OT: Microsoft layoffs

[Stephen]

Honestly i liked vista, i ran the beta and it was weird but there were
a number of thigns, the weird started to fade away as MS released
backwards compatability patches and software developers wrote their
code to be more compatible. Windows 7 is looking to fix a few of my
bigger complaints of Vista (running slimmer and without as much
overhead). but some of the same weirdness is ricgh back on the block
regarding driver and software compatability.

I get this, it is a beta, and to stay bleeding edge this is soemthing
im more than willing to deal with.

I also ran my Desktop that is running windows 7 as a full linux
machine for a couple motnhs as a test to see what i cna and cant get
away with. in the meantime i really liked it as a desktop environment,
learned a great deal about it as a workstation, but also realised i
have certain needs in my job that just cannot be circumvented with
wine/vm. so back to windows i go.

but at home once i get a new video card im all over it.

Heck my boss and i talk about the delight of running/administering a
100% opensource network. firewall to desktop. and we do some real
studies about how much of your personal needs you can replace with
opensource software. and i can get pretty darn close. so can he.. we
just  have a few apps we are trying to sort out.

for me the difficulty comes in i am a gamer... and well most of the
gams i play are windows based... so i either need to get really
creative with wine or dual boot.

I personally would like to see a fork of the wine project that will
merge the two.. so your wine install ties into an existing windows
install so you can attempt to run applications from a dual booted
environment. but i think thats a digression.

The big hurt on MS is really that people dont like change, and for a
long time MS didnt change much. win 95 -> 98 -> ME and NT 3.x -> NT4
-> Win 2k -> win XP didnt chang emuch.. peopel had more or less the
Same UI and admin needs and whatnot available for about13 years now.
and MS is telling them sorry to keep things going you have to change
to this new UI and backend? sorry peopel stayed with windows over
unix/linux not becuase of any great love of MS its their desire to not
change and learn something new.

thats been the biggest grive about an OS upgrade of anyone i have
talked with... its different they have to relearn things.

now vista and windows 7 come along...

thats why MS is laying ppl off. that and the fact nobody can aford to
buy a new OS OEM pricing of windows home basic is about 80 bux not
calculating discounts and then vor vista ultimate its about 200.
windows 7 will be about the same.