Windows 7 will probably get its "foothold" on the consumer market the same way Vista did: when people buy new computers they get Windows 7. I speculate that the vast majority of Windows users are simply running the same O/S that their computer shipped with, whether that is XP, Vista, or even ME (I've been shocked by how many people I know are still running ME (in a vague sense of the word "running")).

Of course that doesn't apply to techies like us, but when you hold mass market share you have mass market demographics.

As far as businesses upgrading their workstations to Windows 7... no way. Windows XP is pretty stable (they've been improving it for like 8 years, it oughta be) and there are few compelling reason for a business to invest in Windows 7. The only way MS will get Windows 7 into the business market will be to force it (via OEMs or by stopping support for XP/Vista).

I think Microsoft's outlook (pun not intended) is pretty gray in the O/S market.

EDIT: changed "no" reasons to "few" as trezor pointed out at least one reason I was unaware of.

This does not mean I'll give up my MacBook anytime soon for a Windows machine, and neither will Win7 replace Ubuntu as my OS of choice on the PC, but you have to acknowledge the fact that Microsoft is finally getting the hang of this OS business.

IMHO, Win7 sucks less than Vista - it's snappy, partly because we have much faster computers (at least I do) than when Vista was launched, and is much less of a disruption, even for a XP user. It was inevitable: software designed for XP may have problems with Vista, but programs designed for Vista run well under 7.

Will I drop Ubuntu for it? No way.

Granted, most of those features were added in Vista, but Windows 7 actually runs quite decent on older hardware, something Vista wasn't exactly acclaimed for doing.

Windows 7 also includes lots of features which are handy for portable machines like laptops. Bitlocker anyone? You also have transparent, automatic VPN back into your company's domain, either trough native IPv6 or tunneled connections. In either case IPSec is used to secure communication. In effect, the windows domain model just got network transparent. That's a pretty neat thing in itself.

Again, some things came with Vista, but Windows 7 delivers it all in a much more appealing package.

I'll shut up before I sound like a Microsoft market-droid, but to say Windows 7 adds no features which would make an upgrade worthwhile in the corporate environment is either disingenuous or misinformed.

I think it's worth the upgrade, but 90% of my family doesn't and I'll need to upgrade them with a pirated version once it's released + cracked.

Ok, that is a compelling reason. I stand corrected.

also who knows??, there are new guys (read Android, WebOS, OS-X) who MIGHT be waiting for the opportunity to jump in ... i dont know why but i feel that eventually google will enter the game by getting android from phones to netbook to notebook....!! if the brand like HTC starts making netbook/notebook then i won't be surprise if it comes pre-installed with android !!

For example, not too long ago I had a bug which caused firefox to crash due to a flash problem. The fix involved having to download the source, editing the launch file and build it.

While this very thing is what draws many of us to Linux, it is the same thing that would push the majority of consumers away.

(That said, I think the closed source Flash player has improved on Linux, too, and some people even get by with open source clones).

Edit: I meant to say "justification", not "reason".

"Maybe the XBox will relegate Windows to the workplace - after all, games have been the most common justification for its existence in homes for a while now."

It's funny, the first time I read your post, this was the meaning I pulled from your phrasing - despite the exaggerations "kill" and "only". I must have known you were speaking about the home market because I had just read the linked article.

I actually think you're on to something. It seems that Windows is losing its grip on the home. Sure, I've heard tales of a few die-hard Media Center PC enthusiasts, but the vast majority probably only need a web browser, a TCP/IP stack, and some implementation of klondike solitaire.

I wonder what the market share of the Mac would look like if you just looked at the segment of the market where a person buys a computer for themselves and/or their family. They seem to have grown there.

We could be in for a historical irony, depending on how things shake out: the rise of the PC in the days of the mainframe happened because non-IT departments (and, in some cases, individuals) could afford to bring a PC into the workplace, ultimately wresting control of computation from the hands of IT departments, who were failing to provide adequate services. In the cubical farm where I work, there are a half dozen people who have decided to just bring their Mac laptop into work every day. And, yes, for work functions.

Yeah it made more sense in that context and it was also what I was thinking about. I admit I didn't think about workplace use. Not sure if most companies choose Windows because that is what most employees are familiar with.

1) because it's what their IT staff is comfortable with and it's what they advise companies to buy.

2) Unix sysadmins are somewhat more expensive than their Windows counterparts

3) Because there are a lot of applications that run only on Windows. The fact several of them are malware is completely ignored ;-)

4) There is a whole lot of documents that are in Word and Excel and that cannot be reliably converted to, say, OpenOffice. Companies must live with their past.

