In the recent few month, we almost see a boom of Linux. Fedora 8, KDE4, GNOME Remote Desktop, Wal-Mart's $199 Linux PC, Android all brought much of our attention away from Microsoft. The trend of operating system design is also splitting with the introduction of JeOS, gOS allowing older PCs to suffice for our daily uses.
Where Microsoft is already threatened:
1. Efficiency
Microsoft has always been lame at this making their systems heavier and heavier. But the fact is, for a daily computer user, checking your emails, surfing the web, listening to music, handling word,excel, powerpoint documents can be done with a Pentium 233 PC prevalent 10 years ago with a Linux system. The singled handed push for hardware upgrade from Microsoft seemed to be challenged by the Linux world. In fact, I saw another day at ubuntu forum a list of operating systems that resurrects your really really old PCs here. I suspect to the contrary of continuous upgrading, one day, we will stop and say, hey, I want a retro-style PC, just like retro cars. One of the cool things geeks are going to do is to see how old a PC will they be able to run things on.
2. Eye candy
The biggest improvements in Vista the whole computer society experienced is probably the enhancement of desktop effects. But have a look at this:
I don't mean Microsoft will lose to anybody at user interface or desktop effects in spite of the fact the general belief that Mac OS is prettier, but at least Linux is catching up. The above two pictures come from a project called Vixta based on Fedora packages and aimed to imitate Vista desktop effects. And a solid proof that Linux can really do more is the well know project Compiz-Beryl.
3. Remote processing
A trend is already set that we need remote desktop, remote control, remote access. Google's document and spread sheet sets a paradigm. We never have to worry how the software would go wrong or to update the software or anything. This brings in business chances in a new form for softwares companies because they can start providing online softwares for users and charge them according to the number of times or total time. For traveller's then, they don't have to take a piece of software that they use for work everywhere and they could just use it online. GNOME remote desktop again makes Linux stand where Microsoft is if not further.
Microsoft's hopes:
A. July 2007, Microsoft issued an operating system called Windows Fundamental for Legacy PCs. The program didn't attract much attention. But Microsoft has also suggested a "kernel" style Windows 7 so I suspect Windows Fundamental is reasonably an experiment. There's not much report on the performance report but I do know it's a stripped down version of Windows XP. Stripped down Windows XPs by hackers already exist and some of them are quite amazing at the balance of performance and sufficiency.
If you have a PC from 8 years ago, it won't run Windows XP very smoothly but the amazing fact is you can still have as useful a Windows XP if you know how to get rid of all the bloated stuff. There was rumors about Windows 7 will be very light and I think that will win Microsoft a fortune if they can make some fundamental improvements. Most people do want to upgrade. But when they cannot run the new operating system on their computers, they regard it as crappy. Actually, Microsoft can offer a whole range of complexity of operating systems. I mean if hackers can make Windows XP run on a 256MB RAM pc smoothly, Microsoft should know the system better than everybody else. If Microsoft could make the system run based on well designed structure like Modules where you don't run what you need, the operating system can serve a much wider crowd.
B. I don't know if 3D desktop gets people lost or not but there's definitely space here. Microsoft's interface has always had comfortable arrangements but again, I think the war is at variety. If several fundamentally different interfaces doesn't come with Windows 7, how loyal do Microsoft's customers have to be to not want to experience some of the eye candy the Linux world offers.
C. This is definitely where the future lies. I cite Bill Gates' words in an interview with Newsweek"
That means that right now when you move from one PC to another, you've got to install apps on each one, do upgrades on each one. Moving information between them is very painful. We can use Live Services to know what you're interested in. So even if you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things. So that's kind of the user-centric thing that Live Services can enable. [Also,] in Vista, things got a lot better with [digital] ink and speech, but by the next release there will be a much bigger bet. Students won't need textbooks; they can just use these tablet devices. Parallel computing is pretty important for the next release. We'll make it so that a lot of the high-level graphics will be just built into the operating system. So we've got a pretty good outline."
The man sees the future but he's not the only one he sees that unfortunately. So if Microsoft were to succeed with Windows 7, I would offer something like "Your Windows Everywhere" online which is a remote operating system that you can access everywhere. It will give the users a chance to see how neat that works and how Microsoft is capable of offering such a great experience and convey the promise of a much better experience of Windows 7 in integration with a remote operating system.
More thoughts: Windows, Linux, the future
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