Windows Need To Be Cleaned

It's been well over a month since my last post.  I've been preparing a new home, moving in, getting situated, etc.

CNet News has a good article on how Microsoft Windows needs a new start.  I've been saying this since Vista came out, so it's nice to see someone in the industry speaking out on it.

To put it succinctly, Microsoft needs to start over.  Windows has so much feature bloat that it really detracts from the experience.  Windows XP pretty much had everything anyone could want as far as features, and if MS had built a new presentation layer just for it, we would all be set.  MS intends to build Windows 7, the next release of the OS, on the same core as Vista, which seems like a big mistake.

You see, Windows has had to carry a lot of baggage over the past two decades from all the different design decisions they've made.  Starting over has been all but impossible because of the need to maintain compatibility for all the software that has been written, which puts a damper on being able to something new and fresh from a technology perspective.

But a lot has happened in the past few years.  Great leaps in technology allow end users to run previous operating systems on the same hardware in the form of virtual machines, making it possible to maintain the compatibility the software needs, as well as make a leap to a new platform for the future.

But, as the article points out, there hasn't been any real incentive for MS to do that--until now.  Vista sales are lackluster, enterprises are opting out of upgrading to Vista and are looking to Windows 7, and Apple has made great strides in gobbling up greater market share.

This isn't the end for MS, but one cannot argue that since its release of Vista, MS has been in a bit of a funk.  We'll see what the future holds.