In the past year, Microsoft appears to have done just what it asked a court not to make it do: fragment Windows. Our Take: I believe that this article doesn’t have all its facts right and it is just an overreaction. Windows currently has three big families (XP, Server and embedded — code-wise makes sense to be different as they serve different purposes), but the sub-versions for these families are not all that different, hence there is no real fragmentation, but merely, customization (with compatibility tightly kept firm) in order to have different price ranges and attract more customers.
Windows Faces New Competition: Itself
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
They’re picking the most used features of the low end OSes and bumping them up to a higher priced OS. Look at the difference between XP home & Pro. The key features for businesses got moved up to Pro…Why? Because they can. Notice that from Win 95 to Win XP they’ve made a habit of adding in tons of enterprise features to gain the market, and now they are slowly removing them from the base versions. Win 95 included a simple, cheap post office, Office XP took it away! Note recent things like the silly 5-user CAL for WinXP-you can’t use it for even a simple office printer server/web sharing wo paying$$. Look at how they recently “redistributed” the CALs for Terminal server. It was included free with XP Pro, now they called it “seperate”. Next OS cycle you’ll be paying extra to keep what you already use! It’s becoming a habit with them!
They’re systamaticlly sucking the value out of Windows for anything except being a glorified TV set! From WinME to XP Home, you lost any chance at using your box other than a client and paid 90$ for the privilage. You had to buy new hardware, software and all the new stuff is booby-traped with MS usage controls! On the server side it’s the same thing…I don’t use MS servers, but looking at the feature sheets, you can see how features have “crept” up the food chain. Note, they created 3 new server varieties from Win 2000 server, Web, Enterprise, and datacenter. Also note that the lower versions have had feature limits sneeked into them that weren’t there before. Note that most users wouldn’t notice the difference between unlimited and 1000 CALs, but the people that use Win servers will notice, espically if they are at the edge of the envelope. The price tiers jump like 400% each step up the ladder.
I’m not normally a MS basher, but these are just facts about what they have done in the past! True, some of them are trivial, but taken as a whole, it’s outright abusive.
<sarcasm>MS is not a bad & illegal monoply!</sarcasm>
The contention of the article seems to be that Microsoft’s testimony in court does not fit their business practices. Umm… has it ever? Should anything otherwise really be expected?
This is quite silly. They call the 64-bit edition fragmentation. It is not fragmentation, because you can’t really chose between Home, 64-bit, and the TabletPC version. They are each extremely specialized and cannot be mixed. If you have a server you run Windows 2003 Server (or whatever they’re calling it now) with whatever kind you need, if you’re running a home PC you use XP Home, if you’re running on a corporate network you run XP Pro, if you’re running on a 64-bit workstation you run XP 64-bit, if you’re running one of those funny-looking HP boxes you run XP Media Center. This is not fragmentation, this is specialization. Especially since each one is EXTREMELY closely linked to the others (they share an extremely common code base) so there is no reason one would progress and leave the others behind. There is no competion–in most if not all cases you have one obvious choice and a whole bunch of silly alternatives (if you have 4 GB of RAM and a 3.06 GHz processor on an AMD Opteron, why the hell would you run XP Tablet???).
The XP and Server Families (and embedded though NOT WinCE) are really one and the same – they use the same codebase. You can use ntswitch to verify this – 2k3 server will come up as XP pro (albeit updated) after the “transformation”. It’s all the same – just minor surface differences – The engine is the same across the board
“our take” is very misleading. it’s all eugenia’s point of view. there doesn’t seem to be an “our” there when the sentence itself starts with “i”.
Many of these “versions” used to be value added work for someone else! If you wanted a pen tablet, you went to Que; if you wanted a cash register, you went to panasonic; if you wanted high-end networking, you bought novell: They added value to MS windows in specific niches. After MS spent years stamping out differentiation in the OEM & ISV channel, now they want the whole pie for themselves! Realize that ATI & Creative & Shuttle could have done a much better job of a “media pc” than MS, but OEMs wouldn’t be allowed to sell it if it didn’t “look” just right per MS. All the new “versions” are just an attempt to meter out the software to gain more profit or to fill a market hole MS destroyed several years ago.
