John C. Dvorak wrote an analysis of how Microsoft lost its way with Windows 8 this week. All in all it sounds reasonable to me. His recollection of DOS and some DOS version 8 confused me at first, but that was what the DOS buried in Windows ME was called. But mentioning it is appropriate, [...]
All posts tagged dos
Where Microsoft lost its way
Posted by Dave Farquhar on June 7, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/06/where-microsoft-lost-its-way/
No, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up
This week, Mark Shuttleworth closed the longstanding Ubuntu bug #1, which simply read, “Microsoft has majority market share.” Because Microsoft didn’t lose its market share lead to Ubuntu, or Red Hat, or some other conventional Linux distribution, some people, including John C. Dvorak, are interpreting this as some kind of surrender. I don’t see it [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on June 1, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/06/no-this-doesnt-mean-ubuntu-and-linux-are-giving-up/
Don’t read too much into the PC sales drop just yet
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you probably know that new PC sales are in the toilet–out of the five biggest vendors, the only one whose sales managed to hold steady in Q1 2013 was Lenovo, while the other four saw a sales decline. So now Slashdot linked to a ZDNet piece stating [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 17, 2013
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2013/04/dont-read-too-much-into-the-pc-sales-drop-just-yet/
Don’t look for me waiting in line to buy Windows 8 at midnight
Windows 8 is out. Yawn. I won’t be standing in line. I wait a minimum of a year to install new versions of Windows anyway, a practice that’s beein serving me well since 1994, and I skipped Vista altogether at home. I had it at work, so I know I didn’t miss anything. If Windows [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on October 25, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/10/dont-look-for-me-waiting-in-line-to-buy-windows-8-at-midnight/
Windows 8 won’t fail just because nobody likes Windows upgrades
John C Dvorak wrote today about the great upgrade upheaval, and argued that Windows 8 is doomed to fail because it’s just going to be too hard to upgrade, and nobody likes Windows upgrades anyway. I agree on the first point but not the second.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on October 4, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/10/windows-8-wont-fail-just-because-nobody-likes-windows-upgrades/
Gary Kildall and what might have been
I didn’t have time to write everything I wanted to write yesterday, so I’m going to revisit Bill Gates and Gary Kildall today. Bill Gates’ side of the DOS story is relatively well documented in his biographies: Gates referred IBM to Gary Kildall, who for whatever reason was less comfortable working with IBM than Gates [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on August 8, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/08/gary-kildall-and-what-might-have-been/
The CP/M-DOS forensics don’t prove much
I saw the headline on Slashdot: Forensic evidence trying to prove whether MS-DOS contained code lifted from CP/M. That got my attention, as the connection between MS-DOS and its predecessor, CP/M, is one of the great unsolved mysteries of computing. Unfortunately, the forensic evidence doesn’t prove a lot.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on August 7, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/08/the-cpm-dos-forensics-dont-prove-much/
Microsoft just priced its Windows 8-based tablets out of the market
Microsoft just priced its Windows 8-based tablets out of the market. Extremetech reports that they expect Windows 8-based tablets to sell for $600-$900. I think Microsoft is forgetting its history.
Posted by Dave Farquhar on June 14, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/06/microsoft-just-priced-its-windows-8-based-tablets-out-of-the-market/
Happy late birthday, OS/2
Twenty-five years ago this month, on April 2, IBM announced its new PS/2 computers and a new multitasking operating system to run on (most of) them–OS/2. They even lured a bunch of the actors from M*A*S*H to do an ad campaign for them. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but that was the [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on April 15, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/04/happy-late-birthday-os2/
Remembering Michelangelo
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the Michelangelo virus. If you don’t remember, on March 6, 1992, Michelangelo was programmed to overwrite the first 100 sectors of a hard drive–not quite as destructive as formatting a drive, but to the average user, the effect is the same. It was a huge scare–John McAfee predicted five [...]
Posted by Dave Farquhar on March 7, 2012
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2012/03/remembering-michelangelo/