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Solitare in Windows 7: Now With Hardware Acceleration
Apparently Solitare now requires hardware acceleration from the graphics card? Really, Microsoft?
The sad part is that it actually lags. It’s not just a stray dialog box, Solitare apparently actually needs hardware acceleration. I don’t know what to say.
By the way, go check out the Windows 7 RC.
How Long Will Software Costs Be Able to Hide
As demonstrated by the current price for a Dell Inspiron Mini 9, netbook prices are falling very quickly and they started out cheap from the beginning. These price drops are largely driven by improvements in hardware that make the hardware components cheaper, rather than the software getting less expensive, though.
This trend poses a problem for Microsoft, since they rely on a small bit of profit from everyone who buys a computer. As it stands, this chuck of the price is almost invisible next to the overall price, but as hardware gets cheaper that will not always be the case. What happens when the cost of Windows becomes half the price of the computer? People will begin to notice that price and OEMs will look for a way to get rid of it. How do you get rid of that cost? Linux.
For most people right now, the cost of Windows has little effect on the price of their machine, since Microsoft heavily disounts it. Microsoft can’t just keep discounting more and more, though. Eventually the “Microsoft tax” will be a big part of everyone’s next computer purchase. This will likely force manufacturers into searching for a cheaper solution, leading them to Linux.
Cutting Through the Windows 7 Hype
I don’t understand it. When it comes to Windows, everything either sucks or is the best thing in the world according to the press. There seems to be no intermediate point, despite the fact that that is where most Windows releases would fit. Recently, I have been getting very tired of anything with the words “Windows 7,” “killer,” and “linux,” no matter what order those appear in.
I am using the beta now in a virtual machine and, to be honest, there is not a lot of changes. Sure, Microsoft messed with the taskbar some (I don’t like it, but I’ll leave that to you to judge), made some networking improvements, fixed the messed-up UAC, and added a few more desktop effects (some useful, such as moving windows to the side of the screen to make them cover half the screen, and some annoying, like strange colors floating all around your taskbar in place of standard, subtle effects), but the truth is that only one feature from Windows 7 is likely to have a major effect (and of course PR): performance.
Performance in really important, but it is really just a bug fix. It’s pathetic that Vista had the poor performance that it did. Now they fixed it. Now we can move on.
The fundamental daily annoyances of using Windows have simply not changed. Here is what is still true:
- It still blue screens. (Yep, I can confirm that – I returned to the VM while it was booting up from a hard shutdown to see the end of a blue screen followed by a reboot).
- It still treats you like a baby and nags you about turning on automatic updates.
- It still is susceptible to malware.
- It still lacks any form of multiple desktops.
Windows 7 will probably be a good release as far as I am concerned, if only for the performance improvement. It just won’t be the ground breaking, new, and amazing release that some people say it will be. What do you think?
Is Windows 7 Really A Linux Killer?
A recent ComputerWorld article titled “Windows 7: The Linux Killer” has been getting a lot of attention. The article basically argues that Microsoft’s vulnerability to Linux comes entirely from netbooks and that Windows 7 is designed to and will take over the netbook market. On one point I agree, on one point I disagree, and on one point I think we just have to wait and see.
I agree that Windows 7 was probably designed at least partly with the goal of developing a modern version of Windows that can realistically run on netbooks. Without a doubt, there has been some serious focus on performance in Windows 7, most likely as a result of both complaints about Vista and the growing netbook market. It also appears that these efforts have paid off and Windows 7 will probably be much better on netbooks than Vista was.
Where I disagree with the article is in this statement:
The threat to Windows comes entirely from “netbooks”
If that was revised to “the immediate threat to Windows comes entirely from netbooks,” then I would agree. The thing is that standard desktop Linux is making a lot of progress, too. I could point to Dell’s Linux offerings, but I think the more significant progress is in overall user friendliness. For example, look at Wubi. You can now install Ubuntu without leaving Windows and uninstall it the same way. I could name almost countless examples of small things that make various Linux distributions more user friendly. Support for Windows file systems, clearly named menus, Add/Remove programs, continually improving hardware support, and so on. Whatever you can say about market share and whatever comparisons you want to make, Linux is improving at a rapid pace. This could be Microsoft’s greatest long term threat. A free operating system already very, very usable and quickly improving.
Finally, the article makes the following claim:
The high point for Linux netbook sales will be from now until the launch of Windows 7. After that will come the inevitable decline.
