Microsoft To Start Running Anti-Unix Ads

PhreakinPenguin writes: "According to this article on News.com, Microsoft and Unisys are preparing to pay for a slew of ads to 'undermine' Unix with the theme of 'We have the way out.' They are apparently hyping that Unix is an expensive money trap. One ad states, 'No wonder Unix makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's more complex than ever.' Unisys is apparently putting up $25 million and Microsoft won't say how much they're chipping in but you can bet it's more than Unisys." As the article notes, this comes after floundering attempts to sell (through Dell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard) the high-end Unisys machines pushed by these ads.

Comments

Re:Expensive experts

[tomstdenis]

Agreed. Now most of you know I like MSFT Windows [and defend it often].

These 2wk IT classes and MCSE [and other certs] type of people are a real pain in the arse though. The problem is not really MSFT's since even if UNIX or Linux in general became the popular one you'd see 2wk IT classes for LCSE people [or whatever].

The solution if you are a CS student [even just at heart] really is to distance yourself from these people. Discourage people from taking the courses and naturally do preferential hiring for real CS types [even if they have less shinny resumes] over IT people.

IT people are not real computer scientists. They just want to learn enough to point and click and then think they are experts.

BOYCOTT I.T.!

Tom

M$ to replace Java and O'Reilly "feature sections"

[acroyear]

I just left my local B&N and overheard the managers talking about an upcoming revamping of the computer section. Seems Microsoft has outbid O'Reilly, Sun, and Oracle and is taking over ALL of that shelf space that used to be dedicated to those books and is having B&N put up exclusively .NET and Visual Studio books instead.

No, its not like the bookstores won't be stocking O'Reilly books anymore, its just that you'll have to go back to the old way of reading the spines to figure out what book you want...

Doesn't mean much to those who buy online, of course...but its similar to the tactic (also mentioned in the trial, b.t.w.) of M$ buying up tons of shelf space at computer software stores so there was no room on the shelves for competitors at all.