Tuesday, June 24, 2008

And in this morning's geek news ...


Apparently, Microsoft crap just isn't "good enough" anymore:

Intel won't touch Vista

Too broken to deploy

ACCORDING TO A memo circulating a few weeks ago, it looks like Intel is taking a wise decision and avoiding the Broken OS entirely. Yes, Intel is not going to use Vista on its corporate machines... ever.

When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says get stuffed, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows MS has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a black and white way though. Reassuring, like a warm cup of tea, or a public kick to the corporate crown jewels.

And the alternatives? Well, it's not like there are a lot of them:

So that leaves two other choices, Linux and Mac. Linux is a distinct possibility, they already have an in-house distro that causes employees look nervously around the room when you talk about it. Although it is not a desktop variant, there is no reason that they could not roll one given two years.

Earth to Intel: If you need two years to simply roll out a "desktop variant" of something you already have, you're not as tech savvy as you think.

The other one is the big white horse in the corner, Mac OS. If there was ever a company that is loyal to Intel, it is Apple. If there was ever a company that could make MacOS work internally, it is Intel. While any marriage with the turtlenecked sociopath is a match made in hell, don't count this one out either.

In the end, you have Intel flipping MS the bird, and telling them what they already know, Vista is undeployable by anyone with a grain of common sense. The impressive thing is that it just might lead to a waving off of MS entirely, they are the underdog for the next round of upgrades.

Frankly, I don't see Intel being edgy enough to go the Linux route, but it can't shock anyone that someone finally told Microsoft that their software is just too crappy to waste any time on anymore. The start of something big? One can only hope.

Microsoft Outlook: A virus-delivery mechanism with optional e-mail capability.

7 comments:

Mike said...

I can't imagine why they wouldn't go Ubuntu, but hey, OSX is pretty sweet too.

As long as it isn't the virus and worm vector known as Windows...

DoubleDeckerBusGuy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DoubleDeckerBusGuy said...

Microsoft Outlook: A virus-delivery mechanism with optional e-mail capability.

First of all, Microsoft has put food on my table for almost fifteen solid years... because their stuff is so "questionable", us techs make a decent living through it's failures!

Secondly, I've never hear that bit about Outlook... and I will now be stealing it and using it often.

Thirdly, I just (was forced to) order a new laptop for my middle kid for university... and I told her I need to have it a few days before she gets delivery to "delete the Vista virus from it."

Sadly, despite better options, for her own ease of use, I will be using that thing Microsoft wishes would go away but won't... XP.

Me, I'm still waiting for my new toy... a Wind which will, indeed, be a Linux based system... Why do I want... no, NEED a Wind? Simple... if I manage to screw it up, I desperately want to say, "Uh oh, I broke Wind." Thanks MSI for not making me say "Eee!"

toujoursdan said...

Linux and Mac OS aren't exactly equivalent.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Mac OS only works on Mac machines. So Intel would have to dump all their PC they already have (even before their sunset dates) for Macs, which is a pretty costly business expense.

Linux/Ubuntu could be installed on the hardware they already have rather seamlessly.

In both cases they would need to make sure whatever peripherals they use would have to work with the new OS. The limitations of both have kept me with Windows this long. (And maybe I have been lucky but I haven't had any major problems with Vista.)

liberal supporter said...

DAN!
You never saw this?
I thought the latest Mac OS was unix/linux internals.

Joe said...

I find the Ernie Ball story is very instructive here.

Romantic Heretic said...

I haven't used anything but Macs for twenty years now.

I'll stop using computers if I can't use a Mac. It never gets in the way.

And as far as I know, there's no reason why the Mac OS can't be used. It uses all the same hardware as Windoze machines these days.