move between them all with ease. Spaces gives you a one-click bird’s eye view of every project.
- you can choose to use Time Machine to back up your drive before installing Leopard.
There have even been speculations that we might see a touch sensitive Mac running Leopard OS in April, after the immense hype generated with the announcement of the iPhone (Apple’s, not Cisco’s).
But all in all, we should ask ourselves if Windows Vista is such a revolutionary OS to justify the heavy investments in new hardware and in its license. For now, after months of testing, I can tell you that the answer is NO.
