[ILUG] Article from Personal Computer World (January 2000)

[Michael Treacy]

HI,

Just came across this article today in the new PCW mag.

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"It's upgrade of bust for Windows users!"

[From Jonathan Lambeth in Florida]

Microsoft will slap a time limit on licences next year to coerce people to 
upgrade to the latest version of Windows, according to a leading analyst.

The Gartner Group's Thomas Bittman also claimed that Microsoft will start 
charging for extra features instead of bundling them with upgrades. "It will 
cost more to obtain added features that many will need or want,' he told a 
Gartner symposium in Orlando, Florida.

He said Microsoft was developing the new strategy because it increasingly 
found itself in competition with earlier versions of it's software. 
Companies will pay 50 per cent more per year by 2002 for Microsoft software 
as a result of the changes - even though the upfront price will stay the 
same, he predicted.

Bittman also said that Windows 2000 would become fragmented into 64bit and 
32bit, high- and low-end, consumer(codenamed Neptune), and embedded markets.

"By 2002, I believe there will be 15 different versions of Windows, eight 
with different code bases," he said.

Three in four large companies will have to cope with testing and upgrades 
for four different NT packages, Bittman predicted.

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Assuming Bittman's predictions are true, doesn't this look like a HUGE 
opportunity for Linux????? I think so!

Mike

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