Microsoft Claims a Billion Windows Installs by End of 2008 365
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed yesterday that there will be a billion machines running Windows within a year. 'The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion. If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept.'"
Re:How many zeroes is that? (Score:2, Informative)
How many PCs have 2 Windows licenses? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm talking when a company buy a PC and has a corporate version of Windows XP (no activation req'd)
That means MS gets:
-one license for the PC leaving the store/reseller
and
-one when the company buys a corporate license for that PC.
Therefore MS get a 2-for-1 deal, everytime!
Re:Something fishy? (Score:3, Informative)
Does Ballmer count licenses to get a high number, or conduct polls to get a true number?
What do you think?
Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS (Score:2, Informative)
d) There's still nothing in Unix that has the same handy role as a Graphics Device Context.
X does have Graphics Contexts and toolkits obviously build upon those as they see fit. It's a pretty standard part of a GUI these days, anyways. Perhaps you are annoyed that in X, the graphics context does exactly what it's supposed to...store graphics contextual information, rather than be a catch-all way to do graphics operations. Of course, then again, you can use the same graphics context with multiple drawables (windows, pixmaps) rather than having the GC be tied to one and only one drawable. I personally find the X system far more flexible than the Windows system, and not particularly more difficult to use or understand.
Re:Quality vs Quantity (Score:2, Informative)
Lots more running Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Moderators! (Score:1, Informative)
I have had to manually configure my monitors in 2005 with some distros. None the less 1995. I think your post is flamebait!
Re:Moderators! (Score:1, Informative)
VNC is hardly a Linux thing. The SSH way is basically intended for running a single program remotely, not for running the entire desktop. Neither of these are comparable to RDP, because they're not supposed to be! It's complaining that a server isn't as portable as a laptop.
NX works in a similar way to X11's built-in networking, except it uses SSH to establish a connection, perform authentication, and tunnels all traffic through it. It also adds compression, latency reduction, and all that other useful stuff. Works much better than RDP, in my opinion. If you're going to whine about remote access sucking on Linux, it would help to actually use a proper solution, rather than complain that the half-assed stuff you managed to hack together didn't work very well.
Re:Moderators! (Score:4, Informative)
Uhh.. what? Why did you have to bring SSH tunneling into it. You could say exactly the same about terminal server.
Under X the simplest is to go to the terminal, select the machine you want to log into and log into it. It's 100% transparent and runs at native speed. This has worked perfectly for 20 years plus. Or you can log in locally and multiple machines on the same desktop just by setting an environment variable (or a script which runs by clicking, which is easier) - and they run exactly as if you'd run them on the local machine again at full speed. Windows just can't do anything like this.
That whole paragraph about figuring stuff out and configuring is just FUD - have you ever even *tried* to use X remotely? 'command line to execute whatever gui you're interested in'? WTF?? Your GUI is already running on your local machine.
X works fine over dialup - it is *designed* to work over slow connections... when it was written that was all they had.
Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS (Score:4, Informative)
a) but linux has ssh, which is far easier than having to remote desktop in to do most tasks. Forcing users to run a full GUI to copy a file is terrible design.
b) and windows 95 borrowed heavily from Mac OS and OS/2. Vista is borrowing heavily from OSX and Beryl/Compiz. Not an argument.
c) see b) above.
d) the power of X11 comes from a separation between what is being drawn and the hardware involved; remote X11 connections are just an instance of this. GDI is a different way of abstracting that information. Besides, regular users don't care *how* it's being drawn.
e) From it's inception, directX was considered inferiour to openGL by all of the big gaming houses. DirectX's popularity is a product of marketing. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL
f) it is now 2007, and linux is far ahead of windows in hardware discovery, and with a few exceptions doesn't even require you to install drivers (now where's the win98 driver floppy for my printer?).
g) you haven't used adept or any of the other modern package managers, clearly. I can install thousands of packages with just a few clicks (and then walk away to have a coffee), or a single command line if I prefer. Windows still requires manual downloading, inserting CDs, clicking through msis and installshields, manual dependency resolution, manual package updating... Kubuntu has a "new package notifier" in the system tray that will not only tell me what OS components need updating, but also which games/office suites/perl modules/utilities/etc can be updated, and which still gives me complete control over what I want to install.
