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Vista has a lot of Business features - in fact, they probably have more biz features than consumer features.

BitLocker is a nifty tech that encrypts the system volume, needing a USB key to boot. I wonder how many businesses with (stolen!) laptops would love to have this feature.

Windows MeetingSpace uses the new network implementation in Vista to allow peer-to-peer detection of clients. Meaning you bring your WiFi laptop into a conference room and you're logged into MeetingSpace. The program itself lets you collaborate - you can share an open program and work on it simultaneously, or share your entire desktop, or what have you not.

Speech Recognition is built into the OS and in my experience, actually works pretty well. I can see a lot of secretaries, typing-deficient people, bosses, etc. appreciating being able to dictate to a computer. I can also see some liability disappear as businesses "cure" carpal tunnel and other repetitive strain nonsense.

User Account Control makes it completely possible to run as a standard user or to default to standard user privileges only even when logged into an admin account.

Windows Service Hardening uses the same changes in the Vista kernel that allow IE7 "protected mode" and UAC to function to run each Windows service under its own user. This means that viruses and the like will be unable to mess with the file system, registry, etc. by piggybacking onto a Windows service, because the special user account the service runs under simply won't have those priviliges.

The new Windows Driver Model and Code Integrity make the system more secure and stable. Unsigned drivers are no longer allowed to run in kernel mode. Instead, the kernel exports a set of interfaces used to program most drivers in user mode, meaning:

• Less drivers need to be signed
• New user mode drivers will most likely be easier to program than their kernel-mode counterparts
• A user mode driver crash will not be able to cause a blue screen.

There's a bunch of other stuff, too, like Windows PowerShell that system admins are going to love (although they're releasing this for Windows XP SP2, also).

There's a lot of business features, most of them focusing on security and stability. (Vista also plays a lot nicer with Unix than XP does.) The question isn't whether there's any "business argument", but whether these features are worth the upgrade. For some businesses, they will be; for others, they won't.

In any size company, you will care when the CEO sends everyone a memo written on his personal laptop with Vista and the latest version of Office and you can't read it.

Microsoft has free programs to read the Office file formats. It would cut into their profits if they didn't - who would buy the next version if nobody could read the new documents?.

The 2003 reader for Word is available here, for example. When Vista and Office 2007 are released, I'm sure they'll have a 2007 version, too.

Bitlocker might be a great solution to keep stolen laptops from causing so much damage.

Only if you buy the "right" version of Vista (i.e. "Ultimate"). Which comes with other things that business really aren't interested in.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/7/2/b7208 5ae-0f04-4c6f-9182-bf1ee90f5273/IE6AC_VPC.EXE

hah, WGA

To follow up my own post.

Microsoft wants you to run OSS on thier stuff. Point your clients to this site:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/a ug05/08-10OpenSourceLab.mspx

Enjoy,

in 2 years after Vista release

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223

This is great news for XP owners, after this 2 year period is ended they WILL release a hotfix / patch to remove the ACTIVATION requirement for XP.

They have stated this here.. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302878

"Does Microsoft use activation to require me to upgrade? Will Microsoft ever stop issuing activation codes for one or more of the products that require activation?

No. Microsoft does not use activation as a tool to require people to upgrade. Activation is only an anti-piracy tool.

Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP and will likely provide an update that turns off activation at the end of the product's life cycle so that users would no longer have to activate the product. "

ENJOY VISTA by waiting for the XP activation REMOVAL patch in 2 years!!!

in 2 years after Vista release

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223

This is great news for XP owners, after this 2 year period is ended they WILL release a hotfix / patch to remove the ACTIVATION requirement for XP.

They have stated this here.. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302878

"Does Microsoft use activation to require me to upgrade? Will Microsoft ever stop issuing activation codes for one or more of the products that require activation?

No. Microsoft does not use activation as a tool to require people to upgrade. Activation is only an anti-piracy tool.

Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP and will likely provide an update that turns off activation at the end of the product's life cycle so that users would no longer have to activate the product. "

ENJOY VISTA by waiting for the XP activation REMOVAL patch in 2 years!!!

