I think saying that Microsoft is making their products crappy on purpose is giving them too much credit. When you're working with software that is so overly complex and bloated, it'd be a miracle if it weren't so crappy. A highlight: these system call diagrams. http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=311 ----- Original message ----- From: "Mike Miller" <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu> To: "TCLUG List" <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:30:49 -0600 (CST) Subject: [tclug-list] Wintel conspiracy? (was "Notebook Windows tax?") Obviously, Dell and most other manufacturers have agreements with Microsoft. Do Intel and Microsoft also come up with agreements? It could work like this: Microsoft can make their system run slower so that people are motivated to buy new hardware. Microsoft doesn't have much competition, so they don't have a lot of motivation to optimize their code for speed. Why wouldn't they help Intel to make a buck? Related point: Microsoft is a monopoly, or near monopoly. When Vista comes out, what is its competition? Well, it's mostly XP. Wouldn't it be nice for Vista if XP wasn't so great? Sure. They knew this day would come when they made XP. Maybe that explains why XP isn't so great. Same for Vista and everything else produced by Microsoft. When you have a monopoly, not only is there no incentive to produce a better product, there is a disincentive -- it is better to produce a bad product so that you can sell upgrades more readily. Mike _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list