The link below is to an article where the author presents his ideas of what Windows could be like {actually what he thinks it should be like] in the next major version after Vista. Personally, I didn't like a lot of the ideas he presented such as:

"Microsoft is considering more radical changes to its Windows business model. A patent application filed by the company in July describes how an Internet service provider could offer free PCs to consumers in exchange for ads targeted to users' profiles, including their language, music preferences, and whether they play PC games. The application also proposes an ad-subsidized operating system, in which users could choose to license the software without ads, pay a reduced subscription license for limited ads, or receive a free version in exchange for viewing many ads."

I don't like ads of any kind and it seems anytime a person agrees to view directed advertising they are also agreeing to give up some privacy. Pay-per-click advertising is a new incentive for malware authors that is mentioned in the article linked to in Humpty's post about Zcodec. There are already a lot of companies and people that are trying to convince, trick, or force us into viewing advertisements.

But this is what I really hope never comes to pass:

"WinFS, the file system dropped from Vista, could surface in releases of Office, letting users store files on servers running Microsoft's SharePoint and SQL Server products. Users could then search a Web site for their files instead of navigating through folders. "It's information at your fingertips, but it's a Web app," Huckaby says."

Since I've never heard of anyone complaining that they have too many of their own files on their own PC there must be reasons other than our convenience for why they want to store our files on their computers instead of ours. Upgrading servers and storage facilities to handle that kind of volume and traffic isn't cheap.

Any opinions?

InformationWeek

For poor people that could be a blessing. Just having internet access is proven to make kids do better in school. I guess anything that gives computer access to people that wouldn't normally have it is a good thing. To new users who this enables it would probably be about the same thing as tv commercials. Now personally I would never use that. I can barely stand to see an ad before streaming a video off of a site or something much less have them all the time or every time I moved the mouse.



I personally don't like the idea of applications being web based. Just the fact that its in a web browser annoys me because of the interface. Its like having a program inside of a program(which I guess it is. ) and the interface becomes clunky. If they plan to do this they need to make a special viewer/browser that makes these web applications look just like ones on your computer. Writely is cool but every computer I use has word on them so there is no incentive to use it.

Windows has to be very careful on its changes. Basically familiarity is the only thing keeping it on top. Windows isn't going anywhere probably ever but if they change things too much so that average people have to relearn everything they know then people may not choose windows anymore.

What could Windows be like a few years from now:
A DRM ridden whore, that still has exploits galour.

Although I must state that "what will Windows be like a few years from now" and my answer would be not on any computer of mine. WinXP is the Windows finale for me as I hate more about Windows than I like each and everyday - hence the reason I recently re-did my whole audio CD collection in MP3 format for future support with anything and it's just a precursor to me preparing to dump Windows.

why mp3? don't you like lossless?

as for windows, same goes for me. i'm planning to move to Linux. hell, i even installed Kubuntu the other day(still need to customize it though). however i might consider getting a Mac because those things are pretty damn fast.

i don't like the idea that Opera doesn't support them. and no, not all computers have word. i use AbiWord and KOffice(when i'm on Linux). but nevertheless, having a web app is stupid. my upload speed is only at 45kB/s so uploading a huge file is not that fast.

Well, a scary thought is they using Trusted Computing to heavily enforce vendor-lock in and having control. I think probably will look at their competitors such as Linux and Mac OS X and try get ideas from there. I heard Microsoft is launching a new command-line shell that will be more powerful and scriptable. The Unix world have had this since the 70's.

In Windows Server 2003, the audio was disabled by default. Maybe in next version, they will make a way to make Windows not start the graphical user interface. They probably would want to make a more powerful firewall too.

As for me, the Microsoft operating system I liked the most was Windows 2000 Professional. I am currently using XP but I feel some things have gone a little bad from this release. Vista I will won't submit to. I will go Linux, probably when I buy a new computer.

I have an AMD processor, I like AMD, but I am looking into the Conroe, Intel is looking really good atm.

You might want to reread what I actually wrote... "every computer I use has word".
Meaning every computer I see on a regular basis has it, not every computer in the world.

Most computers now a days are store bought anyway and most of the big manufacturers include some sort of productivity software(word perfect, MS works, ect.) Although I do run into the dud every once in a while who uses notepad for everything. I always just say "word" referring to any word processor because thats what people are most familiar with. Personally I use staroffice and abiword. I also keep portable abiword on my jump drive.

I use OpenOffice, but I like AbiWord too...

Have all my kids using OpenOffice now for school work and Installing it on every computer I can come across it's amazing how many people still dont know about OpenOffice and that It's just as good as MS Office and free to boot. Would be nice if I could get the local school system to start using it and get off the MS Office hook.

sheesh! vista isnt even out yet and they're already talking about the OS after vista!

I like FLAC, and love WavPack for lossless archiving. But good ole LAME MP3 encodings at -V2 --vbrnew ("old --preset fast stardard") are supported in just about anything including OSes, and with hardware without having to use some firmware hacks, etc., and LAME at the -V2 --vbrnew setting is transparent to my ears.

meh. not to my ears. in fact, not even 320kbps is transparent to me.