General discussion
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Topic
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Did Vista Flop?
LockedWith few exceptions Microsoft makes sound market evaluations and business
decisions which is how they have achieved market dominance, it obviously has not come from a consistently superior product. Vistas hardware requirements and introduction at a time of impending financial crises represents a rare marketing foopah for MS. The bottom and half of one side of poor Vista’s coffin were nailed before it’s release.Extending the service life of XP was a good move, everybody wins, abandoning the ?subscription software? concept also a definite plus, perhaps their next offering will be less bloated and more secure without having to accommodate the master administrator in Redmond.
My small business client?le are looking for cost effective, scalable, secure and reliable data management. In volume licensing, when the annual per terminal costs for security suites and malware / spy ware applications are factored in Vista fell short of
meeting the all of the clients parameters and alternatives were sought.I have taken this opportunity to introduce many of my clients to open source solutions Suse 11.0 being the preferred distro. At this point in evolution it’s just like any other install or upgrade, no more or less challenging, just a bit different. The same can be said for the UI and apps, just as intuitive, just as powerful, just a bit different.
The surprise for me lately has been the number of inquiries I have had from the folks using these workstations that now want it dual booted at home, seems to take about 90 days
Ironic, change and apprehension come as a matched set, whether it is going to Vista, playing XP to the bitter end hoping for the next ?quantum leap? or going to the open source community.
Now, I am a PC, and I believe the ?Vista gap? is going to give the open source community exposure that normally would have not happened had Vista been well received. This might even reintroduce the concept of ?what does this workstation really need to perform the required tasks efficiently?? Is WOW required?
A full blown multi media center and resource hungry animated GUI is not a prerequisite for every workstation in an enterprise environment, for Christ’s
sake, your at work!