Article de OPINIóN Internet
2006-12-12

For two weeks, Microsdet Corp. it began to defer to the great companies his new and awaited version to them de Windows, being promoted the operating system like the principle de a new generation de sdetware. Now the question is: the last launching de its class will be Vista Windows.

Vista Windows is a crucial update for the sdetware with which hundreds de million computers work anywhere in the world. Its objective is to defer a greater protection against the virus and other originating attacks de Internet and includes functions that, according to Microsdet, will cause that the PC is easier to use. The system will be sent at the end de January de 2007 in Latin America with a price among US$199 and US$399. Vista will be the central pillar de the growth de Microsdet and the motor de the industry de the PC, that anywhere in the world moves US$200.000 million to the year.

Now, the programmers de the company face a delicate challenge when gliding the following generation de Windows. The nucleus de the subject is how to adapt to Internet and rivals like Google Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., that use the Web to give at a speed without preceding products that compete with the American technological giant.

Microsdet faced that dilemma during the prolonged development de Vista, that will leave five years after its predecessor, Windows XP. In that lapse, Google, Apple and the Mozilla Foundation — the organization for charity who makes the navigator de Internet Firefox — advanced to Microsdet, sending a first series de innovations and services planned for Vista. Google, for example, presented/displayed in 2004 a tool de “search in gratuitous writing-desk” to find information in a PC. On the other hand, Firefox includes a called function “navigation by eyelashes” that allows simultaneously to show to several pages Web in the same window.

Microsdet could not follow the rate, although it thinks that already it has been able to equal those technologies. For example, Vista includes a series de functions to help the users to find and to organize archives and the new version de Internet Explorer includes navigation by eyelashes. “We will not return to have an interval de five years (between products)”, promised Steve Ballmer, the executive president de Microsdet, in a recent interview.

The fundamental question for Microsdet is if the PC will continue playing a central role in the tasks for which it uses it now to people, from seeing videos and storing music to write up documents. In the last years, the diffusion de the broadband connections and a wave de new technologies have caused that are easier that people use Internet for those tasks. The consumers resort to services like Flickr and YouTube to keep their photos and videos respectively, instead de their computers. At the same time, services de electronic mail and word processing are defered more and more that does not require the sdetware installation. They do not require either that the companies send new versions de the way in which makes Microsdet. Google constantly updates its service search de email without giving much publicity him.

The update represents a delicate bet that agrees with the attempts de Microsdet to adapt to the hegemony de Internet at the same time as it tries to conserve one de the more gJanuaryus egg hens gold de the history de the businesses. For Microsdet, Windows continues being its more prdeitable division, generating US$10.000 gains million in its last fiscal year.

Ballmer insists on which never before there has been as much necessity de a sdetware that defers ample capacities to the PC and other apparatuses that are connected to the Web, although those programs collaborate with sdetware that resides in a servant in Internet.

The battle with Internet

From years 90, Microsdet has looked for ways to adjust to Internet. The height de sdetware based on the Web originated predictions that the services de Internet would become the main place to store data and to manage the daily tasks de the companies and the consumers. Some companies, like Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., even foretold that the PC would be replaced by simpler terminals that they concentrate in giving access to the Web.

It is that Internet became an ally from the PC, since they buy them to the consumers to accede to the Web. And Microsdet has been able to take advantage de this tendency. Nevertheless, Google has demonstrated that, for the companies, the combination de services Web and publicity in line can be at least as lucrative as the business de sdetware for PC.