Quote Originally Posted by Xaqaria View Post
I think the real winner is the general open source mentality that is starting to take over the internet (i.e. "reality 2.0"). Everyone is sharing everything and its great.
So back to usenet circa '92
great, I loved the net back then

Quote Originally Posted by arby View Post
A tad optimistic, IMO
Maybe, but there's a couple of areas that MS just can't touch

The biggy is netbooks
I cannot see MS competing in this area AT ALL
(personally, I think people buying windows on netbooks is just cause they don't know better - but it's not going to last)

Yeah, Intel's Atom CPU is great and all, x86 based so you can bung XP on Atom based netbooks

but nothing can touch ARM processors for power efficiency and cool running
(ARM has been used on mobile phones, routers and all other embedded devices since year dot - it's what ARM CPUs do best)

There's quite a few netbooks popping up now with ARM cpus, and they cannot run windows

Windows needs x86, and I don't see x86 being competative in the netbook sector (ARM based ones will simply decimate them in terms of price, heat (therefore size) & battery life)

x86 netbooks currently have 2-3 hours of battery life
compare that with 10+ hours with the ARM based mobile devices (the Pandora portable gaming machine is the perfect example - this uses complex 3D graphics and beats simple email & web browsing in terms of battery life)
what's going to sell better?

Also, XP just cannot compete with modern OSs (it's 8 years old for gods sake and they're trying to kill it, but can't)
and I don't think MS can slim down Vista or successors and still deliver an OS that rivals competitors - they'll just be featureless husks

(yeah, they do have CE, but seriously that's not a capable OS for netbooks - it's barely capable of running a PDA)