XP lives... for a price

Linux is going to creep into the market - word of mouth is slow

While I am a devoted Linux user I like XP SP3. I know it could be better but it is so much better than Vista on mere mortal machines. I'm sure some folks have amazing user experiences with Vista but on all of the machines I have used it on Vista is slow and needlessly complicated. All of the shiny graphics and soft sounds are impressive and desirable but not at the cost of a mondo-machine or times wasted for the computer to catch up. Not to me anyhow.

I have had a growing number of people I know who have bought a new Vista machine and within a few months come to me to complain about its slowness or cranky-ness. One called last night b/c her browser failed and they can't get out to the 'net grab a fresh copy. I'm simply not supporting Vista over the phone. I am unable to b/c I don't know all the answers and tricks by memory. Can't tell them to click here and there by memory. I have little interest in learning to either. She's thinking about rolling back to XP or perhaps I can persuade her to go to Linux.

Several friends have surprisingly come to me asking about "Leeenicks". On two occasions they have been retirees! They've heard of it and want more information and they know that I have used it for 5+ years now. About 4-5 have had me install it for them and all are impressed.

Their understand of "free software" only extends to free software that expires or clogs up your computer or that screensaver they installed one time that caused all sorts of stability/privacy/pop-up problems. These folks are happy to find that there is a parallel universe where software is written by the community for community. Once they see it - they get it really fast.

When there has been a hiccup (wireless driver that won't work right) they are satisfied that I can or they can go out on the web and find a solution.

At work there are no Vista machines "in the wild" yet. Too many occasions where our XP software won't work with Vista. To my surprise due to serious budget crunches (in higher ed) there is serious talk of moving to Solaris or Linux or some combination of it. I am encouraging the my boss to switch us from MS Office to OpenOffice so instead of OpenOffice trying to act like MS Office, OpenOffice can act like itself where it is 100% compatible.

MS Office might still be the better suite for high end users but there are alot of users here who just won't ever need those high end functions. They need to write memos, send e-mails, write lessons, grade papers, etc.

I think Linux is creeping into the mainstream. That's a good method because shiny TV ads would simply build people's expectations. Let folks find it themselves for free and these people will understand that for the cost Linux is unbeatable. Eventually it won't be OSS trying to be compatible with Windows - it'll be the other way around. MS customers will demand it. Already friends and family are starting to see the value in picking file formats in any software they use that is more universal and less MS-centric. PDF is one good example. Instead of sending a .DOC which may or may not be readable by the person on the other end - why not send a PDF? Programs like PDF Creator and OpenOffice's export to PDF is changing that.

Instead of people's user abilities increasing to make best use of Vista, I think a good number of people are instead seeing the alternatives as their "world" gets bigger.

I've been a Mandriva user since 10.1 and recently switched to Linux Mint. I have my machine dual booting XP for the occasional store bought game for the kids. Truth be told they spend alot of time playing Linux games though.

XP lives... for a price

the fact that users still want XP despite that M$ offers no support anymore and you have restiction on WLAN,drive size etc, does mean something:

Either users have no clue and/or they do not need other computers/software.

M$ can continue selling XP without the need to offer anything beyond a pure copy; price next to nothing, a real money maker.

The other side is that M$ has reached its limit where people will not simply buy the next OS because it is from M$. It will be interessting to see who the business model of M$ will adapt to that. OSS will simple eat away there margin piece by piece, as people will discover that bugfixes mean something.

In due time...

Man, with the recent auto bail out bill being passed, forcing ford, gm, and chrysler to RETOOL and offer GREEN friendly cars (FINALLY), can be greatly compared to the Linux/MS/APPLE companies and the economy.

People are not going to be spending loads of money this xmas, nor in the forseeable future.

Unfortunetly, Ubuntu or the dreaded Novell Suse/MS Distro do not advertise. If only Mark would shell out a major Advertising campaign for X-mas! Offer a super low priced Netbook, HUNDREDS of dollars cheaper than an XP Pro equivalant, would no doubt get people to start talking about ubuntu and this NEW operating system called Linux/Ubuntu. Shuttleworth wants this, I presume, right?

I simply dont understand why he cant spend a few of his millions on a few TV, radio, newpaper and Google ADs???? I mean,,, he started this whole thing called Ubuntu.

NOW is the time to advertise!!!

I never see any Linux Ads or Ubuntu Ads. WHY?

Now is the time... hit the market while its melting and people are looking for BIG bargains.

Linux is a bargain.

Well said

I for one have done just that, switched to an iMac at home and have never regretted it once. I'm now about to replace my Win XP PC that several times daily drops the network connection and has to be rebooted to reconnect, with either an iMac or a Linux PC, both of which are offered pre-configured for our US Lab and are within $300. of the Windows Vista PC's offered as well.

We do Science here and most of the scientist use a Linux based PC to connect to Linux servers etc.

We must have reliability. We can't reboot a hardware control PC several times a day/week that would interrupt our research.

I just do not understand the failures at M$.

Very good comments here. The ones discussing intentional resource wasting are particularly interesting. Here's my 2 cents. As a programmer/tech guy since the mid 80's, I started out on Unix and CPM because they were the only viable small business networking OS's. I was a command line guy and liked the powere of grep, awk, sed and shell scripts. Here is what I don't understand: Why is the M$ software so complicated and buggy? It seems as if they thrive on over-complicating things, comming up with a new acronym each week. Now, I don't expect perfection. I groan when people complain that a new experimental jet fighter didn't work well out of the gates or that the super collider has some bugs. Cutting edge requires a lot of refinement. Just installed a W2K3 server, upgrading a W2K domain. Why in the world should there be so many problems that require reading so much doc and searching the interenet, eventid.net, google groups etc to fix things that should most definetly come up in M$ testing. SP1 kills perms for the network/service account - including RPC and now your windows installer, network connections etc won't work. Errors generated by an unused load balancing service. Errors about drive caching that are not valid due to battery backups. Diffuculty in setting up perms for remote users. Mysterious MS DTC errors with even stranger fixes, Etc, Etc, Etc. It is not acceptable. So much money, so many talented people. Why? Why? Why? And then there is the mindset, the culture if you will, of the OS. Click, righ-click-advanced-special tab-double advanced blah blah blah..... Everything is tucked here and there like cupboards, drawers, and crawl spaces in a ramshackle old house. Use the menu, use the snap in, use the command line. It is ugly. Why are all the tears necessary to upgrade a mail server? Why all the layer after layer of junk. True, they do at least now supply some menu driven scripts to add server roles, but why must everything be such a headache (in truth it can be challenging and fun at times). I guess it is good for job security, but it seems like such a waste. It might just be me. If you want to slam me and just say I don't know what I am talking about, fine. Slam me. Truly, maybe it is just me. I do not know if I could design something more elequent because I am not an OS programmer. But there just has to be a better model. Perhaps much will become moot as cloud computing takes hold and most apps are run on a third pary server on a farm far away. I would not mind an OS that used a web browser for all configuration tasks. And for that matter, I like some new apps I have used that are browser based. Progress is being made. Now I just have to decide whether to change the name of the new server to the old and still try to keep DNS and DHCP on the ........