I didn’t want to write this column. I live as Windows-free an existence as most people can these days. Of course I have to run Windows as part of my job, in order to make sure that Samba, the software I write, will interoperate correctly with all the multiple Windows versions out there.
I also have to install some Windows applications using the Open Source Wine project, which emulates Windows on Linux well enough that some binary Windows applications will install and run straight off the DVD. Like most people, there are some Windows applications I just can’t do without, although in this case it’s my three-year-old son who finds an amazing amount of joy in his toddler games, none of which have yet been ported to Linux. Wine works amazingly well these days for this sort of thing, well enough that my wife no longer complains about the computer “being hard to use”.
However, Windows hasn’t been my desktop environment for about seven years now. I have found I have no need for it; a Linux desktop does everything I need to do very well. That’s not easy to do, as I’m not a casual user. I do tend to have rather demanding requirements for my desktop, as regular readers of this column might note.
Yet Microsoft’s recent announcements about “Windows 7?, the new version of Windows, find me sitting here feeling I have no choice but to discuss it, or be drowned out as a hopelessly irrelevant columnist. This is the power of the marketing megaphone of the monopoly player on the desktop, even though it isn’t my desktop.
According to Microsoft, Windows 7 is the version of Windows everyone has been waiting for. According to the “What’s New” section of the Windows 7 website it will be “Faster and Easier”, it will “Work your way”, and give you “New Possibilities”. I must confess it sounds less than thrilling to me, but these are the things the Windows marketers thought it was worth pointing out about the new “center of people’s technological solar system” — to quote Steve Ballmer.
But wait a minute. Let’s get in the time machine, go back a few years and take our foot off the crushed butterfly of Windows Vista and look at what was promised for the previous version of Windows. Windows Vista is “safer and more reliable” and there were “dozens of wonderful new features”. Dozens! After five and a half years in development, there are dozens of new features.
Of course I’m being overly critical here — more than a touch of sarcasm — but I’m sure you get the point. The amazing thing about the world of Windows marketing is that everything a user might want is always available in the next version of Windows. Up until the time that version is released, then after a year or so of the reality of the software sinks in, and the upgrade drums start to beat about how wonderful the next version of Windows is going to be.
I’m reminded of the fictional TV show “Treadmill to Bucks” invented by Stephen King in his wonderful Science Fiction novel The Running Man (Don’t confuse this with the Hollywood movie of the same name. Just read the book. In fact, try and forget the movie ever existed, for all Hollywood adaptations of Steven King except “The Shining”.) Destitute patients with a heart condition are “invited” to answer questions on camera whilst walking on a treadmill of ever increasing speed to try and earn money for their relatives. This Windows treadmill never stops, and the endless stream of bucks being spent are those of Microsoft’s customers, forever on the road to upgrade nirvana.
source: blogs.zdnet.com
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