COMMENT
The weekly Inbox column collects the best and most thought-provoking of the reader comments silicon.com receives each week.
This week open source guru Richard Stallman puts a spanner in the works of the cloud computing trend – prompting some heated responses. As always, silicon.com readers love a good Vista story, and this week delivered. Lastly, the Apple faithful were quick to remark on a spot of future gazing.
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Hasta la Vista baby, we're just not interested
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is still playing second fiddle to XP with business users, with more enterprises confessing to checking out the unreleased Windows 7 OS than its predecessor.
No surprises
Lack of interest in Vista for business, or home use for that matter, is hardly surprising. Lack of drivers for peripherals such as scanners and printers is one issue, and even when new peripherals are bought, supposedly Vista compatible, often their functionality is compromised when compared to that available with XP.
David Dewick, Birmingham
XP fulfilment
At the end of the day XP does everything people need and it does it with half the hardware footprint of Vista.
Karen Challinor, UK
SP1 descends
After recently buying a new PC with Vista bundled, I have to say I was beginning to enjoy using it. That was until SP1 came down and ruined every web browser I had installed! Firefox crashes intermittently, as does IE7, Opera and even Safari!
Matt H, Staffordshire
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Stallman slams the cloud as "stupidity"
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GNU operating system, has slammed cloud computing as "stupidity"…
"Stallman is an utter letdown"
Am I putty in the hands of the people that make my car because I have to buy parts from them? Am I putty in the hands of my employer because he/she gives me orders? Am I putty in the hands of the shops where I buy things because I've believed their adverts? Probably! But does that mean that in a capitalist environment, with risk, accountability and most of all, freedom to choose, something free is going to be better?
Stallman is an utter letdown to everyone who genuinely wants to see free software prevail. He indulges the stereotype that the fat cat monopolists find so easy to mock. Give me a sharp-tongued, on-the-ball leader with some knowledge and respect of real life, where people acknowledge and grant hard work and fair reward, fair competition and a healthy market.
George Preston, London
Wrong!
George Preston - your analogies are wrong. If you don't like your car you can sell it and buy a different one - nothing else will change, you can still drive to work, drive to the shops, etc. Now imagine if you change your car but all the data on your laptop goes with it, all your family photos, all your music - that is the sort of lock-in Stallman is talking about.
Simon, Cumbria
Just another fad?
Good, nice to hear someone arguing against the prevalent "wisdom". I've seen more than 20 years of these IT fads and trends. If cloud computing becomes well established then at once the industry will start pushing for something different, probably describing cloud as "legacy" computing to make us all feel bad about it.
Anthony Guter, London
Data theft threat
It's a perfectly understandable standpoint to take when the whole IT industry is terrified of data theft.
The whole concept of cloud computing takes your data and puts it on someone else's web servers in a data centre that you haven't specified. Some cloud computing companies may be using SAS70 accredited data centres with the necessary security features; some may be in a leaky shed under a motorway flyover.
Russell Henley, Maidenhead
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Confused about cloud computing? Read the silicon.com Cheat Sheet here.
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The five products Apple must make
A few years back no one expected Apple to unveil a mobile phone. So what will be next for the Mac maker?
Apple ain't Redmond!
One of the most ignorant pieces I have read about Apple for some time. I could sum the article in one sentence:
"What Microsoft does Apple must do."
Anonymous, London
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No, no, no
No on all counts.
Handheld gaming console: It's called the iPod touch.
Tablet: That's a form factor that hasn't set the world on fire, because the best position for input is parallel to the ground and the best position for a display is perpendicular, and a tablet can't do both.
iPhone nano: Possible but not necessary because iPhone production costs will come down as the quantity increases.
Netbook: Same answer as the tablet.
OS X for other hardware: No chance of this happening. Apple is a hardware company that makes an OS. Licensing OS X to other manufacturers puts Apple in the position of competing with itself.
Anonymous, Virginia
Value over choice
Given Microsoft's current struggles, arguing that Apple should do a Microsoft and sell tablets and a software-only OS solution sounds like the sort of thing Apple should absolutely not be doing. Consumers are, as Apple's most recent numbers prove, not particularly fussed about choice - they want value.
Anonymous, London
Tablet/netbook, place your bets
I liked the article. My bet is on a tablet or a netbook with an iPhone-like multitouch interface and a bigger screen obviously.
George, UK
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