Greetings citizens of the realm!

The Paladin brings you news out of Redmond, Washington regarding Windows 7, the supposed successor to Windows Vista.

According to an article on Network World’s website (access original article by clicking here), Microsoft Vice President Bill Vehgte included this assertion in a letter sent to Microsoft customers not long ago.

The Paladin found this article to be very interesting reading.

According to Mr. Vehgte, the reason Windows 7 will be released at that time is that the consumers have apparently communicated to Microsoft that we want a “more regular, predictable Windows release schedule.”

The Paladin has more than one comment to make about this…

First of all, the Paladin suspects that the targeted January 2010 release of Windows 7 may have more to do with consumer’s generally cold reception to Vista itself. Since Vista sales have been disappointing for Microsoft by their own admission, and since the only reason Vista sales are going to pick up is that Microsoft has stopped shipping copies of Windows XP (a perfectly good operating system), the Paladin just finds it hard to believe that it is the consumer’s desire for a predictable release schedule that is driving this “rush” to get a new operating system out the door.

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Greetings Citizens of the Realm!

Today’s story is a few days old (the Paladin is just catching up on things) and comes to us courtesy of ABC News. The reason the Paladin brings this up is because the Paladin has worked for over 2 decades in the computer industry and his was the the industry most recently effected by the off-shoring craze.

Yes, the Paladin knows that manufacturing was one of the first industries to really take a hit in this manner, and his heart goes out to all of those who lost their jobs. The Paladin feels that pushing manufacturing overseas, along with other industries, is bad for America.

Of course, when the accountants, managers, and CEO’s of the Western Hemisphere found out that through the Internet they could hire foreign programmers and system developers for just pennies on the dollar, they immediately began to offshore every programming task that they could.

But they did not stop there!

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Are you a big fan of Microsoft Windows XP? Perhaps you are not quite a fan at all of Windows Vista? Well guess what? Your choice of a Windows Operating System is about to vanish!

After (or is it on?) June 30th, Microsoft is refusing to provide any more boxed copies of Windows XP to stores for purchase. Though, Microsoft might continue selling copies of Windows XP to computer makers and system builders so that they can “pre-install” XP as the operating system for a new computer.

You can read more details on this by clicking here

The Paladin finds this to be a very sad story indeed, though not for reasons you may think…

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