I don’t think it’s so clear cut. First of all, we have to look at costs. Windows costs money, Linux doesn’t. Argue all you want about the details of the training, support, and so on, but the fact remains that Windows has a per-license price and Linux doesn’t. (Unless Microsoft plays some really weird price games, which can always happen.) Second, Linux can be customized like crazy. This really means two things: First, it is almost guaranteed that it will be possible to make Linux faster, since you can strip away, modify, or replace every piece. Second, the OEM can modify the software they ship, as both Dell and HP have done. In fact, they can even take pretty much complete credit for it 
. The point is that, despite Windows 7 making huge improvements, there will still be many reasons to use Linux, so it is not at all clear that Windows 7 will suppress Linux on netbooks.
I can’t say I agree with everything, but I think the general idea of the article is right. Windows 7 is, at least partially, targeted at killing Linux, but I don’t think it will work.
From the beginning it seemed like a long shot, but Psystar has only made it clearer and clearer that they are determined to prove Apple’s locking of Mac OS X to their own hardware is a violation of anti-trust laws.
It appeared that Psystar, a small company that started selling computers pre-installed with Mac OS X, had given up recently when they entered out-of-court settlement talks with Apple. More recently, however, one of Psystar’s lawyers has denied that the suit is over, saying that settlement talks are only standard practice and the lawsuit is “very much alive.”
So what happens if they win? Apple is going to have to change the way they do things. The problem is that they rely on the control they have over their hardware. Notice that few people complain about driver issues on the Mac? Apple only has to support 6 or so machines, Microsoft and Linux have to support millions. Impressed by how cheap the OS X software is? I doubt that price could be sustained if Apple’s core business was software sales. In addition to these issues, Apple gets some benefits by only selling premium machines. Want to know why people who usually use $500 Dell computers are impressed when they get a $1000+ Mac? Sure, a lot of it has to do with Apple, but a fair bit must have to do with the experience of using nicer hardware.
None of this is to say that Apple could not survive. They could. They would just need to change.
The truth is that Psystar has little chance of prevailing against a company as large as Apple who has tons of money and lawyers to throw at the problem. Still, they have a chance and everyone should support them. If Psystar wins, Apple may have a problem, but consumers just get more choice.
Now this is a Linux site, so a lot of you are probably wondering why you should care if there are more options for Macs out there. One word: virtualization. Right now (servers not included), you cannot legally or easily virtualize Mac OS X. If Psystar wins, you can go out, buy an off-the-shelf copy of OS X, and run it in a virtual machine. This would let you run every major operating system on just about any computer. That would be awesome.
The Linux Foundation Should Stop Criticizing Solaris
Recently, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, came out basically saying that Solaris, Sun’s recently open-sourced operating system, will never go anywhere. He even took a shot at it being open-source, saying that open-sourcing it was “too little and too late.”
Okay. First of all, in my opinion, the Linux Foundation should not be in the business of criticizing any other operating system, unless they are specifically defending Linux. Furthermore, if there is any operating system that should be completely off-limits, it should be an open-source one, such as Solaris. If anything, they should be praising Solaris for becoming more open.
One of open-source’s huge advantages is collaboration and sharing. If one project does something interesting, that can be picked up in other projects. If we are all busy criticizing each other (non-constructively, that is), we lose that advantage.
Perhaps it is too much to expect the Linux Foundation to be above the constant flow of attacks from Microsoft, Apple, and the other major players, but it seems that, at least with other open-source operating systems, the criticism should at least be kept to minimum.
Today’s big story seems to be a piece of code in a Foxconn motherboard that checks what the operating system is and, based on that information, uses a different piece of code for each OS. Unfortunately, the code for Linux seems to cause some major errors, due to an allegedly incorrect implementation of the ACPI standards, as best I understand it. The news was first broken, I believe, at the Ubuntu Forums by someone who went out of their way to decompile the motherboard code causing the errors, just so they could track down the problem.
This, and other similar stories, are interesting, because they can be viewed in two ways. On one hand, it is easy to see them as a malicious attack on a specific piece of software. On the other hand, I suspect that the real problem is one of the developers not bothering to really test their software on systems such as Linux. My belief is that these issues are not at all malicious, just a mistake that no one bothered to look for. The good news is that developers will probably learn soon that these mistakes lead to bad situations.
The problem for the software creators is that people who use niche operating systems, browsers, or other software tend to be the kind of person who would decompile a bunch of complicated code and track down the issue. Quite often, these tech savvy people also know how to get a lot of attention. All of this together means a PR nightmare. Eventually, companies will realize that any money “saved” by ignoring a particular platform is likely to end up costing them more than they “saved” due to the PR issues it is highly likely to create. Hopefully, these sorts of issues will go away at that point.
