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Will CS Students Switch From Microsoft?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the depends-on-the-faculty-too dept.

spotter writes: "There's an article in Newsweek International that talks about how Microsoft's tactics are turning off an entire generation of CS students from their products and increasing the fortunes of Linux." The article isn't deep or flawless, but hits on a major point: what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do.

2 of 774 comments (clear)

  1. Visual Studio .NET rollout by kikta · · Score: 5, Informative

    MS is hosting an event here at Miami University (Ohio) in conjucntion with the CS department to celebrate the rollout of Visual Studio .NET tomorrow. "All attendees will receive the full version of Visual Studio .NET Academic, a full version of Windows XP Professional, and other valuable items. Join us for an overview of the .NET Framework and a live demonstration of Visual Studio .NET." That's about $1700 (retail) of software that they're giving away. My suitemate and I are both Linux junkies, but we're both going for the software and out of curiosity. They giving out free food & even have a band scheduled to play. The notice is on MS's website here. They're also giving away an Xbox, Microsoft Press Books, $500 American Express Gift Certificates, MP3 Players, "and more!" MS is definetly pulling out all of the stops to try and hook the next generation (big surprise). I'm interested to see how it will go...

  2. It's nuts what Microsoft is doing to prevent this by DutchSter · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think Microsoft is aware of this, and they are trying their hardest to avoid it. Consider the following. I attend a medium sized (16,000 students) Midwestern University. While our CS department isn't world-renowned, there are about 400 people majoring in it. Tomorrow (The 4th) we've got Microsoft coming to town for the VS .NET "launch party"

    No big deal you'd say...Here's what they're ponying up:
    * Up to 700 people can attend, Students, Faculty, Staff
    * Everyone who goes gets a full version of XP professional, full version of VS .NET Academic, plus who knows how much other Microsoft "Stuff" (Lots of Xboxes floating around)

    Here's the kicker. I was talking to our secretary the other day and she said the whole thing basically went like this: Microsoft calls and says they want to have a launch party, we get $50,000 to spend for $700 people, plus the department gets $10,000 in discretionary "thanks" cash.

    We're having a hard time racking up over $15,000 in expenses for this three hour event. We simply can't find $35,000 in other things to buy for this room! I might add also, all 700 slots were filled in less than a day.

    Is it just me, or does this smack of a company that really, really, wants to protect its future interests?