That's simple - the only businesses that have access to it now include MSDN subscribers and members of their partner program. This means it primarily affects developers who are the ones typically interesting in early adoption; however, they really don't support much of their own development tools right now. They won't support Visual Studio 2005 until SP1 is released first quarter next year, they won't support Visual Studio 2003, 2002, or 6 at all (though they do support Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual FoxPro 9.0). You can read up on this yourself, of course.

That's simple - the only businesses that have access to it now include MSDN subscribers and members of their partner program. This means it primarily affects developers who are the ones typically interesting in early adoption; however, they really don't support much of their own development tools right now. They won't support Visual Studio 2005 until SP1 is released first quarter next year, they won't support Visual Studio 2003, 2002, or 6 at all (though they do support Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual FoxPro 9.0). You can read up on this yourself, of course.

The Office 2007 touts some kind of new UI improvement on toolbars. MS claims enough interest in the new UI to offer licensing http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/n ov06/11-21officeui.mspx . I'd call that a UI innovation.

Then there's the WinFS file system that was pulled from Longhorn. I don't know if it's better, but it sounds innovative.

One MS project that really interests me is PhotoSynth. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/. Anybody out there willing to argue it's not a truly innovative application?

One other area of innovation I'm willing to give MS credit for: building large systems. It's almost impossible to build software on the scale of Office and Windows. Tens of thousands of developers, millions of lines of code, thousands of different software & hardware environments to test in. Not to mention all the backward compatibility. I'm guessing here, but I bet MS innovated in large software project managment.

Well, it has been said before that UNIX spreads like a virus:
http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download .html

From the book:
The features of a good virus are:
1) Small size
2) Portability
3) Ability to commandeer resources of the host
4) Rapid mutation

uh, are any of you aware of Microsoft Research? i'm not a fan of Redmond, but i do have colleagues who do real research, something a "technical evangelist" doesn't know/get educated about/understand, since it's not directly part of the marketing for their flagship products. there is serious cash being put into R&D at Microsoft for years. they also promote research in Academia; for instance Bill Gates donated 20M to MIT to help start the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. http://www.csail.mit.edu/index.php - egad, a building is even named after him! don't hate if you don't know the whole story... http://research.microsoft.com/

I looked online and couldn't find a video, but here's a transcript.

He spoke about how the amount of money spent research diseases that are killing most of the people around the developing world (say, malaria, which kills thousands of children each day) lags way behind money spend on the challenging health problems of the developed world (say, baldness, which prevents thousands of guys from getting laid each day). He spoke with passion and without reading a teleprompter.

Now I use Linux and home and work and am one of the crowd that tends to be prejudiced against Microsoft because they're so big and wield what I consider to be an unhealthy amount of influence. But I want to take issue with those who think Microsoft or Bill Gates are motivated by evil intentions. There's no big difference between the way Microsoft tries to increase sales and the methods used by other companies. The problem is that Microsoft has been so successful that free market competition isn't working well.

The big thing that Microsoft has been called on the carpet for is giving discounts to computer manufacturers that bundle Windows with every computer. This is absolutely a normal strategy -- you get software bundled on computers all the time where the software manufacturer gives a discount because the manufacturer sticks it on every computer. It's not evil, just good business.

The problem is that once you become too big, what used to be good business practices can now become unhealthy. The problem is you don't just wake up one day and think "Wow, we're so successful, let's stop try so hard to sell our products and give the other guys a chance." And that's why we have anti-trust laws which kick in and let the government, on behalf of the rest of us, in effect say to companies like Microsoft that they're too successful and need to back off from some of their business strategies.

There are really two ways to run afould of anti-trust laws. One is to be so successful that you have a monopoly or close to it, and your business practices need to be restricted. The other is that you secretly call up your competitors and fix prices with them, like the airlines did in the 1980's for example. I think the second is a bit on the evil side, but it's not what Microsoft has been accused of.