Your FUD is several years out of date. Please try a modern linux distro and come back with some valid complaints.
Almost half right... (Score:3, Informative)
b) Sure, that's correct, however, I wouldn't say that the start bar is still technically superior to Gnome's or KDE's.
c) Ah, but GDI is no longer hardware accelerated, and WMF is resource hungry for general computing use.
d) Can't speak to this, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
e) Ok, that isn't a statement of something Windows does better. Just a statement of popularity.
f) Closed the gap in hardware discovery? You're stating that Windows was superior 12 years ago. That should tell you something. Have you used Ubuntu? It discovers everything perfectly for me. Vista still won't recognize my onboard SATA, onboard NIC, Linksys Wireless card, or Promise Raid Controller without drivers and excessive rebooting. Good thing my network card drivers are available on the internet...
g) Completely incorrect for most purposes. Common software is available in repositories and available instantly with a search and two clicks. No restart, and installed in your menu in a manner that makes sense. Yes, many power users do work off of svn (easier in Linux than windows) or compile their own apps (easier to do on Linux again).
Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS (Score:5, Informative)
a) Windows XP remote desktop is easier to deal with than X remoting.
I have to respectfully disagree. Not only does remotely using X offer far more flexibility then RDP, I believe it is a better bandwidth user then RDP. It should be noted we shouldn't praise MS for RDP either, their original TS implementation sucked. Citrix licensed their stuff off to MS so MS could make a better product. Look at old TS and compare it with Citrix of that time period, you will see who was the leader.
b) Both KDE and Gnome borrow u/i design heavily from the Windows 95 Start Bar. The concept of COM based shell extensions was looted by KParts.
Ah, but the glory is we are not limited to those two interfaces. WindowMaker, Enlightenment, XFCE, and others offer more ways to use X and in many cases are less overhead then using Gnome or KDE. Not to mention X has allowed you for ages to have multiple desktops, something that was only possible with third party apps for a long time in Windows. You can also heavily customize the UIs to be less Windows like if you want. Besides, isn't the Win 95 Start Bar essentially a rip-off of the Mac Apple?
e) Although I prefer OpenGL for its ease of entry, a lot of big gaming houses seem to prefer DirectX.
Blame MS for this; however, there are plenty of games that will work just fine in Linux. id seems hell bent on continuing to make their games run on Linux. UT2004 worked (and I pray UT3 does as well). Other games using DirectX will work, though some of them can only do so much in Wine and it is somewhat limited to older DX apps. Honestly, if you play that many games you can always dual boot or just stick with Windows. The gaming argument is weak at best.
f) For a long time, Windows lead in hardware discovery. Linux has closed that gap, I think, but in 1995, I was editing config files to get my X to work with my monitor, and Windows would discover both for me automatically.
This is just a poor argument. Tell me how many issues you've had in 2007? I will also say that there is better legacy support in Linux then Windows. I can still find devices that won't install drivers from the base Windows install but can in Linux, even if only well enough for me to get drivers that work well. The gap is practically closed with the largest problem being the quality of some video drivers.
g) It's -STILL- easier to install a new piece of software on Windows. Too easy, the security people will refrain... :-)
Really? Use apt-get or one of the various front-ends available or yum and then tell me this. Both of these do great at handling dependencies and make installations rather painless. Not to mention I do not need to spend hours installing extra software since most of what I need is installed when I install the OS, including IM clients, web browsers (not owned by MS), office applications, etc.
And, in the applications department, there's really no open source offering that comes remotely close to Visual Studio 2005 and C#, SQL Server 2005, and certainly not even Office 2000, let alone newer versions of Office.
