On Vista

I got my hands on a new Vista laptop yesterday and I have to say I was impressed. I had to set it up from scratch, the only thing which went wrong was AVG, in the end I gave up and installed Avast. Aside from that it was quite a smooth experience. It was quicker to set up than an XP machine and had no trouble detecting the wireless signal I use.

It was Vista Home Basic running on a 1GB Dell Vostro 860 and it was as fast as XP running on a similar spec machine. I think it is slightly slower to hibernate and restart but not noticeably. The interface is nice, generally familiar to an XP user and the search function works well. From the outside it looks like an enhanced version of XP.

Adding applications was simple, aside from my AVG problems everything I tried (Acrobat, Flash, Firefox, OpenOffice 3) worked first time without any glitches. It is a good OS and I’m surprised it gets all the bad press. Perhaps this is because I waited for SP1 and bought it with a new machine so I didn’t see all the infuriating errors. That said in a straight comparison with Leopard I think it stands up well and bear in mind I am running a Mac Pro with 4GB RAM to compare it.

The recently announced Windows 7 suggests MS is going back to quicker iterations of its OS with less fanfare. Looking back we could view XP, XPSP1, XPSP2, Vista and VSP1 as essentially iterations of the same OS in the way OSX has had Tiger, Leopard and so on. I think this is a good sign as Microsoft’s traditional strength is writing competent software, not doing jazzy PR.

Pic: WVS

On Microsoft strategy

I’ve been reading through some more of the coverage on Windows 7 and two things struck me. First of all Vista has been abandoned. I don’t know what the release date for W7 is but its perfectly conceivable that most users could stick with XP then jump straight to W7, assuming they wanted to stay with Microsoft at all.

The second thing is that with all the features that were demonstrated at D6, touch screens and the like, along with the other devices which have dribbled out like the interactive coffee table MS is looking beyond desktops. Now it is true that Gates has stepped down but I don’t think the current leadership has sufficient imagination to deviate from the strategy he has laid down. In a way they would be stupid to abandon it entirely as whatever else you can say about Bill Gates he is a brilliant strategist.

What it seems to me is that they are creating an operating system for an entire house, not just a desktop. I think MS imagines a world in which it runs your TV, mobile device, coffee table, fridge etc. etc. in the same way in ran your desktop and everyone will have to dance to their tune as everyone did in the nineties. This is why they put all the money into the Xbox – the games console as Trojan horse for the living room. Unfortunately Nintendo have thrown a spanner in the works with the cheaper and much more innovative Wii.

I think MS are as likely to succeed with this as they were with their ill fated attempt to usurp the Internet with MSN. This is not to say that MS has no place in the future but they will never have the dominance they had over the PC desktop. They are not the only company to suffer from such delusions, Apple seems to have similar ideas with Apple TV, iPhone, iTunes and so on. And they have made a similar mistake by tying down their STB to such an extent nobody will use it. They have taken the wrong lesson from the success of the iPod which thrived as because it was built on the back of filesharing, not the iTunes Store.

What any large company aiming to control everything fails to grasp is that those days are over. The ultimate goal of any company wanting to succeed is to look at what their users want rather than what they want. Users are in control now and the companies that recognise it will be the ones that prosper.

On Windows 7

Leaked screen shots of Windows 7 have been posted by Crunchgear. All I can say is CONGRATULATIONS MICROSOFT!!!

It looks just like Leopard, only badly designed!

On breaking up Microsoft

I’m always interested in the psyche of a company, it’s like a rhythm the company moves to and runs subconsciously through everything they do. I think it’s why some people do brilliantly at one company and disastrously at another. One of the reasons I want to work in my own start-up is to have a corporate culture which suits me well. I have experienced this when I was at Orange and I did my best work there.

There is something deeply embedded in Microsoft that seems unable to keep things simple. So even when they have a good idea like the Xbox they can’t resist putting out four different versions of it. Apple has parodied this trait in its commercials, some have speculated how a MS iPod would have turned out and others have pointed out its muddled branding. MS has recently hired marketing guru Alex Bogusky to help them turn things around but I think the problem lies deeper than simply changing the marketing.

Vista is so heavy that users are baulking at the basic requirements needed to run it and sticking with XP. I’ve said before I think the future lies in much lighter operating systems. MS really needs to forget about building an even bulkier Windows 7, throw out the entire code base which is giving it such problems and set off an internal competition to build a new OS. Pick five of the most creative programmers give them all their own company, a stack of cash and let them get on with it. No rules – let them build it on top of Linux if they want to – and see who wins. Let Windows and Office lumber on if they like but get some fresh air into the company.

WL Gore and Associates is a uniquely well run company. One of the principles it employs is to break up any business unit once it gets bigger than 250 people. It does this to maintain a start-up atmosphere and to avoid stifling creativity. This is the road Microsoft needs to take – ironically this is to impose the anti-trust ruling on itself. Microsoft itself could become the holding company and take its history of muddled brands into the past. In its place Xbox, Live Search, (ahem) Zune, and what ever other brands it decides to develop would then be separate companies with only a parent in common. It is no coincidence that its only post-Windows success, the Xbox, is run as autonomous unit. Ballmer is apparently moving in this direction by trying to develop more internal autonomy. He should go the whole hog and break the company up.

On Linux

Attitudes to Linux is one of the great dividing lines between technical and mainstream users. From what I read from Linux enthusiasts it is fantastic and Windows is terrible by comparison.

Now for programmers, using Linux to build out a back end is doubtless as fantastic as they say. I have no idea since I will never do this but for users trying to install a front end Linux is terrible. My only experience is with installing Ubuntu on an old laptop only to rip it out moments later. The problem was I couldn’t get anything to work, the wireless didn’t work, printer drivers didn’t work. Nothing. This may be down to my technical incompetence but Windows XP is much more usable. I have never used Vista, now having switched to Leopard.

The Ubuntu UI wasn’t too bad and I’m sure if it or some other Linux distribution had come pre-installed like on the Asus I would be fine with it. With more and more of my applications migrating to the browser I don’t really care about using Word or Excel when Open Office can open documents adequately enough. I think I’d probably have to keep a machine capable of running MS Office somewhere but my reliance on those programs is waning fast.

People are already starting to speculate about what is in Windows 7 but I think the Andreessen prophecy about the OS migrating to the web is finally coming true. About a decade too late to save Netscape but there you go.

This could be Linux’s time. If someone can reliably put out a stripped down, good looking Linux OS then the time could come when Windows finally has a worthy competitor. MS is scrambling to get into the UMPC market perhaps realising that simpler operating systems which can fit on smaller machines are the way of the future. This makes Microsoft far more vulnerable to a nimble competitor as its advantage lies in having thousands of programmers making an ever more complicated OS for ever more powerful machines.

If machines start getting simpler and less powerful because more is migrating to the web where does that leave MS? Turning round the super tanker takes a long time. Getting into the console market with the Xbox was a clever move to diversify but making up all the lost revenues from its core business will be a hard task.