M
Michael Griffin
At 13:32 03/07/01 -0400, Jeff Dean wrote:
<clip>
>As another person touched on - longevity is also important. I would not use
>or recommend Linux, because I do not believe it will last ...
<clip>
> but remember that
>the public is fickle and can turn on a dime; IBM has a history of
>[effectively] abandoning operating systems (OS/2); and Compaq has shown it's
>ability to abandon investments that don't make money (Alpha, AltaVista). How
>long will these companies pour money down a hole?
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IBM abandoned OS/2? I thought that Microsoft abandoned OS/2 and IBM maintained it for years afterwards so as not to leave their customers in the lurch. Whatever other bad things you may want to say about IBM, please don't
blame them for this one. OS/2 was a joint Microsoft-IBM project. Microsoft abandoned OS/2 because they wanted to pursue Windows NT (without IBM) instead. That probably turned out to be a good business decision in the long run for Microsoft but it doesn't change the fact that OS/2 was Microsoft's original replacement for Windows 3.1.
As for Compaq closing down investments that don't make money, that's true of any company, and not just in the computer business. What any company claims as being a core product today could be a terminated product tomorrow,
or for that matter, the whole company can be terminated. If your company depends heavily upon the availability of a particular product from a single source, you had better start putting some contigency plans in place.
Which brings me to the question which I had in mind. I was busy working on a question about the future of "Windows NT Embedded" and "Windows CE" when the above quoted letter arrived. This seems like an appropriate place to ask it.
What is the future of these two products? I have some co-workers thinking about the suitability of these operating systems for certain
applications. These are more or less OEM rather than end user products, but it is still possible they might appear in a proposal for a test system. We want to know if we should be avoiding either of these two if they may become terminated products, or changed radically in the future. I'm not concerned about "Windows CE" when it is in a sealed OEM product, only if it is used inside something which might be considered user repairable or maintained.
Please, these are serious questions and I would like only serious answers.
We have found some problems with long term maintenance of computerised test equipment because newer hardware may not be compatable
with older versions of Windows, while newer versions of Windows may not be capatable with the application program (or various data aquisition board drivers). Sometimes, even minor changes in the operating system revision have been enough to cause problems. So far we've always been able to sort things out in the end, but it has never been easy. I imagine we could be in much more serious trouble with odd versions of Windows (NT Embedded or CE).
These are the kind of problems which people building these systems rarely see. They have however caused us much more trouble than any actual unreliability or unpredictability of Windows. Our operators are fairly used to rebooting the computers when they act funny so that particular problem never gets mentioned to anyone unless you question them carefully. The types of problems I have outlined above though can put us in a serious bind.
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Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
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<clip>
>As another person touched on - longevity is also important. I would not use
>or recommend Linux, because I do not believe it will last ...
<clip>
> but remember that
>the public is fickle and can turn on a dime; IBM has a history of
>[effectively] abandoning operating systems (OS/2); and Compaq has shown it's
>ability to abandon investments that don't make money (Alpha, AltaVista). How
>long will these companies pour money down a hole?
<clip>
IBM abandoned OS/2? I thought that Microsoft abandoned OS/2 and IBM maintained it for years afterwards so as not to leave their customers in the lurch. Whatever other bad things you may want to say about IBM, please don't
blame them for this one. OS/2 was a joint Microsoft-IBM project. Microsoft abandoned OS/2 because they wanted to pursue Windows NT (without IBM) instead. That probably turned out to be a good business decision in the long run for Microsoft but it doesn't change the fact that OS/2 was Microsoft's original replacement for Windows 3.1.
As for Compaq closing down investments that don't make money, that's true of any company, and not just in the computer business. What any company claims as being a core product today could be a terminated product tomorrow,
or for that matter, the whole company can be terminated. If your company depends heavily upon the availability of a particular product from a single source, you had better start putting some contigency plans in place.
Which brings me to the question which I had in mind. I was busy working on a question about the future of "Windows NT Embedded" and "Windows CE" when the above quoted letter arrived. This seems like an appropriate place to ask it.
What is the future of these two products? I have some co-workers thinking about the suitability of these operating systems for certain
applications. These are more or less OEM rather than end user products, but it is still possible they might appear in a proposal for a test system. We want to know if we should be avoiding either of these two if they may become terminated products, or changed radically in the future. I'm not concerned about "Windows CE" when it is in a sealed OEM product, only if it is used inside something which might be considered user repairable or maintained.
Please, these are serious questions and I would like only serious answers.
We have found some problems with long term maintenance of computerised test equipment because newer hardware may not be compatable
with older versions of Windows, while newer versions of Windows may not be capatable with the application program (or various data aquisition board drivers). Sometimes, even minor changes in the operating system revision have been enough to cause problems. So far we've always been able to sort things out in the end, but it has never been easy. I imagine we could be in much more serious trouble with odd versions of Windows (NT Embedded or CE).
These are the kind of problems which people building these systems rarely see. They have however caused us much more trouble than any actual unreliability or unpredictability of Windows. Our operators are fairly used to rebooting the computers when they act funny so that particular problem never gets mentioned to anyone unless you question them carefully. The types of problems I have outlined above though can put us in a serious bind.
**********************
Michael Griffin
London, Ont. Canada
**********************