2008 Is here, its now time to face the truth… The clock is ticking on Microsoft’s Windows XP. And whilst Microsoft may view this as a natural stage in the evolution of a product that was RTM’ed (released to manufacturing) all the way back in 2001, a healthy proportion of people will fail to see eye to eye with the company on this one. In this context… Windows Vista.

Vista In 2007

Even with Vista hot off the presses, XP did not give one inkling that it was going to give up the fight, with Microsoft focusing on winding XP up for good-Ending support for SP1 and soon to be SP2.

-Microsoft’s Windows Product Management vice president Mike Nash on September 27th: “with more than 60 million licenses sold as of this summer, Windows Vista is on track to be the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft’s history.”
They had done it-sold over 20 million licences in the first month since RTM, passing 40million within the first 100days and 60 million by mid 2007. The last statistics made available to the public, dating back to the end of October, pointed to over 88 million Vista copies sold worldwide.

At the end of 2007, according to statistics provided by Net Applications, Vista enjoyed a market share of 10.48% - a percentage roughly synonymous with 100+ million sold copies. And while in just a single year Vista’s install base has passed the combined audience of Mac OS X and all the Linux distributions, its performance is still perceived with nuances of failure. And at fault is Windows XP with its roots firmly dug in for the past six years.

Vista’s Problem

Currently Vista (in general) leaves a lot to be desired-to be honest it’s just how I feel. Sure SP1 comes out this year, and there is still hope that Microsoft will boost Vista up to the OS that it has the potential to be, but lets face it-there are A LOT of users who wont go with the flow. Admittedly Vista HAS grown on me since I first tested it a couple of years ago-I have the upmost confidence SP1 will change my mind for the better.

Let’s explore what’s gone down with Vista last year:

• Dell, HP and Acer have all asked Microsoft to extend XP’s availability for an additional 6 months due to the concerns of customers.
• Many Businesses have been slow to adopt Vista due to poor performance and compatibility issues.
• Complaints have arisen regarding performance issues and the fact that Vista is so damn hungry.

XP’s Future

2008 Marks another milestone for Microsoft Windows-No it’s not Service Pack 1. It’s the real upgrade to Vista (SP0)… XP’s Service Pack 3. This final major update to XP has been dubbed by some as the Vista without the crap.

Although XP was faster than Vista before, SP3 ups the ante. Microsoft has said that SP3 features about 1073 fixes and adds some cool features from Vista to make your experience far better. Using Vista after XP seems weird-no device incompatibility warnings, pop-ups asking for permission and poor performance.

Sure this may not seem like big improvements and most of the fixes included in SP3 can already be found on Vista, but isn’t that the issue here? Now that XP is more secure and already sports any and all drivers you are currently using without costing hundreds of dollars to implement, couldn’t it be said that XP is simply the better choice? … It just works!!!

Sadly the end of June (30^th )2008 marks the day where Windows XP will no longer be available pre-loaded on computers from original equipment manufactures or from retail outlets. Starting with the summer of this year (4^th Quarter) and ending sometime in 2010, when windows 7 is planned, end users will only have access to Windows Vista. XP will survive a little longer with System Builders until early 2009, and until mid 2010 with the Starter edition, but sales of the Windows operating system connected with white-box PC’s are only a fraction of the Windows client businesses.

What about the Big Picture?

In the end, it’s not all about the support life-cycles and marketing, not by a long shot. With SP1, Vista will enter its first stage of evolution and with that a massively increased user-base. This will lead better support and compatibility, to increased reliability and boosted performance-XP will fade to the background and Vista will take centre stage.

So…While Office 07 and Vista get their first Service Packs-Windows XP will get its last.

I Say “Viva La XP” but Bring on Vista SP1

Stats and info sourced from cnet and softpedia

Zumobi, the mobile startup spun off from Microsoft Research, has launched its first beta. The Zumobi lets you access, enjoy, and share web-based content on your mobile phone in an innovative, new way. The Zumobi software presents a unique way to access content, with a grid of sixteen tiles that you can zoom in and out of, and the tiles acting as widgets that display web-based content.
Currently, mobile browsing goes something like this…

1. 1. Either you navigate through a list of web sites pre-loaded on your phone, navigate through static bookmarks, or maybe even attempt to type in a long URL with your thumbs. Ugh.

   2. Now that you’ve chosen your content, wait while it loads. And wait. And wait.

   3. Ok, site loaded. Read a few lines and scroll down. Scroll down. Scroll down, deeper into the abyss searching for what you wanted buried somewhere in all that content. Tedious. Often frustrating.

   4. Rinse, repeat.

Ultimately, it’s an underwhelming experience.

Enter Zumobi. Beta Launch Video On YouTube

They are also recruiting Beta Users, To participate in the Zumobi Beta you’ll need the following:
Zumobi Tiles create a solution through which advertising and marketing communications are highly contextual and personalized.

• A U.S.A. mobile phone number
• A data plan with your mobile phone service provider (we strongly recommend this be an unlimited data plan)
• A mobile phone running Windows Mobile 5 or 6

While Zumobi is compatible with most phones running Windows Mobile 5 or 6, we have certified and recommend the following devices for optimal performance:

• Motorola Q
• Samsung Blackjack 1.0
• HTC Dash
• HTC Touch

Of course, you are also welcome to download and test Zumobi on other Windows Mobile 5 or 6 phones, but we have not fully certified these phones yet and cannot guarantee an optimal experience. Additional certified phones will be added frequently, so please check our website for the most current list of devices.

Today, Microsoft Live Labs is announcing the Volta technology preview, a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Also, thanks to a shared programming model across multiple-tiers, Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

“Centro” is built on Windows Server 2008 and provides an integrated server and management system for midsize businesses. The CTP includes many new Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 based components, as well as updates to the server applications that shipped in “Centro” Beta 1 (updated versions of System Center Essentials 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and ISA, as well as new updates to setup, Active Directory domain join functionality and a host of other improvements).

Please take a moment to read through the hardware requirements below. If you meet these requirements, go to http://connect.microsoft.com, click on Invitations, sign in with your Windows Live ID (Passport ID) and enter the following invite ID; Extr-GHBC-JCJM.

Visit source for more information.

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