So to summarize, I think Bill Gates is smart and well-intentioned. It's OK and healthy to dislike Microsoft because it wields too much influence, but that doesn't mean that the people who have been leading Microsoft have been doing so with evil intentions.

No, they were waiting for legitimate customers to install it so they could try out their hacks in the real world. See sig.

Rrrright. Because no legitimate customers have been running vista for months already.

How is this a troll? Have you seen Bill Gates recently? He looks like a reject from a prep school - rejected because of his haircut. My girlfriend cut my hair and it looks better than his does. If it's not funny, that's okay, don't laugh - but mismoderating just makes you an ass and me perform another pathetic cry for help to the slashdot "editor"ship about bad moderation. Not that they give a fuck. But at least I can share the information here to assist in making the slashdot readership more irate with the poor way this place is managed. Er, neglected, more like. I knew it was all over when they took the email address you were supposed to use to report abuse of moderation out of the moderation FAQ...

I've seen and worked with Vista also. Here were my impressions:
- losing work has not been a problem for me since W2K.*
- I've also never had trouble finding my files.
- It is uglier and comes with a bunch more crap I have to turn off
- I spend very little time working with "the system." I use applications. Overall, I find that applications and the OS, from 95 through XP, look pretty consistent already.

So my conclusion is the same as what the summary says Dvorak's is**: it'll make MS some money, 'cause it'll be on every OEM box, but otherwise no one will give a shit either way.

The real question is what will MS do next. Windows has gotten so mind-bogglingly huge that I don't see how they can possibly do anything but toss it all, start from scrartch, and do a whole new OS with Vista running in a VM for compatability. Apple did this when they went to OS X six years ago. MS should have started doing this the day after XP shipped. Now they're very far behind.

It has been said many times before, but I think it's really true right now: Apple is doing some great stuff, and MS is playing catch-up, and losing. Badly. Look at everything that Apple does with as little as 16 MB VRAM, then ask yourself what you get from MS with your 128 MB. Just like a dork trying to be cool***, MS is copying every feature Apple has put out in the last five years, and doing it worse, and making it uglier. Look at the 3 modes Expose has**** and compare that to the ONE thing Aero offers--that dopey 3D window scrolling thingie. Really, which looks more productive: the ability to see every window in an application or the whole system with a single keystroke or mouse motion, or something that looks like a special effect from a late-1990s movie? It's plain to see that MS knows the words but not the music.

On a related note, the ribbon in Office looks decent, but not mind-blowing. It's a little better than menus, 'cause more stuff is shown at once, but you still need to dig a bit to find what you need. The live preview of formatting changes, rather than menu -> change -> apply -> repeat, is a bigger gain, but not much different from what Photoshop and other apps have had for a decade plus, so no points for innovation there.

* even so, I think Leopard's Time Machine is an absolutely great feature.
** no, I didn't RTFA.
*** no offense, fellow Slashdotters.
**** I'll grant you that MS beat Apple to the "Show desktop" punch by about a decade, and they had alt-tab first, too. BTW, I never use Expose--just command-tab and command-H.

• Expose - While not quite as advanced as the Mac product, Vista does add thumbnails when you hover over any task and provides a view of all open windows by hitting Windows+Tab
• FileVault - BitKeeper
• Spotlight - Better file (and email, etc) searching is one of the cornerstone improvements in Vista. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/for everyone/searchorg.mspx
• Dashboard - Windows Sidebar
• Time Machine - Volume Shadow Copy (taken from Windows Server 2003 actually)
• Spaces - I have to give this one to Mac...still no multiple desktops in Vista.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/edi tions/default.mspx There, I fixed it.

windows vista's site uses shanghai skyline as backdrop: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/ love that city!!

Similar in concept to the BartPE disc, you can create an official Vista based WindowsPE 2.0 disc using:
BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) 2007

Here's a link to WinPE2 itself: Windows PE 2.0 Overview

Similar in concept to the BartPE disc, you can create an official Vista based WindowsPE 2.0 disc using:
BDD (Business Desktop Deployment) 2007

Here's a link to WinPE2 itself: Windows PE 2.0 Overview

As I recall, he actually said the same thing during the press conference (I sucked it up and listened to the audio since Quicktime decided it didn't know how to decode the video).

