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Any Reason To Buy Microsoft?
zymano writes "This yahoo article says that almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they can now find somewhere else -- without some of the baggage that comes with Microsoft purchases, like ongoing security concerns and mystifying licensing practices and that in a recent survey of CIOs, Forrester Research found that about 25 percent of them were already in the process of replacing Windows servers with Linux."
Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
Thank Microsoft for inventing the idea of Visual Basic and obstructions to the c++ standard that make it difficult if not impossible to port apps. This was done on purpose to force bussinesses to be dependant on Windows. Fact of the matter is during the 90's they viewed Microsoft as the good guys needed to set standards. Now its payback.
.net train even though they are critizing Microsoft's licensing practices. They will surely be locked in. Infact according to the Gartner group %50 of all companies are looking at .net migration! They just do not get it. Today its mostly Unix based but they are afraid that java might die under the almighty Microsoft view .net as a safe way to avoid risk managment.
I remember the old saying "Don't code it include it!". The point is that your apps are really just wrappers for some ms specific code.
If it took 30 years to replace cobal/IBM 370 code then it will take 30 years to get the com/.net/Windows back out again. I predict Windows to be used for 30 or 40 years thanks to the proprietariness of the whole environment.
Also look at prepackaged software. Its all Windows based. Peoplesoft, great plains accounting, autocad, etc.
Sadly many companies today are ready to jump on the
On another note Microsoft does make the best Office suites around. Not to mention I found no ide that approaches VC++. Vi is cool as a great text editor for many different langauges but it does not have autoword completion, autoclass completetion, class browsing extra that VC++ has. Kdevelop sucks goatballs and only eclipse is close. Unfortunatly its for java development.
http://saveie6.com/
People usually needs a (strong) motivation to move, even if it leads to a better state.
Linux is not a threat to Windows. The general behaviour of MS against it's custommers is.
Facts: (AFAIK)
_ Windows XP has been out for a while now.
_ With such an amount of time, there likely more hardware update needed (and applied) for a lot of computers.
_ A set of 3 changes triggers the mandatory registration process.
_ To have a locked computer on sunday morning because you just installed a RAM upgrade is really a pain. (*)
_ To have a very unpleasant MS guy on the phone Monday morning really improves your general bad feeling about MS and Windows. (**)
I know a few people who experienced that kind of story those last six months. Most were MS tolerant. Some are now planning to give a try to a Linux distribution (SuSE).
Since this kind of trouble is going to happen more and more, I think that MS is more a threat to itself than Linux.
(*) real story
(**) part 2 of the real story
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Because people who have businesses care very much whether or not they succeed or fail. Microsoft has succeeded, in most cases, to convince those that matter that if they go with the alternative, they are taking a risk with their business.
Microsoft, to most businesses, is the "safe bet". It's considered the superior choice only because it's mainstream.
The real threat will come to Microsoft not via some certain tech advance - it will come in the form of a slow penetration of anti-MS and pro-Linux gossip being spread throughout the business community. Once this happens the game will be over and MS will have to *totally* re-invent themselves - another product release won't save them.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
/. you are a much more credible source
Alpha support for ext2fs was added in 1993. So the FreeBSD fs from 2003 blows Ext2fs out of the water? No shit Sherlock.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).
Hmm the kernel help text doesn't say that ReiserFS support is experimental. But of course as an AC on
The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward compatibility'.
Yeah, the only drawback they removed was the non journaling nature of EXT2FS.
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
Yep, having full controll of the hardware platform and documentation will do that...
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost.
Lets compare it to Unix as you did above. I'd say the learning curve is almost non-existant. If a sheep farmer from Victoria Australia who used to use Windows (We actually have one in the Gentoo forums) can teach himself Linux so can a Unix sysadmin.
The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification.
That has not been my experience. If you find something that irritates you file a bug report.
On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
Yep, my Linux prinserver contains bad language. Better get rid of it.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
What is clear is that you have a chip on your shoulder concerning Linux. Considering that there are lots of companies currently using Linux it clearly is an option for some.
Real world examples:
"We need to recommend Mac's. Apple was THE FIRST SERIOUS PC, and Mac was the first GUI. It is far superior to anything running on the PC." (1987)
"Novell has 80% of the Network Operating System market. Go with the defacto standard; the industry leader." (1992)
"The Netscape team INVENTED browsing. Deploy Netscape Communicator to the desktop. Their browser and mail client will continue to dominate the desktop." (1996)
"The ONLY serious competitor in palmtop computing is the Palm Pilot. Why consider anything else?" (1998)
You can say it again and again for Apache (market leader, practically invented the market), Java (re-invented the concept of write-once-run-anywhere), home gaming systems, and forty other technologies.
The bottom line is that you better have a GREAT reason to bet against "Dollar Bill". He knows that there's more to the market than superior products (in fact, product superiority is probably low on Microsoft's strategic list, behind good marketing, product interoperability, and spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).
I think Microsoft's here to stay as long as Bill's driving the ship. Why bet my business by betting AGAINST Gates?
I think an important counter argument can be made against each of your points:
1. Manageability. If you think that Windows is unique and UNIX/Linux doesn't have comparable tools, it's because you have not worked with a comparable sized UNIX installation. Rdist and LDAP can do everything and more that SMS and Active Directory can. Furthermore they do it cross platform using open standards that are interoperable across a wide range of platforms.
2. Accountability. Baloney. Microsoft isn't accountable to ANYONE, including the Department of Justice. Sure, you can BLAME them, but that is not the same thing as accountability. What you are talking about is the old 'Nobody got fired for buying IBM' which is of course a dead letter these days. Accountability means that you can recover damages from somebody when it breaks, or you can switch to a different supplier. The former is impossible, and the latter is only possible if you are using open standards (i.e. Linux).
3. It's cheaper. Microsoft is cheaper? Have you factored in the costs associated with license compliance, the poor stability of Microsoft platforms compared to Linux, the forced site licensing that requires you to buy TWO licenses per employee for every software package? And hardware is cheaper? Since when? Linux uses the same hardware. The only real advantage Microsoft has with cost is due to vendor lock-in of their user base. And you know what? You PAY and PAY and PAY for that because Microsoft has you by the short hairs. License 6.0 is the shot across the bow. Microsoft got away with a major price increase in the middle of a recession, and they KNOW it. Wait 'till you see License 7.0.
People are not switching to Linux for fun. They are doing so because it gives them an advantage.