Its coming. Vista that is. And its going to flop. To many pointless features, and too much pandering to the unintelligent masses.

Apple on the other hand has Adobe in their pocket. Intel now in their pocket. Life is good. M$'s OS is in trouble. Apple was doing everything Vista is doing now years ago. and more games are finally being released for Mac.


And then there is Google who with the release of Google Spreadsheet and the acquistion of Writely are obviously gunning to take out M$ office.

Microsoft = Death? GREAT!

I am just waiting for MAC to actually come out with some good software. Once all the software and stuff is reverted over, and files become supported by MAC's then I will change over . I promise .

I dont like Microsoft in the first place.

See, I don't like Microsoft per se, but I'm forced to at least tolerate them because all my stuff tends to require Win software. That said, I love how the Mac OS is unix-based, how stable it is, and how good it looks. I certainly wouldn't mind if Apple or (quelle horror?) Google took over as the OS leader.

I just hope that all of their game studios don't die with them (ensemble studios, they make some awesome games, *cough* Age of Mythology*cough*). I have kindof wanted to switch over to Linux, but A. my mom would destroy me, and B. Most of my games and a lot of applications require windows. What would be great would be if someone integrated a lot of the must haves in WIndows into Linux...

P.S. I noticed that you put a $ instead of an S, do you want to inherit all of the money .

there's this great program called WINE.....

and M$ is a typical abbreviaton for Microsoft.

along with Micro$h1t and others of that nature.

(I happen to like the obfuscation M1cr0$h4f7) WINE allows the running of Windows .exe's and .bat's from within Linux. A friend the other day was saying aq similar thing about Microsoft, but he thinks Google is going to be the one to take over. He said between GoogleFS, Writely, etc, Google may be able to build a version of Linux with KDE and full support for Windows programs (they managed to mod WINE to get Picassa to run for Linux), Google may have a chance of capturing a share of the OS market.

Same goes for me.

@Harq: Ensemble Studios made AOE3 as well right?

I guess this is good news, but why on the day I passed my second MCP test?

Ensemble Studios made AOE 1,2,3 and all the expansions, AOM and teh expansion, and a few other games that i do not know about.

@Elfprince I hope you noticed the big at the end of my last post, i know M$ is a common abbrieviatian.

@Kerm wtf? Microshaft?

I made the *permanent* shift to Linux about a year ago today, and I hope Microsoft dies a fiery death with all of its disasters (Windows, XBox, etc.)

Hey, Microsofts game studio is still awesome (Ensemble Studios) , they make some of the best RTS games ever (aoe 3 isn't as good as aom in my opinion) .

Microsoft won't die, vista will still dominate, and apple doesn't have intel in their pocket (intel isn't even close to being in apple's pocket, as far as intel is concerened, apple is just one more OEM it ships to, and its one of the smallest intel ships to aswell)

Problems with apple: its waaay overpriced. Look at major PC OEMs (dell, HP, gateway) and you will see that they all ofer extremely cheap PCs, and these are the biggest sellers. Why would ol' granny go with a $1,200+ mac when she can get a $500 dell?

Problem with linux: no real retail or OEM support for desktops systems, and its not quite easy enough yet

Problem with both apple and linux: Ol' granny can't call up her son-in-law to come over and fix her OS if all he ever uses is windows, meaning the cycle of windows will continue unless a MAJOR change happens.

Vista is shaping up to be a good, or at least decent, OS. Sure, most of its features have already been done by mac OS or linux, but windows has the advantage of having millions of windows exclusive programs.

