A Vista revolt begins?
Well, well: The Browser isn't the only one who's asking hard questions about Vista two months before it's available to consumers. PC Pro reports that an executive at Acer is saying Microsoft's cheapest version of Vista, Vista Home Basic, doesn't bring anything new to the table. "The new [Vista] experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won't feel it at all," Jim Wong told the UK-based PC trade publication. That means customers will be paying for a system that's not a substantive upgrade over Windows XP at all. But what's really galling, according to Wong, is that Microsoft is increasing by 10 percent the wholesale license fees it charges PC makers for Vista Home Basic, which will cut into PC makers' already razor-thin margins. (Analysts estimate the average wholesale price of Windows at $70.)
But do PC makers have any choice? They could continue to sell Windows XP, of course, since Microsoft has yet to discontinue that product: It will still be available for a year, according to Microsoft policy. But PC makers will be hard-pressed to sell XP systems when competitors have Vista systems next to them on shelves. Looks like the PC crowd is out of luck. To PC-industry executives like Wong, Linux must be looking better and better every day. While your comments may be true, it is also true that 99% of common apps are written to MS. Linux may be good and getting better, but there is NO migration tool or Linux based system for the typical home user that has anything close to the MS apps suite. Simple examples are Word, Excel and FrontPage. Also, as each MS reelase, update or patch more tightly integrates the "bundle", unlinking them becomes more difficult. Even MS advanced tools are unable to completely restore a registry that has been corrupted by, say, IE7 RTM - as I found out recently. Nothing short of a disk wipe/reformat and clean reinstall of the OS will work (which is why total drive backups are needed by EVERYONE on a regular basis. Anyway, slightly off topic. One needs to give credit to the MS vision and cajones that allowed them to become the dominant personal OS. With the costs of development, any replacement to MS - including browsers is at least two or three years out.
Uhm, If everyone has to pay more for the licence, then that will just add to the price tag of the PC. Why would PC makers allow the extra cost to chip away that their margin?
The college I work at has not intention on upgrading to Vista. Most of our labs are still using NT and some are still running instruments the use Windows 98.
Actually, Novell's SLES 10 has a great Office-type suite, OpenOffice, as well as a virtual Windows app that will let you run Windows-only apps. Linux is becoming a viable alternative for a larger and larger segment of users.
I have a feeling there are a lot of changes and PC Pro either didn't look hard or doesn't know what they're talking about. I know the RC1 release had lots of changes, and I doubt Microsoft would remove all of them for the basic version.
This is great....another person telling me that MS is doing something so horrible everyone is going to flock to linux. Because we LOVE a computer that can't readily be used with our USB mouse, webcamera, joysticks, controllers, printers and other 'extraneous' devices. No automatic updates, no software compatability, but it is free! And that makes it better! I've been hearing this same tired argument against microsoft for the last decade. It stopped being heard about the same time.
To the person who said that Linux fails to replicate MS-like products is Please take a look at either Fedora, Red Hat, or Suse Linux. Name a MS product and I'll name a Linux equivalent that is more stable and more secure. MS Internet Explorer (Linux - Firefox 2.0); MS Office (Linux - OpenOffice); MS Outlook (Linux - Mozilla Thunderbird); MS IIS Web Server (Linux - Apache Web Server); MS SQL Database (Linux - MySQL Database); (Winamp for Windows - XMMS for Linux). Most of these applications will run on Windows and Mac's as well.
SuSe, Fedora, and Red Hat have easy, automated graphical user interface installations. They also have graphical desktop systems that allow for an easy transition from Windows to Linux. Give Linux a try. I don't necessarily agree with the assessment given to Windows Vista from PC Pro, but I certainly don't agree with the blanket observation given to Linux. There is a flavor for every desktop user, to the programmer/developer and expert all the way down to the very beginner. I have to agree with Rashime RC1 ran like a champ even in the 64bit. There were quite a few things that were different about vista than xp. After having worked for a large eletronics retailer for more than 2 years I have discovered Linux's major flaw. Most people would never be able to figure it out. Consumers are entirely locked on windows. Vista may even seem like a major change to them. The process for installing apps isn't the same on linux as it is on windows, so although it linux is looking better it is still far from consumer ready. We also see linux constantly changing. Since its open source its really never finished. I would like to see someone try to explain and sell that to an average consumer. (Good luck I have tried)
Dont care i've been running Linux for 5 yrs now
Yet another reason we should all switch to Macs or Linux. When will the world finally deal with the Microsoft monopoly? I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have such a fast and reliable iMac with no third party software to run on it.
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