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ZDNET: Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?

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urlwolf:
As some commentators have suggested, there may be a bunch of IT departments that adopt Windows 7, but if they do it will be out of annoyance and necessity (if Microsoft finally phases out Windows XP) and not out of the desire to benefit from any new advances in Windows 7. There are none.

It didn’t used to be this way. Installing a new operating system used to be like getting a whole new computer. Installing Windows 95 over Windows 3.1? That was a huge improvement. Installing Windows 2000 on top of Windows 95? That was a big leap forward. There were reasons to upgrade back then, for example:

    * Windows 95 - Greatly simplified interface; much more friendly to the average user
    * Windows 98 - Improved multimedia capabilities and built-in Internet functionality
    * Windows 2000 - Industrial-strength Windows NT code base, but in a much more polished package
    * Windows XP - Unified the Win9x and WinNT/2K code bases; allowed businesses to standardize on one OS
    * Windows Vista - ?
    * Windows 7 - ?

Part of what’s going here is that the computer operating system has achieved a level of maturity and efficiency. You could even say that work on the OS has reached a point of diminishing returns. How much more efficiency can we wring out of it? What other major innovations are waiting out there?
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ZDnet on why windows 7 may not matter anymore.

MilesAhead:
Someone who configured mini-computers and got me interested in programming told me "An Operating System is at its most robust and powerful just before obsolescence."  :)

40hz:
I think the simple existence of so many Linux distributions speaks volumes about the notion of a post-Windows era. It isn't so much that people are considering Linux instead of Windows for their OS. It's more that many people no longer care what they're running as long as they can get to the web with it.

And in that framework, it becomes very hard to justify paying a few hundred for a general purpose OS like Windows when free alternatives are readily available. So if not for general purpose computing, then what?

I think games and DRM-protected media will be the only two things that ultimately keep Windows going.

But maybe Microsoft has already seen their future. And that future boils down to a sophisticated entertainment appliance that looks something like an XBox on steroids.

Unless Apple gets there first. Again. ;)

 8)

f0dder:
It's not true that Vista and Win7 haven't added anything... anybody claiming so should do a little research.

Windows Vista: added transactional NTFS, prioritized disk I/O, UAC :-*, and (not so important, but nice) a smoother GUI (if you have the GPU for it - could've/should've been done more efficiently).
Windows 7: doesn't have that much end-user visible new-niceness (though it has usability enhancements), is a sort of "polished Vista" - but has some nice improvements for running on (and scaling to) higher-end hardware.

...and XP unifying the 2k and 9x codebases? :huh: :huh: :huh: - the systems might have been unified, in the sense that Win9x was dragged into the backyard and shot, and XP was made a more consumer-oriented system than 2k. But unifying the code bases? come on.

zridling:
I think the simple existence of so many Linux distributions speaks volumes about the notion of a post-Windows era. It isn't so much that people are considering Linux instead of Windows for their OS. It's more that many people no longer care what they're running as long as they can get to the web with it.... And in that framework, it becomes very hard to justify paying a few hundred for a general purpose OS like Windows when free alternatives are readily available.-40hz (April 20, 2009, 04:58 PM)
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I came to this conclusion a couple of years ago. The fact that a legal copy of Windows is expensive and licensed, not sold. Using Windows -- for me -- means agreeing to a number of increasingly harsh restrictions. For most Windows licenses, you can't keep the software when you change the hardware. You sometimes can't even give your software away. Who exactly can run the software? On which computer? How many copies can you make? Can you install it on another machine inside the same house? Are updates forced or voluntary? What happens if I lose my media? How come Dell or HP doesn't give me a physical disc for Windows when I buy one of their computers with Windows on it? Why am I forced to buy a copy of Windows when I buy most any retail computer, even if I do not intend to use it?

........................... I could do this all day........................

For what I do on the computer -- mostly access and share information and files through a browser -- Windows just gets in the way of that compared to Linux. Thus there's no need to send another dime to Redmond. Use what makes you happy; and I'll do the same.

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