PaulSpoerry.com

Techcrunch posted an article stating “Gartner Says Vista Will Collapse. And That’s Why The Yahoo Deal Must Happen”.The last paragraph sums up the Gartner view:

The real question isn’t “What can Microsoft do to fix their Windows product?” but rather “Even If Windows and Office were perfect, would it be enough to keep Microsoft relevant in the medium term?” I think the answer to that latter question might be “nope.” And that, of course, is why they want Yahoo so badly. Online advertising revenue is their only real hope of long term survival.

This of course is a complete load of crap. Vista WAS handled poorly by Microsoft, but its not the collapse of Windows by any stretch of the imagination. The most laughable thing is that while so called “analysts” are predicting the demise of Windows,Vista alone (ie, not counting Windows server or XP) still has more market share than *nix and OS X COMBINED. The real reason Vista isn’t selling as well as MS hoped is because of Windows XP. XP has turned out to be a mature, stable, and secure OS. Vista has new plumbing and the kinks are still being worked out (to be expected). The underlying plumbing put into Vista however will position it for the long term, and XP will ultimately be phased out. Don’t count Vista, or Windows as a whole “out”.

The image below shows Windows market share versus the only other statistically relevant OS’s (ie, over 1% market share) as of March 2008.

It’s true that *nix based systems have made some inroads in business computing, however, Windows still controls 90% of the market. Linux doesn’t even show up on the list… it ranks at  0.61% (though OS X REALLY is a flavor of unix so you could count that in the *nix category) Ask any non-geek what OS they run and you’ll get two answers, Windows or OS X, but mostly just windows. The people predicting these things needs to step out of the basement and away from their Tux stuff animals for a bit and look at the real world. Could the apple cart be upset, absolutely, but it won’t happen over night and Microsoft will have time to react.

Opera mini kicks the living crap out of Pocket Internet Explorer. Hands down faster. It’s still beta but totally usable. Opera Mini 4.1 just dropped today and claims to be 50% faster (which is saying a lot when you compare it to the speed of PIE. Expect to see a lot of competition in the mobile browsing space in the near future (read: FireFox mobile is coming).

New in Opera Mini 4.1 beta

Now even faster

Prior to this release, we upgraded our servers and Opera Mini now receives your requested Web pages up to 50% faster. So you can now access sites like Facebook, BBC, and any of your other favorite Web sites even faster, with Desktop-like speeds.

Find things faster

Even though scrolling to your Web content is already easy with Opera Mini, the new Opera Mini 4.1 beta lets you search for text within a Web page so you can get to the information you need even quicker than before.

Get your to your Web sites faster

Now you can stop wasting time typing in full Web addresses more than once while browsing. When typing Web addresses, Opera Mini 4.1 beta will recognize and suggest completions for you based on your Bookmarks and browsing history, making address input faster, easier and much more intuitive.

Download and upload files

On phones with JSR-75, you can now upload and download files using Opera Mini 4.1 beta, without being re-routed to your phone’s native browser. Update your blog while on the go. Upload photos to your Web site or social network. Add attachments easily to Web-based email, and download other non media-rich content to your phone using Opera Mini 4.1 beta.

Save it for later

On phones with JSR-75, Opera Mini 4.1 beta lets you save pages for offline viewing so you can quickly access and read your desired Web content, even when you’re on a plane, in the subway, or in other places where you can’t get network reception. Depending on your phone, you may need to choose a destination folder for storing pages for offline viewing.

Exisitng features and download after the jump. Read the rest of this entry �

Engadget has been running a series of articles on Samsung’s 64GB SSD. Today they finally release some results of their tests (versus just their random gushing over how kool is will be to have an SSD drive). Turns out, the SSD drives pretty much spank the crap out of a platter drive on nearly every operation. Of note is cold boot times dropping from about 1:45 to under 30 seconds, it’s completely quiet, and you’ll get 10-15% more system time on battery. Of course the things still cost an arm and a leg, and are only available to retailed (ie, ya gotta get one in a new rig). Read the full scoop over at Engadget.