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Technology Stocks : Microsoft Corp. - Moderated (MSFT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JP Sullivan who wrote (11655)	3/27/2006 2:28:47 AM
From: dybdahl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19790

Maybe virtualization can do something for Microsoft in the next version. Imagine DOS, Win16, .net and Win32 running inside virtual machines, connecting to the user interface (like apps on Linux or apps in seamless Citrix), while the core OS is 64-bit only. It would probably reduce Microsoft R&D costs a lot, especially if they announce, that Win64 apps and drivers will not be binary compatible between different versions of Windows (they will need recompiles). Only drawback is the loss of performance, but they are not leaders in that anyway.

To: JP Sullivan who wrote (11655)	3/27/2006 4:50:11 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19790

When you have an installed base of hundreds of millions of machines it's not the same as Apple. You just don't have the freedom. I'm sure there were plenty of screaming fights about this issue in Redmond during the planning of Vista, but I honestly sympathize with both sides of the argument. Both the technical and marketing questions regarding compatibility are a little challenging when the base is that huge (and that old). I don't think it's amenable to some bold stroke that leaves millions of users out in the cold and told to suck it up. Incremental is all you get. Think what they had to do to get XP out the door, and then add to that how much hardware has changed since XP's initial release. That's the downside of owning the world. Whatever else Gates is, he's not a dummy. --QS EDIT: (But on the other hand, if I had participated in one of those screaming fights, I probably would have argued to make Vista a 64-bit system and do another couple XP service packs :-).