50 million lines of code

Today The New York Times asked the question, Windows Is So Slow, but Why? My copy of Windows XP is appallingly slow on my Dell. I’m using a clean install of Windows XP but it still takes forever to launch Internet Explorer or do anything on the system. Yes, I keep it up to date with all of the latest security patches and upgrades. No, i don’t have viruses, adware and spyware bogging things down.

Considering that Vista has “50 million lines of code” and is “more than 40 percent larger than Windows XP”, I’ll have to purchase another Dell just to run it. Whenever it gets released.

It’s been 5 years since Microsoft upgraded its operating system and the next version, Vista keeps getting delayed. How is this possible with all of the brilliant engineers that Microsoft has at their disposal? The Times article says,

In those five years, Apple Computer has turned out four new versions of its Macintosh operating system, beating Microsoft to market with features that will be in Vista, like desktop search, advanced 3-D graphics and “widgets,” an array of small, single-purpose programs like news tickers, traffic reports and weather maps.

It turns out that Windows is just too big. Mac OS X, Linux and Google really do pose a threat to Microsoft, the longer it takes them to release Vista. As Microsoft continues to patch its code and add on to the beast called Windows, Apple is on their third Macintosh operating system (all of them backward compatible). Each new version continues to innovate (and inspire future versions of Windows).

Remember Longhorn? It was a previous version of Windows that Microsoft scrapped in favour of Vista. They should scrap Vista and start from scratch. Why? 50 million lines of code would be my first reason. That must be a nightmare for bug fixes and security vulnerabilities. Stay tuned.

Posted in Technology at 9:18 PM