microsoft longhorn???

[jujuk8]

what's all this talk about microsoft longhorn i hear about?? All i know is that it looks very nice..

[sechs]

It's the next major version of Windows.

As I recall, it was originally supposed to come out last year; it's now slated for 2007.

[elroy]

http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/longhorn.asp

[INTEGRALE69]

I've heared that one big downside to longhorn is the fact that it will only accept signed drivers e.g. you will not be able to run programs like firefox and company's like epson who are slow off the mark getting drivers signed you will have to wait for drivers before being able to run there peripherals

[Reather]

They had not better cut off unsigned drivers and support to firefox. If they do, I say boycott. It would be another example of their legal monopoly. In addition, they had already cut off their new File system, so I'm not going to get it until they do. Also, new viruses would target the H--- out of it, so I'm not going to it. Also, the requirements are going to be really high, so if you are going to upgrade to it, prepare your system.

[johnnyis42]

Originally posted by INTEGRALE69
I've heared that one big downside to longhorn is the fact that it will only accept signed drivers e.g. you will not be able to run programs like firefox and company's like epson who are slow off the mark getting drivers signed you will have to wait for drivers before being able to run there peripherals

that would be the rumor mill. that kind of practice is reserved for Mac OSX, and you would see everyone migrate at once to linux if microsoft pulled something like that, with the full force of the PC hardware industry behind it.

[Reather]

Hey, what's that insult towards Mac. I'm a PC guy, but I do appreciate what Apple did for us. If it wasn't for them, windows probably wouldn't have began (assuming that's a bad thing) or it wouldn't have been popular. Also, even if windows took off, Microsoft wouldn't do anything about security or anything that Mac does well today (iTunes).

[johnnyis42]

i find it interesting a statement regarding what a computer company is "doing right" is selling music, while the biggest downfall mentioned about the most successful software company is its security vulnerabilities. i would like to think a computer company's best asset would be its computer business.

truth be told, the cars that are on the top of the list as stolen the most also happen to be the most popular make and model of car. does that make them inherently insecure?

securityfocus.com had an interesting article on default installs of the most popular desktop linux distributions being vulnerable to 10+ year old attacks. but this is not a well known fact amongst most people, the same way most people don't know how to steal a car, but they know which ones are stolen the most.

if this sounds like an insult, it's because it is not being considered the difference between windows and mac OS: that mac OS is written for mac machines (software and hardware made byt he same company, for the said company's products) and windows is written for any x86 based hardware, with standards for the hardware more or less freely available (you just need the compiler).

though microsoft is proprietary, the hardware standard isn't. with Mac, both are, and what Mac says is what goes.

[Reather]

I was making a point that microsoft tries to copy what others do. It's a known fact. For example, when Firefox 1.0 became popular, and when microsoft's IE market share fell below 90%, instead of waiting for MS Longhorn to come out, they are going to release it earlier. And when itunes came out, they released Media player 10. Now, if they hadn't, there is a pretty good chance they wouldn't have released those (and others), we would be waiting and they probably wouldn't be more full of features. So, we need other companies for quality products to come out and prices are lower.
And speaking of prices, MS could sell their office suites for $40 and still make a profit, instead of $500.

[johnnyis42]

i would never argue the point that MS charges way too much for their software... most of the lawsuits they have incurred have been exactly because of the reason that many other people, even governments feel that way as well. they are a business and have to weigh the market and their product, and thus they use the capitalist methodology of calculating what is the highest price the market will pay for their product which will yield the greatest profit. basically, if a million people can afford your product at 50 dollars a unit, which cost you 10 dollars per unit to produce one million, your net yield is 40 million. however, if only 250,000 people will buy your product at 400 dollars per unit, and the cost to you is now 20 dollars to produce each one, your profit ends up being almost 100 million.

this sucks because you cut out 75% of your product's market purely for a profit motive. now this may not be true for, say, luxury products, but for software it is true because many people who may like to work from home can't, unless their workplace purchases the license allowing them to distribute the software tot heir emplyees for that cut rate price, a solution microsoft realized they had to make or else they would lose ground to other software.

but the whole thing about microsoft "copying" everyone else is kind of bugus. Xerox had the first gui, but Mac was the first to figure out how to impliment it in a personal computer, allt he time EVERYONE int he computer industry was trying to get a graphic interface to work (when Mac released their first Mac computer with a mouse and a graphic desktop, many other companies were still trying to figure out if the mouse hardware would run the pointer, or if the operating system would)

my point before about support for other software/hardware drivers goes soemthing like this:

Mac has PCI and AGP ports in their hardware. however, their interface is Mac specific, requiring Mac approval and testing before a vendor can sell their product as "Mac" compatable. Microsoft, on the other hand, gives hardware vendors the option to submit their product's drivers for HQL certification. the vendor doesn't have to rely on reverse engineering to develope their product to work in windows. Mac's product advertisement relies heavily on their claim that their operating system doesn't crash (which is total garbage) and because of this Mac must closely control what hardware is used with their products.

to make my point, how many people complain about their Xbox crashing in the middle of a game compared to how many people complaining about their PC crashign in the middle of, well, anything? yet the Xbox is still running windows. how can the Xbox be so stable? because EVERYTHING, hardware and software, is controlled by microsoft. comparing stability and security between a Mac and an Xbox is more relevant than comparing it between windows and Mac OS. on the other hand, comparing linux and windows is much more relevant for those aspects.