NoFastMem wrote:
Oh XP, I used to treat it with such disdain. Much to their own detriment, Microsoft managed to hone XP into a relatively usable and stable OS in the five intervening years. Oops.
Exactly, I realised many years ago, that it was in M$'s interest to make sure that their operating systems were flawed... that way they could ensure that users would upgrade. The Windows 9x systems were perfect for this business model... but after the joke that was WinME1... M$ had no choice but move the consumer over to the more stable NT platform... introducing WinXP... now users would experience a system that lacked the design flaws of the 9x systems and would therefore function effectively for the task which it was designed.
Strike one against the old business model!
Then Longhorn was delayed... now users grew comfortable with the XP platform... and being actually quite a well designed system it behaves predictably and thus can be relied upon. The delays meant that M$ had no choice but to update XP and keep it useable!
Strike two against the old business model!
Now MEII (Vista) has been released... it break compatiblity with existing software and hardware (much like Windows 2K did, when released... but that hadd a year or so in the wild to allow it to gain support, before it was released to the consumer as XP)... and it lacks any real features that users need, not to mention that all "new" features have been present in *NIXes and MacOS X for years...
No user wants MEII... The OEMs would prefer to phase it in over time... but that is totally against M$ business models...
