Gates wavers on Windows" future theaustralian.com.au
It could be replaced in a day! If only there were any bright innovators around. . . Anyway, either Bill has gone wacko on the vegemite / witchety grub diet down under, or the technoid press in oz leaves something to be desired. Cited for amusement purposes only, the link showed up on zdnn.
He said little about the upcoming release of Windows 98, which is the subject of a long-running investigation by the US Department of Justice.
Instead, Mr Gates recommended businesses choose the upcoming Windows NT 5.0 product, and said he believed the booming sub-$US1000 ($1500) PC market would use Windows CE.
Right, the first part is fine as long as those TBD's get filled in sometime this millennium. As to the second part and Windows CE, I'm sure he's right about that too, there's so much software available for it. It might be more reliable, anyway.
The main focus of Mr Gates' visit to Australia is to promote the Digital Nervous System, a concept similar to an intranet, integrating PCs and information systems for a paperless office, and relying on NT.
Ha! I called that one. Why talk about ship dates when you can mumble vague things about the future and everybody laps it up.
The second beta of NT 5.0 is expected to be released about the same time as the rumoured launch of Windows 98 - June 25.
However, this date was not confirmed by Mr Gates, who only said he was "confident" Windows 98 would be released before the end of the year.
By suggesting users move to a significantly enhanced Windows NT, Microsoft may be trying to avoid the problems it faced getting people to migrate from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 when it was launched in late 1995. Significant numbers of users are still running Windows 3.x.
Somebody is seriously confused here. I assume it's the reporting, or maybe just massive jet lag.
Mr Gates said he did not believe Microsoft would be forced to ship Windows 98 without Internet Explorer integrated. The dispute about the release of Windows 98 centres on the fact that Microsoft would have to ship a "crippled" version of the product, in addition to a fully functional version.
"It's pretty clear that when users have the choice of a fully-functional product or a crippled product, which one are they going to choose?," he said.
We all know the answer to that one. The cripple, of course. Like the 2 1/2 year old retail Win95 release, it's the best seller! It's what the consumer demands! The market has spoken!
Cheers, Dan. |
