Brier Dudley's Blog

Brier Dudley offers a critical look at technology and business issues affecting the Northwest.

July 10, 2008 10:23 AM

Windows Vista app to power Indian rail system project

A new application built on Microsoft's operating system is going to power a train notification system across India, automating a tracking system for 9,000 trains ridden by 17 million passengers a year, according to a report in the Times of India.

Passengers will be able to get real-time information about arrivals and departures on their phones, a huge improvement over the unintelligible and unreliable announcements in train stations, according to the story. The opening:

"Painful delays in reaching your destination, waiting for hours on end at the railway stations in the country for trains to arrive, with the announcement system blaring old information repeatedly, may soon become a thing of the past."

I wonder if someone's going to write a version for the iPhone app store.

(Would India really run a system like that on desktop PCs? I wonder if it was perhaps built on Microsoft's platform, by developers using Vista desktops, but will run on one of the company's more industrial-strength products ... )

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Posted by Bob-o

1:38 PM, Jul 10, 2008

Oh, lord, you thought rail travel there was dangerous before... now the backbone will go down when their system is stuck on a BSOD, some 'security warning' or other glitch (say media player is being autoupdated).

Who in their right mind would put such critical usage applications on a windows driven system? Oh, the Indian government..

Posted by aaron

1:27 PM, Jul 17, 2008

I think that Microsoft really needs to embrace the concept of usign a desktop as a mini-server.

it should be a feature-- not verboten.

If companies could run SQL Server on a desktop -- like we used to be able to in the SQL 7.0 days-- then maybe we'd get even more adoption.

as it is; the jump from windows desktop to windows server is just too much money.

Maybe Microsoft should just come out with an EXPRESS version of Windows Server. Now that would be nice.

and while we're at it--- yes, Microsoft needs to bring the desktop and server releases back in sync, and make them driver compatable.

It worked great for Nt 4 and windows 2000.. and then Windows Xp / Server 2003-- I just swear that was one of microsofts best features-- a smooth transition from a server OS to a desktop OS.

I mean.. picture it this way.. if someone outgrows their windows vista machine- they shuld be able to run ONE DESKTOP across two distributed physical machines.. in order to make it faster.

seriously.

are they leaders or followers?