From the transcript:

What I really said was, look it, as a customer, you would have taken me, when I was working at my old company and said, I want you to get this, and get together with the other vendor, and make this stuff work. Don't put that responsibility on me. And Kevin, being a former CIO at Wal-Mart, he resonated, that was right on the money. He went and grabbed Steve and Brad, and said, you know what, this probably is the right thing. Steve had been hearing it, and Brad had been hearing it from customers, and then that really drove them into a meeting that we had in the May timeframe where we got the teams together and really began those discussions. I would tell you, it always takes two in a relationship. Both sides were listening very intently to each other, but that's how the story unfolded. Thank you to Kevin.

The only real piece of material in this interview tht was original was Mr. Hovsepian every-so-delicately pussyfooting around saying anything useful about Microsoft's IP allegations. I mean, come on. Grow some balls. Steve Ballmer just beat you over the head with the proverbian chair while you were standing on stage with him and you refuse to so much as condemn the comment?

Just out of interest, in the last month or two Microsoft has actually put a note about OpenDocument support into their Office support pages. Notice how they insist on identifying it solely with a specific product (OpenOffice.org, whose name they get wrong). Their comments about why ODF is crap and MSXML is sweetness and light are also pretty ... partial, which isn't really surprising I suppose. More intriguing to me is how they basically say the whole debate is grandstanding by Sun (and not, say, something to do with public interest).

Why is Microsoft offering a new standard, rather than simply supporting the file format for the Open Office product (sometimes called ODF)?

The OpenDocument format would not meet requirements for backward compatibility, for forward compatibility, or for performance, that millions of Microsoft customers tell us that they require.

Sun submitted the OpenOffice formats to a small committee in the OASIS organization. The record shows that there were almost no material changes to the OpenOffice specification from the time it was submitted to the time it was approved by the working group at OASIS. Sun timed the release of the OpenDocument standard in conjunction with the OpenOffice 2.0 release. The OASIS committee did not focus on the requirements, constraints, and experiences of Microsoft customers.

The Microsoft OpenXML formats have had a number of unique design requirements, including the following:

• Backward compatibility with billions of documents produced over decades.
• Intrinsic support for integrating customer-defined XML data. This enables new levels of innovation as documents generate and transport information in unique XML styles not defined by Microsoft or the document standard, but defined by the business processes of an organization.
• High performance. The Microsoft OpenXML formats put a high priority on the speed of opening, closing, and working with documents, to roughly reflect or improve upon the performance of the past binary formats, rather than degrade the performance due to parsing XML.
• Robust Testing. The OpenXML formats for Microsoft Word and Excel have been part of Office 2003 and have undergone extensive real-world testing and usage, by customers and developers.

In conclusion, the formats are significantly different, with different design points and strengths.

Sig under construction. Please check back when Duke Nukem Forever ships and/or Windows Vista is released.

Does being able to download Vista count? There's a link here, assuming MS didn't stick a funky cookie that tells them I'm an MSDN subscriber.

Here's a link to Microsoft:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx? PostID=525938&SiteID=17

On that page is another link:
http://www.runaware.com/microsoft/en-us/office2007 /td

Better than a screenshot, but you'll prolly need to be using Windows/IE to get any joy out of it. Nice though

Oh?

Monad has actually been released recently.
They've renamed it Powershell and it's available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technol ogies/management/powershell/default.mspx

I'm a little surprised there hasn't been a slashdot article, at least so the bash fanbois can go on about how blatant a copy this is... :)

I've built a lot of web pages, and this has made me realize that it's incredibly quick and easy to whip up GUIs with HTML. The experience was much better than with the GUI builders I had used, and certainly beat coding GUIs by hand.

