Microsoft to Users: We're Giving Up on Windows
It's true: Microsoft has confirmed that it's abandoning Windows as we know it. Cagey as ever, the Microsofties won't say when it'll happen, but they have talked a little bit about what the next OS is going to look like--or not look like.
Microsoft code-named the project Midori. As best I can figure, it's cloud computing: Everything, including applications and data, is on the Internet.
What Exactly is Midori?
My colleague Elizabeth Montalbano, with the IDG News Service, tried making some sense of it in Microsoft Prepares for End of Windows With Midori and Erik Larkin, our crackerjack OS and Web guy, has plenty to say in Cloud Computing, Microsoft's Midori, and the End of Windows. There are also details -- and speculation -- in an SDTimes piece, Microsoft's plans for post-Windows OS revealed.
Midori for Linux?
One of my smarter-than-me buddies, Gary F., told me that Linus Torvalds worked on something called Midori a few years ago, an embedded Linux for mobile devices: "I doubt Microsoft would ever release something that could be traced back to Linux, but if I recall correctly, Transmeta's Midori had some rudimentary 'cloud computing' features vaguely similar to Microsoft's Midori." Read Details emerge on Transmeta's "Mobile Linux" and Transmeta Exports Midori Linux to China for details.
Quick aside: Cloud computing is worth knowing about, if for no other reason than sounding smart at your next dinner party. Read Yahoo, Intel and HP Form Cloud Computing Labs and Sci-Fi Channel Has Head In Cloud (Computing) to get a handle on it. Interesting, too, is what Dell is trying to do; read Dell Tries to Trademark 'Cloud Computing' for details on that.
Talkback
Midori isn't likely to be available for years (hey, we first have to gear up for Windows 7 (see Windows 7 in 2009?). Nonetheless, everyone has an opinion, and I'd like to hear yours.
If you have something to say, do it in Comments below, take the quick BuzzDash poll, or if you'd prefer, fire an e-mail right into my inbox.
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It will be a LONG time before complete cloud-based OS's become viable. The average American's internet speed is far too slow to accommodate all the programs, games, and media they wish to consume. For the foreseeable future, internet OS's will not be a comparable alternative for desktop OS's. Everyone would see a MAJOR decrease in overall speed.
I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot computer. I will never use internet based software - slow - and/or data storage - slow and no security. If this is the future of computing I'm not interested.
Didn't Sun try this with "The computer IS the network" a few years ago? And didn't it completely flop? Cloud computing requires a 100% reliable end-to-end network connection, which just doesn't exist, and likely never will. So it's a dead end, as far as I'm can see.
Well duh! Just as DOS 4.0 and Windows ME signaled the incompetent end of Microsoft's 16-bit OS's following very good mature OS's, DOS 3.3 and Win98SE respectively, so does Vista signal the incompetent end of MS's 32 bit OS after the very good Win XP.
What will the next OS look like? 64-bit. Look to Windows Server 2008 pared down for end users. Massive drive and ram availability. Multiple core/ processor support.
Will it be a Win 3.x or Win95? Uuugggh! Hope not but probably.
Or will it be a Win2000Pro? Gosh I hope so. WinServer08 is pretty darned good. One thing is for sure they do not have much time and will only get one shot. Apple and Linux are looking sooooo much better these days and improving!
"Cloud computing"... what a joke. As you describe it, this would not only be the end of "windows," but the end of the PC. All we'd need is dumb terminals hooked up to the internet to access our applications and data. And paying through the nose for that access and licenses. Yeah, right. I can see everybody eager to jump into this no-control / no-ownership concept. Dream on...
Do tech-writers deliberately write such useless trivia just to see a few dumb readers respond with a rebuttel?
Hay---wake up out there in computer land....
If cloud computing allows me to use leased apps from any network computer then sign me up.
I'm already using two online applications for doing some rather nifty ballistic calculations. What this experience has taught me is how much I wish I had the algorithms on my PDA or laptop so I could reduce data at remote locations. In fact, I'm looking into software that will do just that. The comments regarding a reliable and high speed data link being a show-stopper strikes a chord. I am also very concerned about privacy and will not use an application if I'm going to be charged every time I use it.
I have one Question : when will Microsoft start to think about what customers need in the way that customers think, not how Microsoft thinks???????
From my experience and what i need , i think i need my personal computer to be able to read more than 4 GB of RAM>> so i need 64bit OS, i need this OS to be realistic, not like Vista which requires as much of RAM as i can take !!.
Please read Microsoft Minimum requirements for Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx
and as Mr. Scott M. Fulton said "Despite Microsoft's claims that Vista can run on such trailing-edge systems," writes Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research, "iSuppli believes the reality is quite different."
read the article:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Vista_Minimum_Requirements_Unrealistic/1165596677
I want my OS not to occupy 60% of my CPU because it's indexing or i don't know what !!!
i don't want 500 MB patches every few months.
People Get real
"Users to Microsoft: We're giving up on you!"
Definitely makes sense to me. Windows PCs should have been replaced by an all talking, all reading, all 3D seeing, interactive
interface, with 64/128 bit CPUs, and autonomous PUs for graphics, Ethernet, sound, and data transfers, starting in 1995 and moving to 256bit by 2000.
Instead the world has been forced to spend money on the gradual
increments of Microsoft's rendition of the '75 XEROX WIMP, an
interface that reached it's end of life phase in '85 on multi
processor 32bit personal workstations like the SGI Indy.
The only way I can make my 64bit AMD box work as fast as these old workstations used to, is to load a real time optimised Linux kernel, and compile the software applications for the hardware. At least by using KDE4 and 4 GB RAM I don't have to wait more than the then standard 0.3 of a second for each function to complete.
Goodbye Windows, roll on Internet ISP leased connectivity boxes in a P2P supercomputer grid, user friendly human interface devices and the cloud.
When Larry Ellison came up with his "thin client" uhh, "paradigm", my comment was: SQL*Nuts. I haven't changed my mind, though I am sure that corporate IT is going to love the idea of re-building the "glass house", throttling off anything "not invented here" and turning the corporate computing environment into a profit center - remember that term?
What is being forgotten here is the fundamental reason that the PC became popular: it's like the difference between personal transportation and getting on the bus, or train. Uhh, which do you prefer?
In my opinion, it's time to start thinking about converting over to the Macintosh. When will Microsoft come up with a reliable operating system without thinking about clouding? And what about all of the rural people in the world that do not have access to high speed internet or do we matter?