Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Some kind of cheaper upgrade for existing Vista users is also being mulled over, something Fried noted she had received a lot of emails on, and something I and many others have said should at least be the case for Vista Ultimate users who received a series of Ultimate Extras most people wouldn’t bother paying for.
HP is quoted in the article as being very happy with Windows 7 code thus far, and one would imagine, given Acer’s leaks and general good press, that most other OEMs are very happy, too.
Windows 7 rumours have come in the last few days already talking of a Windows 7 SP1 build in the works, although no dates have been set for any SP1 release.
Pricing for Windows 7 is also yet to be unveiled. The size of the hole Microsoft shoots into its foot will be heavily dependent on how greedy they are with Win 7 pricing, something that has been flagged as “higher prices”, although this could well be yet another red herring.
Certainly if prices are high, consumer and media reaction will be swift and horrific for Microsoft, and will work exactly in Microsoft’s disfavour, pushing ever more customers over to a free Linux environment just to be free of the Microsoft taxman.
After all, who wants to pay lots of money to Microsoft when Windows 7 involves learning a new environment, despite its familiarity, when the effort needed to upgrade to something like Ubuntu isn’t that much greater, and could actually be easier?
The Road Ahead for Microsoft clearly wasn’t the one Bill Gates predicted, and unless Microsoft gets the launch of Windows 7 right, aside from the all-important code, Windows 7 will either be the beginning of the end for the company, the end of the beginning of Linux’s long-overdue ascension, or some kind of muddle through for both as Win 7 gains a lot of new market share but Linux distros do to.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