Of course, HTML is not intended as a language for describing native GUIs, so it has some limitations there. Fortunately, there is a variety of XML formats for describing real GUIs.

What makes XML so great for describing GUIs is that it's so good at describing nested objects. If you think about it, that's exactly what GUIs are: you've got your windows, with a bunch of widgets in it, one of which is a scrollable area with more widgets in it, etc. This is naturally described by an XML tree that contains all these widgets, with some attributes used for connecting them to the application; e.g. ids to allow the application to reference widgets, and embedded code to let the GUI respond to events (e.g. HTML's onclick).

Where many XML GUI languages fall short is in that they don't provide methods for building new abstractions. If you have a lot of subtrees that are all very similar (say, a frame, a title, a content window, and a hide and a show button), you'll completely have to code each of them in full. Any programming language worth its salt will provide a way to abstract over this (functions!), but I think the realization that XML GUI descriptions (and HTML documents!) are programs hasn't fully set in yet.

Next time I'm coding a GUI, I'll be generating the XML from a proper programming language. I've had good results with Lisp before...

Microsoft has mostly been about making products barely clearing the bar

From TFA:

The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?"

But there it was, right on the Zune's tech support page. Is this really what parents want to be doing at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning?

To which the goldfish replied:

No, dude, you've got to register one. Now stop talking to me.

Actually, they do.

Used to be you could get Windows and keep it reasonably safe from viruses/cracking/licence-revocation by not connecting to the internet. That option will no longer exist as of Vista.

The term dead man's switch originated in the train industry. The idea is that a switch has to be kept contuously pressed for the train to continue operating. If the engineer suffers a stroke or heart attack, he can't keep the switch pressed, releasing the switch triggers a circuit that causes the train's brakes to be applied, bringing it to a halt. A helluva lot safer than the alternative.

In software, it has a more sinister meaning. Your software must contact the mothership, be inspected by it, and receive authorization to continue operating. If it can't cantact the mothership, it stops functioning. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/ and select
Product Name: Windows Vista
Version: Home Basic
Language: English
and download the PDF that it points to. On Page 2 of that pdf, paragraph 4 talks about mandatory activation. If it was a one-shot deal, I wouldn't have a problem. ***BUT*** paragraph 5 on that same page states (and I quote)
  5. VALIDATION.
a. The software will from time to time validate the software, update or require download of the validation feature of the software. Validation verifies that the software has been activated and is properly licensed. [...deletia...]

b. During a validation check, the software will send information about the software and the device to Microsoft. This information includes the version and product key of the software, and the Internet protocol address of the device. Microsoft does not use the information to identify or contact you. By using the software, you consent to the transmission of this information. [...deletia...]

c. If, after a validation check, the software is found not to be properly licensed, the functionality of the software may be affected. For example, you may
* need to reactivate the software, or
* receive reminders to obtain a properly licensed copy of the software,
or you may not be able to
* use or continue to use some of the features of the software

The sections I bolded basically state...
1) Vista may, from time to time, decide that it wants to call the mothership and download/install/run additional software
2) By using Vista, you agree to item 1)
3) If the validation doesn't work, e.g. no internet connection to the mothership, Vista may partially or completely stop working.
Fills me with confidence... NOT!

Microsoft has complied with all of the EC decision except the interoperability documentation, one of the squabbles is what the 'license terms' should be for the interface info - MS doesnt want it to be free, and heaven forbid GPL-friendly.

Novell has now validated MS claim that the interface info is indeed license worthy, notice they are paying royalties, so now MS can say to the EU that Novell found their license terms "Reasonable and Non Discriminatory". The Novell deal will undermine the EC ruling, and ensure that anyone wanting to interoperate with MS will need to license and pay royalties (and NOT REDISTRIBUTE).

Novell sold the community out, why did they pay MS for the interoperability info that the EC was forcing them to hand over? The deal was about interoperability after all, but that may be worse.

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensour ce.html

It's not the actual contract but it answers some relevant questions. Notable highlights.