(burn, karma, burn)

I also prefer Windows for a variety of other reasons, but cost is a significant factor.

In either case, not the kind of person I would take advice from.

Anyway, not sure what your problem is. I wasn't even giving advice in my comment.

Edit: maybe you can enlighten me about the wonderful world of the Windows Exchange Server (which I presume you are referring to). Perhaps it could actually improve my life - any pointers?

Edit2: reading my original comment again, I realise that I phrased it badly. What I meant was "justification", not "reason". Of course there are all sorts of business tricks that also made it persist.

Using the word "force" seems odd to me and seems to indicate you have a bias against Windows which is based more on personal preference rather than rationality. It is a companies right to choose what platform they want to build their infrastructure on, and if you as a potential employee have an issue with that, nobody is forcing you to take the job.

or because of the nifty group management features of Windows products?

They are not merely nifty. For any organization of any noticeable size, it is essential. It streamlines IT management to the point that a smaller IT staff can concentrate on improving and expanding the business's infrastructure instead of merely maintaining it.

You can not seriously argue that this is merely "nifty" and has little real world value?

Anyway, not sure what your problem is.

My problem with your comment is that it is simplistic, unreasoned, obviously false and and of no value what so ever. You might as well have replied "LOL NOT Linux!" and it would have made no difference.

If I wanted that level of commentary I would go to digg.

But I'm assuming you've simply had better experiences with Windows than me. Let me tell you what my experiences have been...

If smaller IT staffs can benefit from Windows features, then IT staffs can be almost eliminated by Unix features. On my campus over a decade ago, it took one man to administer the entire network of Unix machines.

"The company" doesn't tend to make the decision so much as "the I.T. group", which is trusted by executives that really don't know any better. Since I.T. won't risk its livelihood on relative unknowns, nothing significant ever really changes. Why would they deploy something that takes one man to run, when they can have Windows?

In most organizations, there are plenty of users who don't know any better. And there are users who hate Windows, but they've long given up the fight because if they complained all day long, they'd never get any real work done. And for this same reason, they're not about to look for another job: Windows is too prevalent.

Sometimes, employees are extremely productive. These are the ones knowledgeable and efficient enough to deploy their own solutions in spite of I.T. offerings. They're the ones loading up Windows with a pile of open-source packages to make up for its pitiful tool set. Or, networking together a bunch of Linux laptops because they know nothing else will do the job. Despite the fact that their company has failed them with a poor status quo, these employees are more committed than anyone to do really good work.

But even those people have limits; they eventually leave and form startups (that are free of Windows). Having failed its true talent, the company is left with the people who don't know or don't care how to be productive anymore. Mission accomplished?

It's painfully obvious you never had to manage a virus/malware outbreak.

See, Windows has GUI tools that will help you point-and-click your way into the illusion of maintainability. With Linux, you could buy something like Canonical's Landscape management tool or quite easily roll out your own, if you don't need all those bells and whistles.

Locking down a Linux desktop is very simple. Keeping a Windows desktop secure is next to impossible.

I guess then it is my turn to ask if you have ever worked in a company. Whatever.

"obviously false and and of no value what so ever"

Or maybe you are just too biased to understand what I actually said.

To reiterate - I need to have a user logged into the desktop environment in order to get wireless networking going. At that moment I lost all enthusiasm for the prospect of desktop linux becoming mainstream.

    Of course there isn’t. He lives in a web browser.
    The underlying OS is irrelevant. 

People here can help you, if you let them. Posting incomplete problem reports like this as evidence for a platform troll is kinda bad form.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834

http://www.big-ape.net/nethax/

I installed Exchange 2007 with Small Business Server 2008, so accessing Public Folders pretty much requires Outlook or IE. (Evolution only seems to work with Exchange 2003...)

Which brings me to ActiveX. So much of what I do requires ActiveX that I also must have a copy of Windows around to be fully functional, as I haven't gotten WINE or IEs4Linux to support MS's RDP correctly.

Otherwise, I would be running Ubuntu only, as I don't really game much beyond all the games that have been written/ported to Linux.

But when VPN does not work, I then require ActiveX controls (I do not allow RDP directly through my clients' firewalls).

Likewise, ActiveX is the only other way that I know of that allows me to access Public Folders against an Exchange 2007 server with drag and drop support for filing to that system from my personal folders. I am a bit if an organizational nut, so I find this high on me digital "needs" list.

And, as I mentioned, my whole email storage system currently lives in Exchange 2007 as a quite intricate set of private and public folders, not addressable by IMAP.

  sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
  sudo do-release-upgrade