[Quote:]

Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s group vice president for platforms, looked at my Apple PowerBook and smugly pointed out that the number of copies of Windows sold this year will be more than all the Macintosh computers used worldwide.

Jim, jim… you don’t get it, do you? I mean, the number of Britney Spears albums sold is not likely to be a deciding factor for me when picking music to listen to.

If you want a Longhorn machine to automatically configure itself so you can work in a coffee shop, it will. If you put in a DVD, the volume will automatically adjust and the video will just start playing full screen. “You shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time struggling with things,” Allchin said, adding that the number one design goal for Longhorn has been: “It just works.”

Hmmm… I wonder where he copied that phrase?

. Longhorn doesn�t just show you an icon for a document, for example, but rather an itsy-bitsy picture of the first page.

They keep dragging that one out to describe an “improvement” in usability. Where I work, all documents (from design specs to department meeting minutes) have a standard cover sheet. I guess all icons will still be the same then…

Microsoft’s research shows that the average corporate employee spends about 20% of her time on the PC simply looking for items.

I wonder if that 20% productivity loss is factored into the TCO arguments they use…

Allchin did have a lot a lot to say about a major change that is coming to Windows this month. Rather than running just on computers that process 32 bits of data at a time, the new version will run on chips that process 64 bits. For Allchin, this is a very big deal for businesses and individuals. The reasons are technical, but the bottom line is that 64-bit computers will be much faster. They should also be more secure.

Wow, the author of the article really doesn’t have a clue. Talk about drinking the Cool-Aid….