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"Microsoft is still resolutely refusing to admit they might have blown it with Vista, even a tiny weeny little bit"

I'm an Apple guy but I've Vista recently and its not all that bad. Yes, its still slow on older hardware (i.e. 2003) and on PCs with <2GB RAM but on a modern computer it runs just fine. The relatively frequent BSODs and crashes that happened to the RTM are now gone (in SP1) and SP1 has fixed up most of the little performance and stability issues there were. Vista may not have had the "warmest welcome" on release but its really alright now that they have fixed up its main problems.

And as for power consumption, you ought to put things into perspective. In the big picture, computers hardly use any power. My huge Xeon DP system uses about 5 cents of power per hour. Even if that doubles to 10 cents, it still won't be of any concern to me. Things like furnaces and water heaters and air conditioners are what use the power in homes.

Edited 2009-01-12 00:21 UTC

Well, those performance and stability issues were not present in XP, so at best you could say Vista was a step backward when it was first released. It's pretty safe to say that they released it before it was ready.

I think I've seen 1 or 2 BSOD's in the 6+ years I've been using XP. As long as your drivers and hardware were good, it just didn't happen enough to even comment on.

Edited 2009-01-12 01:56 UTC

I think you need to look a little further than the confines of your own home, and your own country. I'm talking about the total energy costs of computing generally to a society. That includes businesses and institutions and the giant server farms run by the likes of Google. The amount of energy used by IT is enormous (add in indirect costs, like cooling and air conditioning) and governments are starting to turn their eye to it. In the EU, for example, there is already a determined attempt to reduce energy consumption of electronics via legislation. If you think this isn't going to become a big issue all over the place, you are in for a surprise. Since Microsoft is the prevalent provider of operating systems they are right in the firing line.

Secondly, I was not referring to the stability of Vista. FWIW, I run Vista64 and it is perfectly stable, if rather clunky. I was thinking more of Vista's appeal to corporates and institutions and of its hardware requirements (as was, on release), compared to XP. Even the most rabid fan of Microsoft must admit things here do not seem to have gone exactly according to plan.

Edited 2009-01-12 05:44 UTC

Personally I think any power consumption over 50W is excessive. Video cards in particular are shockers.

Why can't we buy a powerful 2D multimedia video card that only uses 20 watts for under $100? Most people aren't gamers but many of us want smooth blu-ray playback and fast video encoding without needing a quad core $500 CPU.

If you run a ac then the power consumption for your computer just doubled. because most energy in the pc transfers to heat which means that your ac has to work harder to remove that heat.

"I really don't see Microsoft changing much until Ballmer has been sent off to tend his garden. He can afford a rather large one. The company still seems transfixed by Google and is obsessed with dominating every market it enters. The days of domination are long, long gone and as for the Google thang, what this really suggests is that Microsoft has yet to find a skin in which it can feel comfortable. As a company it still doesn't seem to know who or what it is now the glory days of the 1990s are fading."

ok .... think about it, .. If you were running a company would you not want to dominate your market?

I swear, you socialist morons need to read some Ayn Rand.

and this from somebody who does not like microsoft.. but I am a capitalist and understand the principals behind free markets.

Edited 2009-01-12 07:58 UTC

There's a difference between wanting to work towards that goal and assuming that you are entitled to it because of the easy cash cows you have been living off for twenty years.


I didn't see much socialism in the parent's comment, and I see we have another moron who thinks they can quote an author as having the perfect answer as many governments have even done worryingly. Ayn Rand's advice on capitalism and how to run it has proved a complete disaster in the current climate, there are elements of social interest that need to be looked after but nationalisation just leads to stagnation.

I really don't know why people look to these so-called philosophers when the world is clearly not that simple. Is socialism right? Is hands-off capitalism right? That's what people are asking now. The simple fact is that no one is right. It depends.


Do you?

Wouldn't you have to draw a line and define what's your market first? MS seems to be eager to jump on everything related with IT or entertainment.

They just can't dominate everything everywhere (if they do then expect to be sued left and right).

Not necessarily. If it was my own little company perhaps i'd be pretty happy as long as it made me enough money to have a comfortable living. The majority of companies in the world aren't multinational behemots.

Edit.
Also note that wanting to dominate any number of markets is/can be bad business sense. It drains your resources away from your core business and can cost you more than you think.
Many companies has expanded wildly into different sectors only to have it bankrupt them.



You capitalist morons need to read some Karl Marx.
Or just not read Ayn Rand.



Or so you say. I dont recall the principles of free markets including that every company must strive to dominate the market. As I recall, it is about healty competion that in turn is good for consumers.

Edited 2009-01-12 19:11 UTC

Microsoft obviously don't understand the principles of a free market since United States v. Microsoft (1998) when they bundled Internet Explorer unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers.

Or EU v Microsoft (2004) about bundling Windows Media Player.

Ha. You need to read something OTHER than Ayn Rand. She has warped your little brain.



If you really understood the principles behind free markets you would know that competition is what drives the market. Market domination doesn't help anyone but Microsoft. It doesn't facilitate better and cheaper products. It just puts money in Microsoft's pocket and stifles innovation.

Google it appears is no better at the energy/carbon/pollution thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7823387.stm

It seems we must all (users, OS providers, network providers, search providers) start thinking *very* seriously about this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7821754.stm

NB from the latter:

"Casey Harrell, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, said progress had been made but there was room for improvement.

"We're not arguing any more about whether green is good - we're arguing about the definition of green and the pace at which we're getting there," he said.

The campaign group said six companies had refused to take part in the survey - Apple, Asus, Microsoft, Nintendo, Palm and Philips.

Greenpeace said it was disappointing that Apple had refused to cooperate for the second year running, especially since its new range of Macbooks could have scored well."