Repost: More Articles part three-Windows/Microsoft
Jun 4, 2008 20:12:27 GMT
Post by CharlieChomper on Jun 4, 2008 20:12:27 GMT
Disclaimer: As the title suggests, this is a reposting of an earlier thread. The information is still relevant as is the article and was important enough to where I've chosen to repost it here.
I'd like to start off by apologizing for such a long post, and the next "set" I hope to keep much shorter than this.
For this next "set" of articles, I decided to focus on Microsoft and Windows (not just Vista, but there are some articles included as well regarding XP and the upcoming version of Windows that's currently in the works, codenamed Windows 7).
Obviously, there are lots of articles here and for that I apologize, but I honestly did not expect to have been kept as busy as I had been to prevent me from posting these links and sharing them with you much sooner. However, some articles are as new as today, so it may have been just as well (so long as there isn't a massive amount more of them tomorrow, of course.
). I'm also going to group them depending on version of Windows just to keep things a bit more organized (in the case of overlaps with XP and Vista, I'll put the articles in with XP just to simplify things a bit as there are more Vista articles).
Microsoft and non-Windows issues or all (current) versions of Windows articles:
That said, the first article (which isn't specifically about any version of Windows, but about Microsoft as a company) involves current speculations and observations about Microsoft, as a brand, currently being "in decline".
The second article goes into a little bit more about the future of Office and wanting to turn it into a subscription-based service.
The third article is more of a briefing of a paper (the link to which is included in this link) that was published by Carnegie Mellon University that confirms a long-suspected potential security issue with the way that Microsoft has currently implemented the patching process with Windows. This isn't the first time that this has been mentioned (previously, a few security groups as well as vendors in that field had raised questions about it and released their findings about it), but it does confirm the issue more concretely and a bit more thoroughly than had previously been expressed if anyone is interested in reading it.
This article and this article tend to go into current speculations and theories about Windows, given the current situation and information that's out there now and goes into a bit more (albeit brief, as it only covers markets that consumers would have reason to be aware of) insight into Windows in other types of markets and how Microsoft has handled things in the past. However, as is usually the case with opinion-based articles or blogs, I would advise taking this with a grain of salt, as it were.
XP
This first article delves into what's being referred to as a temporary "reprieve" for XP. However, before anyone gets terribly excited about the news, this mainly applies to what's known as the "low cost PC" market (very low-end PCs --a very good example would be something like this) as currently, most vendors in that market (particularly the example I linked to above) are choosing to offer it with Linux pre-installed (which Microsoft isn't terribly happy about--they regard Linux as being their largest threat in terms of operating systems, just as they do with the open source community toward some of their other products out there).
url=http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/03/microsoft-extends-xp-through-2010-ultra-low-cost-laptops]This is another article[/url] that delves into the situation a little more as well as more or less confirming the possibility of Windows 7 being released sometime next year (whether or not that may be due to the situation with Vista remains the topic of constant speculation) or the year after.
Also, this may not be a major surprise to some, but this is confirmation by way of actual testing showing XP to be "faster" than Vista and provides more specific information of what was involved, the criteria, setup, etc. for anyone interested in reading about it.
Vista
To start off with, anyone who has been annoyed by Vista's UAC might be interested in reading this. They deliberately designed it that way and the article goes into the reasoning behind it.
Also, for those unaware, Microsoft's blogger and Vista product manager, Nick White, quit recently. He's been amongst the main sources of "in-house" information regarding development, releases, etc. to the public and development community alike. The article goes into this a bit more, however, and why it's significant. Just as here's an interview with the man, himself, over why he left, what he did at the company, more about some of the things that went on "behind the scenes" as it were with Vista and within the company, etc.
In addition, I have more information about Service Pack One as well, involving complaints from users who have been dealing with it and other issues involved with it. On the "positive" side, at least they removed the "feature"/bug that was mistakenly flagging many users with legitimate copies of it as supposedly being "pirates".
And another article that goes into one university system which has stated it won't immediately agree to upgrade where Vista is concerned (however, I should note that this also applies to Apple as well where updates are concerned).
"Windows 7"
This goes into more about what to possibly expect with the current version of Windows in development, currently being referred to as "Windows 7". However, one thing that the article does get wrong is in regards to Apple and OS X (which is referenced in it).
Having spoken to people at Apple and having worked with it myself and with other 'nix-based operating systems (for those unaware, OS X is actually, itself, a variant of the Unix-derived operating system, BSD), the interface for it actually wasn't entirely "custom" to Apple--it actually came from the desktop manager interface that was developed by another open source project (some "standard" tools and features that shipped with OS X and have made their way into each update have all come from various open source projects out there). It's also probably worth noting that, at one point, Microsoft also had made use of some of BSD's codework for a previous version of Windows (they also once had their own variation of Unix as well sometime back in the `80s from what I've read).
