twitter's Journal: Roughly Drafted: Windows 7 Will Fail.

Roughly Drafted predicts Windows 7's failure even if it's technically perfect because OEM's are tired of paying the Windows Tax for the pleasure of competing in a fierce low margin commodity market.

The real problem with Vista is that nobody wants to pay Microsofts Windows Tax. Not even a hypothetical, brilliantly flawless new version of Windows can solve that problem. ... PC makers are desperately jealous of Apple, which not only doesnt pay Microsoft the Windows Tax, but also is so strongly differentiated by its unique software that it can charge sustainable prices for its products in a market that has PC rivals diving into a shallow margin of water with no hope of floating. ... big PC makers from HP to Dell to Acer to Sony are all investigating Linux or their own software that can be used in place of Windows. Once Microsoft loses their business, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ever get it back.

The author gleefully points out the massive failure of Vista and reminds the readers of their correct prediction that failure. The article mentions how "downgrade to XP" has been used to pull more money than ever out of customers for seven year old software that sucks a little less than Vista, and how OEMs realize that XP is the only way to sell their computers. The previous article predicted Vista failure from a lack of demand for what Vista had to offer, overpricing, a more competitive Apple and everyone else in the world ("IBM to Oracle") having invested in GNU/Linux. No one could have imagined the Vista compatible dissaster, spill over of internal email calling the product shit or even just how shit Vista's insane DRM and spyware anti-features would make the OS. Some of that technical failure is pointed out in the previous article because M$ has yet to deliver on it's early 1990's feature promisses.