Our agreement with Microsoft is focused on our customers, and does not include a patent license or covenant not to sue from Microsoft to Novell (or, for that matter, from Novell to Microsoft). Novell's customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft. We have not agreed with Microsoft to any condition that would contradict the conditions of the GPL and we are in full compliance.

Q3. Is this agreement an admission that Linux products from Novell infringe Microsoft patents?

No.

Patent concerns did not drive our entry into this agreement. Novell makes no admission that its Linux and open source offerings infringe on any other parties' patents. Our position has not changed as a result of this agreement.

Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?

No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.

Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.

Q8. What does this mean for Mono and its inclusion in non-SUSE distributions? Does Mono infringe Microsoft patents?

We maintain that Mono does not infringe any Microsoft patents. This agreement does not impact the rights and abilities of other distributions to bundle and ship Mono.

Novell is the leading contributor to Mono and we remain committed to the Mono project. Mono is a community project with many constituents and collaborators from companies, universities, governments and individuals.

And here's the actual agreement from Microsoft.

Think twice...

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

• 2006 -- Large Display Research Overview
• 2005 -- Large display user experience
• 2004 -- Display space usage and window management operation comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users
• 2003 -- Towards characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays
• 2003 -- Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Monitors

• 2004 -- A Diary of Task Switching and Interruptions

a. Licensed Device. You may install one copy of the software on the licensed device. You may use the software on up to two processors on that device at one time. Except as provided in the Storage and Network Use (Ultimate edition) sections below, you may not use the software on any other device.

Following section is to be found only in Vista Ultimate license:

1. STORAGE. You may store one copy of the software on a storage device, such as a network server. You may use that copy to install the software on any other device to which a license has been assigned.

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/defa ult.aspx

If you look at all the numbers Linux is lower on everything except Labor.You're not the first to fall for these meaningless values, but you're the highest moderated.

Percentages are meaningless if you don't take total cost in account.

Multiplying percentages by the given TCO you get (in eurocents per site/server/month):

(.Net 2000, .Net 2005, Linux)

Hardware 5.49 2.75 2.77
Network infrastructure 5.06 2.53 2.41
Operations and Network Mgt. 17.48 8.76 8.40
Power 1.69 0.84 0.85
Bandwidth 43.39 21.19 36.34
System software 12.90 6.45 3.31
Application software 50.02 28.64 22.75
Back office software 44.22 22.09 22.10
Labor 211.76 105.77 348.12
Downtime charges 0.00 0.00 0.00

But when you look at percentages, those for SQL 2000 and 2005 are quite similar. It means that one real server under SQL2005 hosts twice as much virtual servers as SQL2000.

I will let to others in-depth critics about the methodology.
Just that quote from the full report (emphasis mine): "Hostbasket experiences a lower TCO on Windows than Linux because our support cost for Windows is lower and because our developers and system engineers have better knowledge of Windows than Linux," notes Hostbasket Chief Operating Officer Alex Van Overloop.

Microsoft asserts that commercial virtualization systems are not mature enough for broad use, yet such systems have had far more real world use than Vista has had.

You have to remember what true hubris is.

Their product is immature... and not ready for prime time... therefore all others must be even worse off.

Because MS knows their product is allways "best of class".

3. RESERVATION OF RIGHTS AND OWNERSHIP. Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this EULA. The Software is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties. Microsoft or its suppliers own the title, copyright, and other intellectual property rights in the Software. The Software is licensed, not sold.

Here's the direct link to the cost analysis report: TCO Report

They are doing it for free. They have only released a Mapuzugun language pack for Windows XP. It is a big cab that is installed using the Regional Settings window in the control panel. You can download it from here actually: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=0E09942E-36C8-4CA8-83F9-9AD87586301A&displa ylang=es. Check it out. now... where is my Mapuzungun Ubuntu??? sheesh!

http://www.microsoft.com/chile/mapuzugun/

Google thinks Mapudungun too :), but M$ thinks otherwise. Actually, the spelling seems to differ depending on your own language.

CC.