MS is facing tougher competition in several areas now

[Pemalite]

cory.ok said:

slowmo said:

cory.ok said:

slowmo said:

cory.ok said:

their os is going downhill too, they are already palying catchup with ubuntu, and ubuntu is coded by community and distributed for free.  now that we have reached the physical limit in the amount of transistors that we can add to one board computer components will drop in price a lot faster than they have been in recent times.  predictions have been that windows will start to be 15-20% of the cost of all computer within the next few year (it already is ~20% the cost of most computers sold).

when that happens theres a lot of predictions saying linux will reclaim a lot of territory that windows had taken from them

Ubuntu making inroads, Seriously???  I've heard this crap for 10 years and I still don't see these big inroads happening.  Vista was a chance for Os's like Ubuntu to make their move, it just didn't happen (and in Ubuntu's case likely never will).

in the last 8 years it has seen growth in 92 of 96 months.  you know what also didnt happen during vista? people using it.  during vistas peak marketshare (of about 18%) windows xp had about 70% marketshare still.  infact windows xp marketshare never fell below 70% until after windows 7 released (and is still about 50% lol)  microsofts os buisness hasnt been going good

I gather you don't understand why businesses are slow to migrate from a secure mature platform to a new one hence why Windows XP is still used.  All I can say on your growth stats is the 4 months it didn't grow must have been some drop offs because Ubuntu really isn't making inroads at all.

ubuntu has been rising almost as fast as apple has been, they are drops those months but theyre pretty small (0.1-0.2%)

i dont think business want to stay at a secure platform (ubuntu is much more secure than any windows device btw), rather i think they just dont want to pay for new machines.  xp requires like 64mb ram while vista requires 1gb

even if businesses wanted to downgrade their 256mb ram machines to vista they couldnt, xp was leaps and bounds better than their older os', it was a good investment to upgrade, vista not so much, 7, not so much.  linux?  linux gives everything that windows 7 does (and more), for free and without the system requirements.

The machines have to fail eventually, OEM rigs aren't exactly using the best quality components around with cheap motherboards and in most cases PSU's.

In regards to OS requirements... If you are running XP on 64mb of ram, then it's going to be a very painfull experience. Optimally you would wan't 256mb or more even for just basic word and email.
Ram is flippin' cheap and a great and easy way to improve a system regardless of OS.

However if you consider Windows XP to be "Leaps and bounds" better than any previous OS... Then I guess you have forgetten it is essentially Windows 2k with a new wrapper?
There is less of a difference between XP and 2k under the hood than there is between Vista and 7.

Now... Linux can do everything Windows 7 can? Hardly, Linux although has come far is still not an OS for gamers even with Wine.
I recently experimented with Ubuntu on my Gigabyte tablet, the OS was fairly quick and painless to use...

However there was no drivers for the touch screen, wireless and the sound card, hunting around didn't result in anything, back to Windows 7 it was... Tried Jolicloud next, same issues.
That ends my attempts of Linux on my Tablet.
Won't even consider anything other than Windows 7 for my desktop as it's primary function is for gaming, with 15 years of games capable of being run on it... Nothing comes near it to suit my needs.

It was cool to bash Windows during the Vista and Windows ME days, but seriously... Windows 7 looks awesome, is compatible with a multitude of hardware and software combinations, relatively issue free and runs on my Tablet with it's Atom n470, 2gb of ram, 120gb SSD, 10.1" touch screen which shows it isn't as resource heavy as one may presume.


I'm glad Microsoft is getting competition in *every* segment, it's going to mean Microsoft will have to Innovate faster with better products to succeed, which is never a bad thing.
However as a company... They aren't going anywhere any time soon.