Is this the beginning of the end for Windows?
Every technology that humans create has a lifecycle. As part of the lifecycle, the technology eventually becomes obsolete. Some technologies have a very long run, but eventually something better always comes along. The incandescent light bulb lasted over a century, but now it is seeing its end. Compact Discs have been around for more than two decades, but they are heading for oblivion as well. There isn’t a good replacement yet for the internal combustion engine, but we know that it is coming because ICEs are so bad in terms of efficiency.
So what about Microsoft Windows? Are we seeing the beginning of the end for it? These two articles think so:
Linux is about to take over the low end of PCs - “Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users’ hands…”
Forget the Linux Desktop, it’s the Linux Laptop that matters! - “As hardware costs have fallen Microsoft customers have been paying ever greater percentages of the total device cost to Microsoft. Though it seems with the release of the EEE PC we have reached the threshhold where manufacturers are beginning to produce devices so cheap that the cost of Windows is by far the most expensive part of the device…”
The average person only does 4 or 5 things with a computer:
1) Email/IM
2) Internet browsing
3) Office applications like a word processor and spreadsheet
4) Digital photo storage and management
If that’s all you do, you don’t need Vista. Windows Vista has three big problems:
1) As hardware gets cheaper and cheaper, Vista is too expensive relative to the hardware.
2) Vista requires way too much hardware for what it does (2 GB RAM, dual-core processor, etc.)
3) Vista is too complicated.
Are we at the point where, over the next two to three years, we see Microsoft’s market share fall from 90% to 50% as the entire low-end of the market switches to Linux?
Good article. Rather than losing market share, I hope that that MS begins to adapt to the changing climate of the tech world (i.e. less expensive, more customization for simplification, etc.)
As a side, the internal combustion engine is inefficient? Would you like to inform everyone of a more efficient system for vehicular propulsion? Coasting downhill doesn’t count.