I assumed the vista scare was correct, because of these things I've heard(and I have had my own problems with vista, but I am not well enough versed in it to be knowledgable about its faults, these are things I heard):

A. Games run at lower frame rates on vista.

B. Incompatible drivers cause hardware and software not to run correctly on vista, specifically certain business related software.

C. Vista has certain copyright protections with the intent of reducing your freedom to do legally questionable things on the internet.

D. Vista has no apparent or streamlined advantages over XP, to the normal user.

Anecdotal:

My cousin, Greg's company surveys land around my state of Mississippi. At christmas, he told me a story about their new office computers and laptops they purchased, and how they returned the entire set of computers(15 of them) because they could no longer get their cad programs(? I think he said cad, dunno much about it) to bring up many of their old documents. He also told me that their were incompatible, and they couldn't get their "stuff to work" on Vista.

He complained that you can no longer get new PC's with XP on them, and that Vista is a "terrible" program, that is not userfriendly, and attempts to make you restart your computing entirely.

The problem is, what if this happens everytime MS makes an un-needed update to an old OS. There really isn't any single huge advantage you can point to Vista and say, well, Vista has this, that XP couldn't have had, if Vista didn't exist. DirectX 10? Could work on XP, MS is just holding it hostage on Vista to make PC owners upgrade.

The problems with Vista are many, the advantages are few and the userfriendliness is none. I see going back to XP as an upgrade based upon this information, and the only reason it isn't a complete upgrade is because MS seems to be forcing it on the consumer by only releasing updated software and games that only work on the OS, for no other reason than to gain money from releasing a new OS, not because it was necessary.

It was released to make money, not because it was a necessary or even plausable upgrade, in fact in many ways, it was a downgrade, but MS seems to be intent on forcing it on people because it contains code to prevent theft from Microsoft and their parent companies, and for little other reason.

Why does Vista exist? Why is it necessary? What are its upgraded features? What are its drawbacks? These are tough questions when it comes to this particular product, imo.

Now I could be wrong, and will listen to reason, and I would LOVE to read a blog on how mistreated Vista is by the general public, and how awesome it really is. Can I get a link? 

You just shouldn't have added the "Why Microsoft is dying" part.

A) Games had significant issues in the beginning primarily due to nVidia and ATI being lazy about developing decent drivers. The overhaul in the driver model meant that they couldn't just drop the XP drivers in place and be done with it.

Generally now, most games run comparibly to XP. This is still a minor slowdown as DX9 content must be wrapped into the new driver model, but from my experiences, you are talking a few frames a second at most.

B) This is an issue with any new OS which has its driver model overhaulled. XP suffered similar issues too from hardware which only supported the 9x range. Even futher back, Win2k suffered more closely to Vista due to the fact it was fairly different from NT. As I've mentioned before, any business jumping on a new OS without testing is definitely going to run into issues.

C) Can you point out what restrictions these are exactly? I've been running Vista for approximately a year now and it hasn't slowed down any of my 'questionable' activities. If you are referring to the DRM used for HD content (HD-DVD/Blu-ray), this has no effect on any non-DRM content.

D) I agree that the advantages for the average user aren't obvious and are significantly less than going from 9x->XP. Unfortunately, some of the advantages (from a technical standpoint) end up being disadvantages in the users eyes. These include things such as full 64-bit support, improved driver models, improved security models, etc.

As I mentioned previously, the upgraded security model causes issues for poorly written programs which think they have access to the entire system. Windows for years has been scurtinised for the fact that it runs users with full admin access, but when this is changed (read: improved), the average user sees it as a problem with the OS as their program doesn't run. This change in security also causes the UAC prompt to appear significantly more often than it should, which is yet another annoyance to users.

1) Programs take time to be upgraded. Given Vista was available to developers for at least 12 months before it shipped, I find it hard to blame Microsoft when 3rd party applications don't work on Vista, especially a year after its release. Once again, this is a problem for any new OS.

2) Vista does have differences, some technical, some due to Microsoft's stupidity. While it does require some relearning to those who memorise button presses rather than concepts, he is exagerating that it requires going back to basics.

On the issue of getting XP, while I'm not entirely sure it covers OEM versions, Vista actually license users to revert back to XP legally. Where you get the media from, etc... I'm unsure about as this is not something I have needed.

3) Let's assume instead of Vista, XP SP3 offered everything Vista does. Now XP SP3 has all the issues of Vista (Don't forget, you need to backport a new driver and security model). Does it really make any difference? Perhaps the issue here is the cost? While I agree Vista isn't worth what they are asking, the number of changes is similar to an OSX update which is charged for.

4) No comment as I'd just be repeating points.

5) Once again, what is there to prevent 'theft'? If you can give me some examples I'll try to elaborate on them.

6) A small amount of research (hell, just a quick look at wikipedia) can answer a lot of these questions. Unfortunately in my experience, the average consumer doesn't do any research into products and when it comes to complex beasts such as an OS, even if they do research, a lot of terminology will be above them.

7) I don't personally know of any link, nor is their likely one talking about how great Vista is (which isn't heavily biased atleast). I too agree that Vista isn't a huge step over XP, but what I am sick of is people being misinformed, which is my gripe against that paragraph. While I am definitely a power user and am entirely aware there WILL be issues, I personally have not seen anything that is a show stopper, and for the last 6 months or so can't think of anything that XP does which Vista doesn't during my daily activities*, and I run Vista x64 which is more likely to have issues.

I think a lot of the negativity towards Vista isn't because it is a terrible OS, but because after 6 years of development, plus a heafty price tag, on the surface Vista doesn't offer that much more over XP and many of the underlying upgrades are causing issues. For the average users, a large number of changes, primarily technical, are (or should be) completely transparent to them, but these are long overdue in Windows.