Okay. Visual Studio is great if you are building for Windows. How well can you build on other platforms? Not at all. Go figure. KDevelop is actually fairly good and offers most the items that the average developer will probably ever use. Of course, I still prefer writing makefiles and source by hand. I've never been a huge fan of IDEs. As for Office, I must laugh. First, word processing of 2000 compared to either Abiword or OOo is equivalent in all regards. I see no advantage to either, except for the fact that both Abiword and OOo will still be supported long after 2000 is not. I have seen no major issues with Calc compared to Excel and if you are using Access (or Base) for a database, you should really get your head examined. Most database people will tell you that Access is not a good solution for a database and
Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS (Score:3, Informative)
Where then, in SUSE Linux 10, can I just click on an icon, enter a computer name, and remote desktop in?
Ah, but the glory is we are not limited to those two interfaces.... Not to mention X has allowed you for ages to have multiple desktops, something that was only possible with third party apps for a long time in Windows
Architecturally, Windows has allowed for multiple Window stations and multiple OS personalities since Windows NT. Microsoft never implemented them. Third party developers have. And I wouldn't hold it against MS for buying Citrix technology any more than I would hold it against KDE guys for working with Apple on some things.
This is just a poor argument. Tell me how many issues you've had in 2007?
Actually, in 2007, as I said, Linux has closed the gap. Neither Suse Linux 10 or Windows Server 2003 automatically installed the appropriate driver for my nVidia 6200 AGP on my dual Opteron. On the other hand, Linux utterly fails with my DVD drive, but Windows just plays them. Please don't lecture me about codecs and licensing...at the end of the day, Microsoft pays for it, and Linux writers don't, and I can watch movies on Windows and not on Linux. However, I don't really like to watch movies on my computer, so, for 90% of what I do, Linux is good for me.
And don't even get me started on sound. What sound API should a developer write for these days on Linux, and, does any Linux sound API support hardware accelerated MIDI playback on sound cards, support for sound fonts, and all that other stuff? With Windows, I know there is a layered solution, starting with PlaySound for quick and dirty stuff, then the MCI API for some studio type of stuff, then, there's the lower level mm API for MIDI, and finally DirectX for all sorts of audio playback. With Linux sound, it seems like I fly right into the teeth of KDE vs GNOME and I just lose all hope.
Okay. Visual Studio is great if you are building for Windows. How well can you build on other platforms? Not at all. Go figure. KDevelop is actually fairly good and offers most the items that the average developer will probably ever use
Portability is a religion that not all customers care about. If you are delivering a solution, you are delivering the total package of hardware, OS and language choice. Changing one out would be like asking Ford and GM to make interchangable V8s - a nifty techno trick, but really not all that useful in the real world. To that end, I think Linux does have a lot to offer that Windows doesn't. Off the top of my head, I prefer how Linux mmap works over Windows VirtualAlloc, Linux sockets to Windows sockets, and certainly how the Linux file system works - Windows locking files because they are open is just absurd. But on the other hand I think Windows threading offers more power than Linux threading does. There's a kernel native threadpool, support for the concept of a collection of jobs, and, yeah, I really do like MsgWaitForMultipleObjects.
KDevelop is, I think, better for C++ development than Visual Studio. There are some exceptions - looking at registers in KDevelop is utterly annoying. However, if you haven't done anything serious with Windows Forms in C# in Visual Studio 2005, then you have no idea what you are missing. The intellisense is absolutely godlike compared to KDE or Eclipse. Debugging works really well - the whole "Quickwatch" thing is nice. And finally the refactoring tools are simply rock solid.
As for Office, I must laugh. First, word processing of 2000 compared to either Abiword or OOo is equivalent in all regards
Word feels better. It just does. That matters. Featurewise, OOo is pretty close, as I said, but Word feels better. And besides, 2000 is 7 years ago. Word XP/2003 or whatever the version is before the current release blows OOo out of the water. Still, none feel as good as my old favorite, Lotus WordPro (formerly Samna Ami