The final nail in the coffin is games. Apple (and linux) just don't have them, nor will they. The biggest problem is DirectX, which is MS exculsive and is the most used game API. You say more games are finally being released for Mac, but more than 0 isn't too hard Vista will introduce DirectX 10, which promises more speed, and stricter requirements for hardware to become DX10 compatible (no more "optional" features hardware can support), which will drive more developers to DX as they won't have to code as many seperate rendering paths for different card models/companies

Now you may argue that games will only affect gamers, not the majority of other users (ppl who just use their comp for MS office, checking email, surfing the web, etc...), but this won't be the case. Think about it, when your parents go to buy a new computer, don't you argue for certain features/speed? When your grandma/grandpa decide to get a PC, don't they come to you to spec it out for them? If you are going to be a primary user of the computer, and you play alot of games, you would obviously push for a windows system with a good 3d card, even though the person buying it doesn't necessarily need it.

The unintelligent masses will also flock to vista, as they will see the pretty interface and ooh and ahh, then drop their $200 on it.

In short, MS isn't going anywhere, vista won't affect the companies massive market share holdins at all, and nothing will change. Despite all its flaws, MS is a powerful company that really knows how to target the stupid people, and that is MSes key to success, making software that is painfully easy to use

Wow Kllrnohj, not much I can say to respond to that. <applause>

More evidence vista won't be a flop (and that MS isn't quite as evil as people try to make them appear)

http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/06/09/Vista_Beta_2_Biggest_Download_Event_In_History.aspx

MS is limiting their bandwidth so that they don't crash the internet, isn't that nice of them? (now if only they could do something similar for windows so that it doesn't keep crashing... )

That's funny. When I told my similarly techgeeky friends about that, they didn't believe me.

0x5, usually you don't here about some one entity that has the capability to crash the internet as a whole

Other than us, you mean? Ah, to be Microsoft, but better and without everyone hating us...

I refuse to use Vista because all it does is limit the end-user for media and requires such good hardware. I have a great computer at the moment, but still, I don't want an amazing looking O/S with great visual effects...I mean, who cares? Seriously. It's not a game. It's an operating system. And just read about all of the limits on media associated with Vista. And the built-in DRM. Oh what fun!

Read this: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003882.php

I think I'll stick with XP Pro.

I hate copyright protecting on music and videos... I bet that after Vista, there will be hundreds of 'criminals' who decided to circumvent DRM (not me of course ).

I agree with your argument somewhat but let me qualify that for you. Remember back to the days of win 3.1 (if you were too young, that's a pity)? The OS was very much just a core GUI with limited functionality, and very limited graphics (mine ran on VGA, and I remember it being a big event when we upgraded the graphics card to super VGA). Later came windows 95 with that neat little start bar, improved graphics, and more functionality.

This advancement was much more than just an upgrade in OS. The OS required more advanced hardware to run on it. As a result, companies were forced to meet these mediums and the average computer specs rose. This again happened with 98 coming out (although the improvement between the two was less than between 95 and 3.1 IMHO). All the time, companies had to meet the higher and higher demands of the operating systems. Stasis or marginal improvement was no longer acceptable with each coming release. When XP made its debut there was a similar improvement. Why do you think you see all those stickers on computers that say "Made for XP"? Other than the obvious advertising for microsoft, it shows that companies had to make better technologies to use XP, and as a result what used to be high end became the norm.

Again we are going to see the same trend with Vista. Vista will require more high end technologies to run it, and it should. This will - as I have said - raise the bar in technology. Now, I know that technology improves by itself and is also spurred by other programs that require better and better hardware, but you can't argue that when Windows (the virtual monopoly of OSs) releases an OS, that this won't greatly speed up this process.

Suicide_Guy, you say that you would be pleased with XP graphics. Ok, fine that may be true, but don't you remember how when XP was released, it required major hardware upgrades?

Personally, I look forward to the new graphics that we will find in Vista (if you get it). XP's graphics, although unnecessary, have made the OS much more userfriendly and pleasing to the eye. With your logic, why don't you just go get DOS or some other similar Command Line OS and use that if GUI is not important to you? In the end, it seems like a pain now to have to go out and buy new hardware to run Vista, and I'm not saying it isn't, but this will raise the quality of the computer experience for the average computer user, and that I strongly support.