Perhaps I am slighly biased due to the fact that I've been using NT based OSes as my primary OS since NT3.5, but there isn't anything seriously different happening now that hasn't occured for previous NT path upgrades.

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*Except maybe the MinGW stable not being fixed on 64-bit OSes, but if you can't get the update, you probably shouldn't be programming.

Lets hope no more delays on PS3 games by Sony. It is getting really annoying that Sony have to delay every game by 6 months or more. GTA IV should of been out October last year, now it will be out on April 29th..... over 6 months late. Resistance 2, GT5 and MGS4 better get released soon or there will be some disgruntled fans out there. Who cares about high storage dvds. We want more games to be released. So developing games with extra capacity will mean it will take longer to develop games and result in more delays?

There are definitely a few things misleading, such as:

"360 shipments also fell 33% year over year as buyers shifted their attention to the newer Nintendo Wii and PS3."
He makes it seem as if the shipments fell year over year because buyers shifted their attention to the new consoles, but in reality it was just because there were still many 360s left over from the holidays. He doesn't mention that the number of 360s bought by consumers actually increased year over year. Very misleading.

"the PS3 has also eclipsed 360 unit sales as it enters its second year"
This is not true. The PS3 is still almost 7 million units behind the 360 in units sold. He never mentions that it is only when the launches are lined up that the PS3 is selling better, but that is what they graph shows. Again, misleading.

I'd slow down there if I were you. This thread may be dying, but not the original article.

The willful ignorance here is truly astounding. You even suggest that "Microsoft barely invested in HD-DVD" when the reality is that they had more at stake than any other company, with the obvious exceptions of Toshiba and Sony. If you'd taken the time to read the article (which you admit you didn't) you would learn what many of us already knew: that HDi was the main reason the whole format war started in the first place. Toshiba and Sony certainly didn't want to engage in a costly "war", but battle lines were drawn over the inclusion of MS's proprietary interactivity layer. Had HD-DVD claimed victory over Blu-Ray, HDi would have become a massive cash cow for MS. Why do you suppose they spent so much time touting the dubious "benefits" of HD-DVD?

MS is obviously not on it's last legs, but neither is it the invincible beast it once was. That is the fundamental point of the original article, and the analysis is pretty much spot on, even if it does tend towards hyperbole. With the notable exception of the X360, most of MS's recent endeavours have been resounding failures, and the author of the original article is simply joining the dots between the death of HD-DVD, the relative failure of the Zune and the unquestionable under-performance of Vista, to paint a picture of mistrust surrounding MS. This is a view with which I wholeheartedly concur.

@ Katilian
So you don't think MS leverages it's market position to push new proprietary standards? Why do you think they created DX in the first place rather than encouraging an open standard? DX ensures MS retains a stranglehold on the computer games market as games cannot be easily ported, and PC gamers are therefore effectively forced to use Windows. Proprietary standards are the reason Windows has remained on top for so long (.doc specification?)

@ ZenfoldorVGI
For once, I'm on your side. I think the article is valid, and I am astounded that so many people have rushed to the defence of MS when the xbox isn't even discussed.

@ Dark_Lord_2008
I think you must have posted in the wrong thread. This is about the impact of HD-DVD on MS. It has nothing to do with the PS3 or Sony.

@ agabara
PS3 sales have eclipsed 360 on a weekly basis, but not LTD. Both statements are true, but the way they are worded is indicative of the author's bias. That doesn't mean that the article is wrong though.

Before reading this sure to be excellent article, I have to say how revealing the first comments are. Seems like the first knee-jerk reaction is to discredit the guy and its articles.
Yes, the Roughly Drafted author is an Apple fan, but he's also a very knowledgeable guy, which has excellent informations and analysis power, who have been right on a too high ratio for anything he says to be dismissed just because "you don't know him" or "he's an Apple fan".

I know I will read his piece with great interest now, and I'm also sure it's full of truth and likely to happen predictions.

Edit:

After reading the article, I can understand the hatred. Now, I'm sure that every MS shill will have their name in this thread at least once, as they have to do their job of quickly trying to discredit this article, like good astroturfers and shills, the very tactics described in the article, for which MS is so known for.

This article is the plain hard truth, it approaches the 99 % correct, which is amazing.

It's not even rocket science, as everything he's written could be validated by any industry observer who has watched the computers industry this last decade, like myself. 

I'm glad because there's one thing I learned from this article, that I hoped for several years ago, and thought would never come. Lots of industries have been screwed by MS, actually, every MS partner has always been screwed. Which is why I can so easily predict some things around MS nowadays. I remember when I said Sega would bite the dust before their console was even released, as soon as I learned they partnered with MS for their console's OS (which was based on WinCE). This is also why I favored Blu-Ray, despite it being backed by Sony. But what makes me glad, is that finally, at least some companies have wised up, and allied against MS proprietary stranglehold.

Which is a very good thing.Thank god H264 won this one!

Microsoft will never die. The fact that they have a strangle hold on the Operating System market. The also have the number one Office productivity suite. They also have the number one application for email with Exchange. In the gaming market it doesn't matter whether the 360 fails or not. Microsoft will live on regardless.

The HD-DVD addon only selling to ~3% of Xbox 360 gamers seems to indicate that it was really a non-issue among gamers.

Microsoft designed HD DVD's iHD software. This software is the basis for the format. Every film uses it, and every player must support it. I wouldn't consider that being "barely invested".

Also, maybe you should read the article before commenting, hm?

OT: Overall, I agree with the article, though I don't like how he used 360 shipped numbers instead of sold. The article was obviously biased against MS, and made them out to be doing much worse than they are (just look at their financial statements), but it does portray their monopolistic practices quite accurately, and it also shows the rest of the industry's disdain to support Microsoft's endeavors.