What do the future of computing, a hurricane-ravaged home, and Fred Flintstone's car have in common? If "no windows" is your answer, step on up and claim your prize.
Microsoft's
In a "Windows Is Collapsing" presentation this week, a pair of Gartner analysts claimed that businesses have been slow to embrace the new platform, given its chunky system requirements and the Web's role in making popular applications operating-system-agnostic.
The first point is valid. Those thicker spec sheets had companies such as Dell
The second point is equally valid and perhaps even more damaging, because it also speaks to the future of Microsoft's other workhorse, Microsoft Office.
Cloud computing's initial appeal is economical. It is typically cheaper to go with Salesforce.com
The more lingering appeal is in the convenience of having your files follow you wherever you have Web access, since the files are saved on the provider's servers.
That's a double-whammy for Microsoft. If you don't need to run Office, you don't need to run Windows. Any operating system will do. Nearly any Web browser will do. This is partly why Apple
No one is painting Microsoft as an underdog quite yet, but it's not the universal favorite it used to be. Some may argue that Microsoft took a deep look in the mirror, saw what it's going to look like in a few years, and decided to go the Microhoo route, but that doesn't make sense. Yahoo!
Either way, Microsoft has to be concerned that a pair of market-research firms are jockeying to see which can be the first to plant their flag on Vista's grave.
What do Redmond housemaids, hurried auto-body shops, and computer users have in common? They just don't do Windows like they used to.