Inaugural Reader Feedback

We were only making those comparisons in terms of the relative popularity of the operating systems and presidents. We certainly weren't trying to make a political statement or any value judgments. (In other words, we weren't Bush-bashing...seriously.) We generally stay away from national and international politics here unless we're ripping on the EU. The EU is always fair game.

Anyway, most of you got what we were doing, and when we asked what you'd like to hear in Windows 7's inaugural speech, we got a couple of nice responses. But before we get to those, we'd like for you to sit through a long, rambling poem. Just kidding. Let's have Steve start us off:

"I want to hear that freedom is more valued than protection. I don't want an OS that protects me from my own software, or from software I've used on previous systems.

"I want to hear that it doesn't cough up on its own programs. Virus protection is great, but I'm angry about Vista constantly asking me for permission to run a program I've already said I want to run."

We're standing here hand on heart, Steve. That was downright inspiring. From what we've heard and read about Windows 7, you should be pleased with the new OS when it comes out. Apparently, Microsoft heard the chorus of complaints about user access control and warning messages and made some improvements. Maybe you've seen that if you've played with the beta -- which we haven't done.

Next we have Brad, a fellow native Texan and frequent contributor to RCPU. Brad's not quite ready for Windows 7 to take office yet. He's (certainly not alone in) sticking with XP for now -- an OS for which we don't have a presidential comparison, although it's been around so long that Franklin Roosevelt's multiple terms come to mind.

"Pretty funny comparing Obama/Bush with 7/Vista. I hope your humor doesn't draw unnecessary political banter. I went to the beta site for Windows 7; the warnings are enough to make me wait until I try any new OS. I'll stick with my XP until 7 is out of the beta diaper and taking its first steps."

Understandable, Brad. XP's likely to be the incumbent for a while to come, if you'll allow us one more flourish with the presidential theme. But Windows 7's time will come eventually...and we'll see whether it'll live up to expectations.

In other news, sans political humor, Carl wrote to us about Citrix's rockin' "bare metal" hypervisor announcement:

"Intel has engineered its latest chips and desktop/laptop motherboards to support V-Pro...allows for out-of-band management for patching OSes even if the whole machine is asleep or powered off (needs to be plugged in, though). It is not a stretch to figure out that Citrix is doing anything to salvage its hosted solution stranglehold on its loyal customer base. Intel has left open the option to store a chunk of code that is accessible at power-up to do things like out-of-band testing of a VM/HDD to search for A/V updates, etc...The machines can be redirected to boot from a remote location (this smells like hook to a master Xen server...) and then the centrally located/managed profiles can be coded for booting an appropriate VM on the local HDD.

"I see them trying to do anything to make a proprietary hook into the VDi initiative. I'd like to see DVD playback and streaming audio delivered to the endpoint...then we know they have something worthy of purchase."

Interesting. Frankly, you follow this stuff in more detail than we do. We're not sure what sinister motives Citrix or Intel might have, Carl, but we thank you for your perspective.

Anything to add? About anything? Add it at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on January 22, 2009