Actually, XP Pro comes up at NT 5.1.xxx while Windows Server 2003 comes up at NT 5.2.xxx. The update is as big from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.
Realize that ATI & Creative & Shuttle could have done a much better job of a “media pc” than MS
None of the companies you mentioned made software that competes with Windows XP Media Center. Based on ATI/Creative/Shuttle hardware, you can still use Windows XP Media Center – Microsoft doesn’t compete directly with hardware makers. Meanwhile, since where ATI and Shuttle made anything remotely like Windows XP Media Center? HDTV reciever with a remote control and a nice cube-space PC doesn’t count.
All the new “versions” are just an attempt to meter out the software to gain more profit or to fill a market hole MS destroyed several years ago.
Let’s look at Windows XP Media Center – prior to that, how did Microsoft destroyed the market? Because competitors like TiVo and ReplayTV (however unporfitable they are) manage to scare media companies so much to fill lawsuits show that the market was there before Microsoft came on the scene.
And as for gaining more profit – what do you think they are after? This isn’t the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundatio – their are a profit company, not a non-profit organization.
“I believe that this article doesn’t have all its facts right”
Then why is it on OSNews?
“Then why is it on OSNews?”
You just answered your own question.
>>Actually, XP Pro comes up at NT 5.1.xxx while Windows Server 2003 comes up at NT 5.2.xxx. The update is as big from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.<<
Yes – but if you use ntswitch – the computer will come up as XP Pro – with a version number of 5.2. My point was XP and 2K3 are the same basic codebase.
“Note, they created 3 new server varieties from Win 2000 server, Web, Enterprise, and datacenter.”
Actually, there is only one new server variety. The Web Edition is the only new variety. It is “lesser” than the standard Server OS.
Datacenter has been around since at least Windows 2000. The Enterprise edition is the next version of Advanced Server.
Why do they need totaly seperate versions, I mean if the code is basicly the same. They could just have add-ons you could get from your local software store, or download from the ms site.
Why do they need totaly seperate versions, I mean if the code is basicly the same. They could just have add-ons you could get from your local software store, or download from the ms site.
mo $$$
Customized is what the court wanted, isn’t it? It’s been a while since I read the court docs, but it sounds the same to me. Media edition is a customized WinXP. What about CE/PocketPC? That’s a customized version of NT, yes?
I’m pretty tired of this topic anyway. Actually, I’m more tired of all the “Linux Commentaries”…
Yeah, me too! If you can’t operate a toaster properly, please don’t publish a Linux review. If you can’t see a niche for any operating system (even if it sux), please don’t publish a Linux review. If your computer experience is more than 50% on any platform, please don’t publish a Linux review.
Seriously, Windows has been a fragmented platform for a long time now. Why it’s suddenly news now is beyond me. Just on publically accessable/visible machines in Portland, Oregon, you will find Windows 3.1/DOS 6.22 (either the English or German version depending on if you’re looking at a TriMet schedule kiosk or a TriMet ticket vending machine), Windows NT 3 and 4 (both flavors are used in schools that haven’t moved thier older hardware to linux yet, as well as many libraries in Washington County), Windows 95, 98, 2000, CE and XP (Windows Server is basically XP Server had the previous naming convention been kept). That’s a large variety of versions across four major fragments.
The differences between these fragments are not negligable, either. CE stuff just plain won’t run on other varients of Windows without major rewrites, and vice versa. NT is relatively new to the home market and is basically being forced on the people who picked the wrong Windows fragment and is (now) more or less binary compatible with the 9x branch. And we all know about the original Windows and Windows 9x fragments being dead for years now.
Windows has always competed against itself. Each new version of Windows has been bigger, slower (generally), and more resource-intensive than previous versions, creating a trade-off for users to consider when upgrading.
Windows For Workgroups 3.11 flies like a bat out of hell on any Pentium or higher system, although I would currently consider Win98SE to be the best of all possible Windows-centric worlds right now, given such factors as speed, size, compatibility, etc.