How Linux Can Take The Marketshare Microsoft Throws Away
Regardless of what you think Microsoft is doing wrong, no one seems to think that Microsoft is doing a great job. They may still have the top position (by a lot) in desktop market share, but they are losing it fast. The point is, Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot. They may recover, especially with new management coming in, but they are certainly going to throw away a lot of market share, before they recover. The question is, how does Linux capture that thrown-away market share?
Right now, an average user who is frusterated with Windows is far more likely to turn to a Mac than Linux, since most people know some avid Mac users. As it stands, I suspect that Apple will pick up most of the desktop users that leave Microsoft, and Linux will pick up most of the business users. That’s pretty good, but Linux can do bettter.
As an average PC user looking to buy a Mac, you would most likely be surprised by the high prices. You can argue all day about Macs being more expensive for what you get or not, but they definitely start higher-end than your bottom-line PC. This is Linux’s easiest to understand advantage over the Mac.
To push this advantage, I believe a volunteer-based (so no big company paying tons of money for TV ads or anything) joint Dell and Ubuntu advertising campaign would be effective. The name Dell, which almost everyone knows, would make it clear that “Linux is not just for geeks” and the price would make people seriously think about trying Linux. Plus, Dell might be able to arrange some sort of “buy a PC with Linux, and if you don’t like it, we will replace it with a Windows PC for just $50″ (or whatever Windows costs to Dell.)
With an advertising effort like this, Linux might be able to make people who are moving away from Microsoft thing twice before moving to the Mac.
A Future of Instant-On Cloud Computing
Windows and Mac OS X are names from the history of early computing, from back when computers used big, bulky slow OSs. Technically, of course, computers still use OSs, but they are simple, small, fast windows to the cloud, rather than full OSs. What people used to call “web browsers” and now just “computers.” WiMax and other similar technologies blanket the globe, providing high-speed data access everywhere. “Desktops” are no longer used, just tiny pocket or bag-size UMPCs as well as the occasional laptop. Instead of using desktop applications, everyone uses web applications.
All of this could come to be reality in the future, perhaps even the not-so-distant future. Think about it. Web 2.0 applications are already competing with almost every desktop applications you can think of. UMPCs are taking off fast. After all, can you think of a major computer company without a UMPC? Apple, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, and tons more all have them. And, finally, many of these companies are adopting an instant on Splashtop or Splashtop-like system. The technology is all here. And it runs Linux.
Live Review of OpenSuse: Friday, June 20 At 3:30 PM EDT
Proof of the Obvious: Microsoft Discounts Windows for UMPCs
Microsoft has apparently given details of a new deal to PC makers that allows them to get discounted Windows XP licenses for use on UMPCs, according to Computer World UK. This already appeared to be the case due to pricing on the Eee PC, however it had not been confirmed. There seem to be two parts to this story. First, Microsoft is selling Windows for less on UMPCS. Second, some people suspect that the deal is supposed to prevent UMPCs from competing with normal PCs.
The first part is relatively simple. Microsoft is giving essentially the same product away at difference prices, depending what type of device it will go on. Although I am not in any way a lawyer, I suspect that this is legal, since Microsoft can just change one little feature and then it is a different product. Just because it is probably legal, does not, however, mean I think it is a fair practice. Another way of stating the second sentence of this paragraph is: Microsoft is making Windows less expensive in the markets where Linux is gaining market share. Because of this, I think this practice should be illegal and is certainly unfair.
The second part of the story is slightly more complicated, though not by much. The Computer World article brings up the point that Microsoft may be trying to limit UMPCs from invading the regular PC market by defining them with these specifications:
- Max screen size: 10.2
- No touch screen
- Hard drives are limited to 80GB
- Max 1GB RAM
- Max 1Ghz single-core processor, except for a few particular chips
Although it is true that these specifications would limit a UMPC from competing with a regular PC, three things should be kept in mind.
- Microsoft has to set the limit somewhere. If Windows is going to have a different price for UMPCs, Microsoft has to define what a UMPC is so a 17-inch desktop replacement doesn’t count.
- Every major UMPC that I can think of fits these specifications.
- If these specifications are going to limit UMPCs, it is only going to hurt Microsoft. PC makers will not stop improving their hardware because they don’t get Microsoft’s discount. They might, however, switch to Linux, because Windows costs $50 more.
For these three reasons, I don’t see anything wrong with the specifications Microsoft has set. I do, however, think that the whole idea of selling the same product at differenet prices is unfair. If you disagree, however, I am open to hearing your arguement. Go ahead and post it in the comments.