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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 11/04/2009 The problem Microsoft has launching Windows 7. Windows 7
has been available for a week now, and despite the Microsoft hype machine in
full gear – it looks like people aren’t upgrading. I walked by a
perfect display of Windows 7 software in Costco the other day; perfectly
aligned boxes of software, with no gaps in the boxes. No human hands had
touched this display. A lot of
the consumer revolt is based on the price of upgrading the operating system
software, at least $ 120 per computer. Trying to take advantage of this
product introduction, Apple is advertising heavily that instead of upgrading
to windows 7, you should buy a whole new computer – and of course it
should be an Apple computer. But we
have to understand that Microsoft’s cash cow has been its operating
system. Microsoft entered the PC
marketplace in the late 1970’s as a languages company, and in the early
days was known for its Microsoft Basic and other programming languages. But after their alliance with IBM in
1982 on launching the IBM PC, Microsoft entered the operating systems
marketplace, and later developed their own multi-taking environment –
Windows. Today the
vast majority of pc’s sold in the world today
have a Microsoft operating system. Today the oldest most stable Microsoft
operating system is Windows XP, which has been available in different
versions now since 2001, and if you subscribe to Microsoft updates through
the internet, has now gone through 3 major service packs of minor upgrades
and tweaks. More
pc’s run Windows XP today than any other operating system, and the
majority of them have older processors and hardware peripherals, which would
add to the cost of upgrading to Windows 7, as I explained in my own situation
last week, and why I’m not upgrading. I clearly
remember Microsoft hailing Vista as a new generation operating system
designed to take advantage of the new class of Intel processor released at
the time, specifically the Intel dual core processor, and I did buy a new Vista-based
Dell computer in 2007 with this new Intel processor,
and it is very significantly faster than either of my 2 Pentium-based Dell XP
computers. Some
tasks that I did regularly related to computer graphics and movie making took
hours on my XP systems, but took less than 20 minutes on my New Dell with the
new Intel processor and Microsoft’s new Vista operating system. But now
Microsoft is trying to tell us that we should upgrade these older pc’s to an operating system 3 years newer than Vista.
I don’t think so. I don’t think they have the hardware power to
do much with Windows 7. I think
the logical course would be to eventually upgrade XP computers to brand new
computers with current state of the art hardware, and of course that also
means upgrading your office suite and other software. This all
makes Windows XP a nice comfortable place to be for many people, and
hopefully to get a few more years out of your investment. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2009 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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