Linked by Tony Steidler-Dennison on Mon 28th Jul 2008 18:42 UTC, submitted by Dan Warne
Windows Business PC buyers are still overwhelmingly opting for XP, computer giant HP has revealed. Yet at the same time, Microsoft is claiming that Vista is selling faster than XP ever did ... so where's the truth? HP, which is the world's number one computer maker, has explained how Microsoft comes up with these dubious statistics.
Permalink for comment 324913
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
luzr
Member since:
2005-11-20


3) If Microsoft had a bit of vision and could swallow their pride, they could find a way out by going the Apple route...dump both XP and Vista and go for emulation -- none of this virtualization stuff that adds yet more bulk with little benefit -- virtualization should be the focus of the new cleaned up API. All future work is on a lean, cleaned up API over a stable kernel. They could go with a F/OSS kernel, but knowing Microsoft, buying QNX might be a better bet and would allow them to break into markets where they have no credibility.


I keep hearing this argument again and again, and I think it is flawed.

First, you assume that Microsoft problems are due to bad API. Well, more specifically, you seem to assume that XP had serious problems. Well, for business, not so much. XP was extremely successful product.

Now the for the API. Well, Win32 is not great, but if you compare it to e.g. what we have in X11, it is still a relatively good API.

Anyway, the most important problem is that this is API used by majority of world's software. Do you think that it makes a sense for business to rewrite everything? And if they do, would not be better for them to consider abandoning Microsoft altogether and go different path? (either OSX or FOSS).

Of course, everybody touts virtualization, but that will just make existing software second-class citizens.

The reality is that XP and Win32 API works quite well. Throwing everything away does not make sense.

Reply Parent Score: 1