There’s a paper, “Windows NT from a Unix Point of View”, written around the time of NT 3.51, which is heartbreaking in describing what they were trying to do. It no longer appears to be on microsoft.com; I’d love to find a copy again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7932149.stm

A little incestuous, no? Both people are notorious for their relationship with Microsoft.

Development effort went into Longhorn, which was “rebooted” (Microsoft’s word) or suffered a “development collapse”.

Can’t beat modular code!

The most annoying parallel is the Edsel’s successor, the Comet, which was a huge hit … despite starting life as the Edsel Comet before the cursed brand name was hastily removed. Presumably Microsoft hopes for a similar effect.

I have copies of confidential memos and contracts between Microsoft and large OEMs (e.g. Acer, Dell, Compaq/HP). I intend to analyse these and highlight favouritism in the future. We need them translated to plain text.

Special deals were based on all sorts of reciprocal agreements (e.g. promotion of MSIE). There’s also volume that affects pricing and Intel used the same illegal tactics against AMD.

@Roy B:

Yes, Dell was afraid of retaliation.

If that card, nay, that entire deck was taken away from Microsoft, they would be nothing in comparison to Linux. As it is, “free markets” favour monopolies pulling stunts like these so they can stay monopolies. The only salvation comes from the fact Linux costs $0, otherwise sadly I don’t think Linux would have a chance. You have to perform some AMAZING acts in order for an unfair monopolistic market to give you room to breath, and $0 is pretty amazing.

Only reason why Apple is alive is because it used BSD, and it selected a small amount of hardware to focus on. In uncharted open hardware waters if Apple consumers actually had open choice in their hardware like Linux and Windows users get, Apple would sink unless BSD drivers could save it’s sorry butt.

That is, if they are given the choice. Unfortunately, and ironically, real competition isn’t given a chance very much here in the U.S.. Microsoft doesn’t want to compete and play fair, but everyone already knew that.

“pressure on OEMs may be the only thing that keeps Windows afloat at this stage”

Well, that and the software selection problems still facing Linux. Windows still has the better software for it in many areas, so consumers will be paying to have that extra bit of choice if they buy Windows. Not to mention the software packaging fragmentation which distros refuse to put effort behind to resolve so that consumers have even the same choice of *Linux* software no matter what distro they choose.

This may be true, but let’s also consider the fact that OEMs could deliver multi-boot systems (or fast boot, or VMs) without additional charges. Consider the BeOS story for details.

Fortunately, that’s already changing.

Well, that and the software selection problems still facing Linux. Windows still has the better software for it in many areas, so consumers will be paying to have that extra bit of choice if they buy Windows. Not to mention the software packaging fragmentation which distros refuse to put effort behind to resolve so that consumers have even the same choice of *Linux* software no matter what distro they choose.

Let’s just hope these trends continue, and hope that software patients get band. Not only for us, but for IBM, AMD and other chip manufactures because without an OS, or at least an updated OS these companies will not exist.