Replying to Future of Microsoft ?

Well, first off...I'm not really into PC gaming...so what I look for in the OS is different from what you are probably searching for. I think that Microsoft's OS is good. I've went through other alternatives before, but I much prefer Windows. I don't think they'll be going down anytime soon. I don't doubt that they will ever fall, but for the moment Microsoft still has control ^_^

I think the future of Microsoft depends greatly on how well they will do in the media convergence. Will they try to conquer every possible platform or will they settle for compliance with other operating systems. Don't know really which one would be the better option for MS, might even be neither.

Microsoft, like many other companies, are trying to get into as many possible areas of business as possible. They plan to challenge google in the web searching business, Apple (and others) in the electronic music business, etc. It is unlike that they will succeed in everything, but equally unlikely won't wind up with nothing.

I don't think Microsoft will go down in near future. Most likely they will be able to keep the majority in OSses, regardless of how badly Longhorn sucks. Windows XP sucks but hey, people obey, download SP2 instead of running to the nearest Linux/UNIX store (ok there is no such thing...).

The success of Microsofts OSs depend greatly on the gaming world, both PC and console. Will games companies keep on releasing less profitable PC games instead of console games? Also the technical development of consoles and their comparison to PCs (graphic accelerators in particular) performance will have its affect. I believe that for many people who play PC games regularly, including me, a change to console gaming would mean abandoning Windows. I have actually made a some sort of decision already that I am not going to buy 64-bit windows, unless it absolutely rules which is highly unlike. If the OS is difficult to use illegally (yes I'm a big bad pirate), and I update to a 64-bit system I will start using Linux or BSD and for gaming going for a console (be that PS3 or whatver...). And heck the gaming in Linux has been constantly, although slowly, improving.

which show yet ANOUTHER different shade of blue

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Do you mean they're changing the colour of the infamous blue screen ?

I think Microsoft are going down. More and more people are switching to different OSs (I think I saw somewhere that 25% of PCs run Linux) - and MS aren't doing very well in the browser wars either. Lots of big corporations are also switching to Linux based OSs, and one helluva lot of servers run Apache on Linux.

Start the rebellion of Open Source, and tell those evil Microsoft guys to f*** off!

They Patent Software which was Used in Unix decades before Microsoft was funded.
(god knows how they got that through the patent office)

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I wouldn't be suprised if someone at the patent office got a bit of a pay rise after that . From what I can remember Microsoft never used to be anywhere near this dirty, but then that may just have been because i was younger and so more partial to Microsofts propoganda.

Microsoft Keep beeing exposed.. keep losing legal battes.... but nobody seems to care.

There Software is the most expensive, the least secure, the lest reliable.
They Patent Software which was Used in Unix decades before Microsoft was funded.
(god knows how they got that through the patent office)

Is it OK to say that until MS has read over the law books a million times and has sued every company they can, that would be the end of them?

Although this is definitely not where most of their income is generated from, in fact it's the smallest percent, most of it is OEM software and corporate companies, not to mention the home users. Although still this is still marginal, they've now hit the gaming industry with releasing their console into the market. As long as they can continue marketing and bagging others and monopolising, they will contine for quite some time.

How many quotes have come through MS that have just lied through their teeth, MS is good for lying and stealing, it's how their company came to be. Digital Research, IBM and Apple must have kicked themselves hard when it happened and I'm sure they don't like dealing with MS that much either but due to popularity and market hold they really have no choice.

MS have to start reading the rule books and try sabotaging. Eventually some bright spark will show MS up and it may not even be Linux involved, I'm hoping.


Cheers, MC

well, you're right. flashdrives are the future. no more spinning disk but solid memory.
besides that: doom3 was extremely heavy when the beta version leaked, but when i bought it, it runned very smooth.
same will go for longhorn: they'll fix some memory-wasting parts and it'll run a bit lighter
but the problem is that it just takes too long! by the time it'll be finished, 1/3 of it will be 'old' software.

I am both excitied and worried about Longhorn at the same time. If its a huge faliure, Microsoft will have a huge problem on their hands. As you know, Longhorn isn't a simple Operating System to run. Heck, I think you need a computer from 2003 to even run it decently enough. It will be a major problem for laptops too, as I tihnk it will drain the batter faster than ever

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Hey.. maybe by the time Longhorn is out PC technology will have advanced beyond Physical storeage.. and instead of a hard disk, we will have some kind of non volitile ram.... (or internal USB thumb drives)

spinning those heavy ceramic disks in the hard drive 7200 times a miute must eat up some power.

I am both excitied and worried about Longhorn at the same time. If its a huge faliure, Microsoft will have a huge problem on their hands. As you know, Longhorn isn't a simple Operating System to run. Heck, I think you need a computer from 2003 to even run it decently enough. It will be a major problem for laptops too, as I tihnk it will drain the batter faster than ever

hm, longhorn is gonna be bad i think. it was gonna be released around 2005. now it's 2006-2007 and the filesystem is not gonna be in it yet, but will come later on in a service pack or something like that.
meanwhile, apple releases their new os, which is great.
also meanwhile, linux distributions keep evolving
but microsoft will remain same old till 2007... that's just bad.
untill then, longhorn will be ... antique... it'll have parts that were programmed in 2002... what to think about that.
from what i've heard, it uses huge amounts of recourses too. well, that were beta versions off course, but still. it's a bad thing that it takes so long.
apple is doing a great job. they got very popular with the ipod, and they are getting better and better. the os isn't as heavy as xp and certenly not as heavy as longhorn, but very powerfull. gmail servers are macs!!!!

xbox will last, but then again: ps3 is coming soon... they'll have to come up with something too!