Interesting analysis from Cringely. As always, "follow the money" ...
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I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Wimpy | PBS
...
Several readers are concerned about Microsoft's decision to stop selling
Windows XP and -- most importantly -- end security updates for the
venerable operating system. This has everything to do with business and
nothing at all to do with technology. Wearing my business reporter's
fedora, then, I'll point you back a week or so to Microsoft's most recent
earnings announcement, which disappointed Wall Street. This is significant
because it is hard to find a Wall Street analyst who remembers the last
time Microsoft's earnings were disappointing. It simply doesn't happen.
That's because Microsoft has a myriad of tools for adjusting the numbers
to look just right.
Because Microsoft has so many tools for fine-tuning its financials
(primarily the management of expenses, by the way -- Microsoft makes so
much money that it tunes the numbers by throwing cash away), the fact that
this last set of numbers disappointed suggests to me that they, too, could
have been avoided. Microsoft probably decided to deliberately take an
earnings hit precisely so they could play the "we have to get the earnings
up" card to justify the final death of XP.
Microsoft has been under huge pressure from its hardware OEMs to dump XP,
thus forcing millions of customers who have been avoiding Vista and
Vista's inevitable hardware upgrade to finally buy new computers. Dumping
XP will help Dell and HP AND Microsoft, big-time. It won't do anything for
you or me, though, since Vista still sucks, but we obviously don't matter.
Those customers who think they'll keep XP going on their own will probably
be out of luck, too. With Microsoft abandoning security upgrades, hackers
will eat holes in the old OS practically overnight. And if one or more of
the security companies like Symantec or McAfee think they can make a
business out of defending XP, I simply doubt that customers will pay.
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Other topics also discussed in his column here:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080509_004880.html
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