Seems to me Gartner just wants their name in the news (well blogs anyway). I have no respect for their information. Also, the writer might want to check their facts and grammar. Poorly done. I guess CIO's these days are just business grads with little real world knowledge. That's a shame. Shame on this CIO and shame on PCWorld (and their MACWorld bosses).

The statements quoted in the article seem pretty dead on. Especially the point about the OS you're running not mattering so much as time goes on.

For instance, Java runs pretty darned well. Sure, it's Sun's baby, but so is OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox. Similar to Microsoft, Sun bought 'em all.

One of my favorite editor/IDE packages is jEdit. It works perfectly on every platform I have run it on. Eclipse similarly runs well, though I don't personally care for it. Tries to do too much 'for me', big, bloated, etc.

The 'Google Documents' Java applets work well enough, and they'll only improve with time.

As good standards evolve, even 3D intensive video games will simply run under runtimes like Adobe Flash/Air. The 3D and sound mixing is the stuff that needs the native performance, and once you virtualize that and wrap it in a fast runtime compiling interpreter, then there isn't much reason to stick to a native implementation of a game. Build once, run on any console or any computer that meets your minimum requirements. GL? DirectX? Console specific API? They won't matter. Game developers are desperate to get out from under the direct retail channel and the subsequent 'exchange' of their games and the nasty babel of potential platforms to build for and support. They get a hundred thousand copies at an exorbitant rate, can't afford to make more, and users start trading the games making shops like 'Game Stop' money. Profits all lost, another game company goes under. A web distribution model will fix it all. Just go to the game site with the browser, log in and play.

I do have to disagree with something in the article, too. Do give Vista a miss. Like an AMC Gremlin rusting in the showroom, Vista is a P.O.S. The new Millennium Edition.

Let me get this straight... accuse a professional computer game programmer since 1990 who has used Microsoft Windows since 1993 or so (Windows 3.1) after DOS that finally got sick and tired of Microsoft's garbage... inexperienced with Windows?

Wow. Yeah, that's me alright. Somehow over the last 18 years of professional Microsoft experience after even more years of Apple, Atari and Commodore experience, I missed out on all the best things in Microsoft's product line.

You betcha.

wow i used to like pcworld but now they are becoming "Linux Advocate" I like Linux and Windows. But these articles are "anti Windows" one article after another back to back geeze

For too long, Microsoft has been allowed to pretty much do what they wanted. Because it was 'Windows', Microsoft automatically thought computer users would automatically get in line to buy it. Users are much more sophisticated today and recognize when a product is not worthy, i.e. Vista. Microsoft has basically been the 'only game in town' for too long and has taken the consumer for granted. Windows seems to only 'innovate' when felt threatened. IE6 would still be around if Firefox and Opera had not come onto the scene. The big bad beast from Redmond has become complacent and while others have seized the opportunity. VISTA can't compete with Leopard. Companies that upgraded to VISTA have returned to XP. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that the product is less than acceptable. With MS scheduling Windows 7 for release in 2009, only 2-3 years after VISTA, they even recognize the inferiority of their product.

Besides random posts in so called technical blogs can you please point us where we can see proof of your statements?

Why do you not think that it is a good idea? I use Linux on one of my computers, and it is great!