Technology, training, learning and development blogs

Bill Gates has left the building (and taken Windows XP with him)

Those prone to conspiracy theories might argue that Bill Gates leaving Microsoft today after 30 plus years service is an elaborate smoke screen, constructed to bury the real news of the day. Windows XP has left the building. Well sort of.

Many thousands of words, pictures and hours of video have been dedicated to Bill going part time. You may have seen the excellent documentary on the BBC last week (thanks for the reminder Graham). It seems that Bill eats cheeseburgers, is not a big tipper and now, sadly, is only the 3^rd richest man in the world. If you missed it, at the time of tapping this into the Xpertise blog’o’matic™  machine, you can view it on YouTube, 2,230 people already have. I’ve been privileged to hear Bill speak a few times and, once, with  my friend Janet W,  even sat next to him. (That’s my claim to fame, alongside breaking Mick Jaggers wine glass). As a speaker, Bill does charismatic in the same way as Steve Ballmer does technical. I remember hearing him speak in San Francisco in the 90’s, its only today the subject of his presentation is becoming achievable. Although I didn’t know it then, he talked about what became .NET and SOA.

For most organisations Bill moving from SQL to Saga won’t have an immediate impact, Office 2003 is hardly going to throw in the towel and follow Bill out of the door. In some ways, with the world and its services moving to the “Cloud”, fresh technical blood may be required to take Microsoft into the next period of its history. (I’ve checked their recruitment site).  A PC in every home, revenue earning services in every cloud.

The XP writing is on the wall

The important stuff. What’s the latest news on the future of Windows XP?  Firstly, support for Windows XP isn’t going away for a while yet; Microsoft will continue to provide security updates and other critical updates until April, 2014. So lack of support is not a reason to upgrade an existing estate of XP based desktop and laptop computers to Vista. 

But the 30^th June 2008 is the day when Microsoft officially ended sales of Windows XP. But its slightly more complicated than you may imagine. They have stopped selling Windows XP as a retail packaged product and stopped licensing it directly to major PC manufacturers. We don’t care to much about the retail packaged product as we tend not to buy XP off the shelf, but we do use the XP that ships with new PC’s from those major PC manufacturers.  So does that lead us up the geek (sic) without a paddle?

For businesses buying Windows Vista, (not all versions/SKUS) they can install Windows XP Professional through a customer “benefit” known as “downgrade rights.”  Downgrade rights are also available to all business customers that license Windows through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs.  Basically you can zap Vista and install XP, under the Vista EULA  (end-user license agreement). If in the future you want to move them back to Vista, you can “un-downgrade” them back up to Vista without any additional licences. Dell is offering a “downgrade” service where they will “exercise your downgrade rights for you and factory-install XP Professional on your system “

Bizarrely, OEM’s/System Builder may continue to purchase Windows XP through Authorized Distributors until 31st January 2009.  It’s not what you call clear cut is it. Luckily, Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President at Microsoft has written you a letter. You’ll find it here.

 

Vista, really? Are people using it?

Vista has been teetering on the edge, for a short while it ran the risk of becoming the 2007 equivalent of Windows ME. But now, hardware has played catch-up with better device compatibility, software vendors have “fixed” issues that Vista exposed and SP1 has now shipped – organisations are moving to Vista. What evidence do I have for such a bold claim? As of April 2008 there were 22,764 Microsoft Certified Vista Technology Specialists.  There are more Vista Technology Specialist than any other. In 18 months, Vista has given the XP MCDST certification a run for its money. There are 43,479 XP certified folks  – and that’s over, what, 6 years? I’ll be upgrading my MCDST to Vista as soon as I get time to sit on the course.

I’ve been using Vista on all my machines since RC0, and while I’d be fibbing if I said everything worked without issue, generally problems have been solvable – back at the office we have problems with Vista and our broadband modems for example, and frankly some of the cheaper laptops with shared video RAM have been put back to XP (thank goodness for downgrade rights). But, on the whole, the move has been less traumatic than the move from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. Or on July 29, 1996, when NT4 shipped, and we all lost plug and play but gained NTFS and a 32bit sub system. Don’t under estimate the need for end user training when when you role out Vista, its a enough of a change to require some awareness training.

With my recent upgrade to Server 2008 I’m ready to go IPv6 and implement NAP across my estate…maybe a job for next weekend...

Of course Bill hasn’t helped Vista take off, accidently mentioning that Windows 7 was already a working proposition as he headed for the car park. Although their own product release schedule suggests its two years away yet.

What’s Bill Gates ever done for us?:

I asked this question of a group of people attending one of my Microsoft seminars, one answer I jotted down went like this:  “The Microsoft Windows operating system and Microsoft Office have been the single unifying force in business computing.”   I guess anyone under 30 won’t remember the days when applications all shipped with their own collection of printer drivers; it wasn’t unusual to have retype data from one application into another – Remember life pre Cut and Paste?  If we used WordStar and you used MultiMate, it was game over...

Its not that others couldn’t have “unified” our world, but  what Bill Gates and Microsoft did was get their software onto more computers than anyone else. Period.  They managed this with a tiny clause in their contract with IBM. Microsoft would provide IBM with PC-DOS but could resell it as MS-DOS. Had IBM known Compaq had an “IBM Compatible” PC in the wings, things for Microsoft could have been very different.

Now I need to get that CV finished, “I’d like to apply for the position of Bill Gates, I have my own spectacles (and I like cheeseburgers)…“

 

Till next time, assuming I don’t get the job

 

 

PS I’m spending next week with Microsoft in the US, I’ll give Steve Ballmer your regards.