I'd like to start off by apologizing for such a long post, and the next "set" I hope to keep much shorter than this.
For this next "set" of articles, I decided to focus on Microsoft and Windows (not just Vista, but there are some articles included as well regarding XP and the upcoming version of Windows that's currently in the works, codenamed Windows 7).
Obviously, there are lots of articles here and for that I apologize, but I honestly did not expect to have been kept as busy as I had been to prevent me from posting these links and sharing them with you much sooner. However, some articles are as new as today, so it may have been just as well (so long as there isn't a massive amount more of them tomorrow, of course.
). I'm also going to group them depending on version of Windows just to keep things a bit more organized (in the case of overlaps with XP and Vista, I'll put the articles in with XP just to simplify things a bit as there are more Vista articles).Microsoft and non-Windows issues or all (current) versions of Windows articles:
That said, the first article (which isn't specifically about any version of Windows, but about Microsoft as a company) involves current speculations and observations about Microsoft, as a brand, currently being "in decline".
The second article goes into a little bit more about the future of Office and wanting to turn it into a subscription-based service.
The third article is more of a briefing of a paper (the link to which is included in this link) that was published by Carnegie Mellon University that confirms a long-suspected potential security issue with the way that Microsoft has currently implemented the patching process with Windows. This isn't the first time that this has been mentioned (previously, a few security groups as well as vendors in that field had raised questions about it and released their findings about it), but it does confirm the issue more concretely and a bit more thoroughly than had previously been expressed if anyone is interested in reading it.
This article and this article tend to go into current speculations and theories about Windows, given the current situation and information that's out there now and goes into a bit more (albeit brief, as it only covers markets that consumers would have reason to be aware of) insight into Windows in other types of markets and how Microsoft has handled things in the past. However, as is usually the case with opinion-based articles or blogs, I would advise taking this with a grain of salt, as it were.
XP
This first article delves into what's being referred to as a temporary "reprieve" for XP. However, before anyone gets terribly excited about the news, this mainly applies to what's known as the "low cost PC" market (very low-end PCs --a very good example would be something like this) as currently, most vendors in that market (particularly the example I linked to above) are choosing to offer it with Linux pre-installed (which Microsoft isn't terribly happy about--they regard Linux as being their largest threat in terms of operating systems, just as they do with the open source community toward some of their other products out there).
url=http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/03/microsoft-extends-xp-through-2010-ultra-low-cost-laptops]This is another article[/url] that delves into the situation a little more as well as more or less confirming the possibility of Windows 7 being released sometime next year (whether or not that may be due to the situation with Vista remains the topic of constant speculation) or the year after.
Also, this may not be a major surprise to some, but this is confirmation by way of actual testing showing XP to be "faster" than Vista and provides more specific information of what was involved, the criteria, setup, etc. for anyone interested in reading about it.
Vista
To start off with, anyone who has been annoyed by Vista's UAC might be interested in reading this. They deliberately designed it that way and the article goes into the reasoning behind it.
Also, for those unaware, Microsoft's blogger and Vista product manager, Nick White, quit recently. He's been amongst the main sources of "in-house" information regarding development, releases, etc. to the public and development community alike. The article goes into this a bit more, however, and why it's significant. Just as here's an interview with the man, himself, over why he left, what he did at the company, more about some of the things that went on "behind the scenes" as it were with Vista and within the company, etc.
In addition, I have more information about Service Pack One as well, involving complaints from users who have been dealing with it and other issues involved with it. On the "positive" side, at least they removed the "feature"/bug that was mistakenly flagging many users with legitimate copies of it as supposedly being "pirates".
And another article that goes into one university system which has stated it won't immediately agree to upgrade where Vista is concerned (however, I should note that this also applies to Apple as well where updates are concerned).
"Windows 7"
This goes into more about what to possibly expect with the current version of Windows in development, currently being referred to as "Windows 7". However, one thing that the article does get wrong is in regards to Apple and OS X (which is referenced in it).
Having spoken to people at Apple and having worked with it myself and with other 'nix-based operating systems (for those unaware, OS X is actually, itself, a variant of the Unix-derived operating system, BSD), the interface for it actually wasn't entirely "custom" to Apple--it actually came from the desktop manager interface that was developed by another open source project (some "standard" tools and features that shipped with OS X and have made their way into each update have all come from various open source projects out there). It's also probably worth noting that, at one point, Microsoft also had made use of some of BSD's codework for a previous version of Windows (they also once had their own variation of Unix as well sometime back in the `80s from what I've read).
