Windows 7: Vista Mark II

Sam Varghese
Friday, 29 May 2009 06:18

Opinion and Analysis

For sometime earlier this year, there was much talk about how Windows 7 was going to play saviour to rescue its creators from the cesspit that Vista had created. Now it looks like even the biggest fans of that company in Redmond have realised that it is another dud. I guess the disillusionment has begun with the netbook; for a while Windows 7 was going to run on netbooks at speeds that would rival that of XP. But when Microsoft decided that netbooks needed to be redefined - the classic tactic of moving the goalposts when your argument misses its mark - then the scales fell from admiring eyes.

There's no need to wonder anymore: Windows 7 will be Vista Mark II. The time for illusions is over and the real stuff is being jammed into the innards of this great operating system - to use bizspeak, " as we speak, 24/7, seamlessly."

What has passed for a netbook all this time never was. No, the new specs which Microsoft has brought to the table are those of a low-end laptop. You need to pay through the nose for a toy too.

It looks like all the positive press about Windows 7 has emboldened the beast of Redmond to stretch out its claws. Customers are being told bluntly that they will have to pay more from now on - witness the case of the Australian charities and that of New Zealand.

The chickens are being counted well and truly before they are hatched.

They've even got Asus onside, to shout loud and clear that Linux has no future on netbooks. What did it take to come up with that kind of talk, that flies in the face of every bit of logic?

With Windows 7, it looks like Microsoft has shot its bolt. The Vista fiasco is going to be repeated. XP will have to be pulled out of the dustbins and retained on desktops as the world waits, in a breathless state, for Windows 8. Or 9. Or maybe 12.

The forthcoming launch of a new search service tells us one thing - the old one was a miserable failure. It's part of a tale that says much about Microsoft these days. With Ballmer guiding the ship, it looks like things are lurching from one crisis to another. Something like the Titanic on steroids.

The dud Zune has now been relaunched but it will fail too, in the face of the Apple challenge. Saddam Hussein's tactics don't work in this kind of war.