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Is Windows Worth $45?
bgelb writes "This article from the Wall Street Journal questions whether Microsoft really innovates enough to justify the enormous amount of money (nearly 10% of the cost of every PC!) it takes from consumers each year. Hard drive and chip makers innovate constantly, but what about Microsoft?"
I'm not a Windows user, but all of my friends in my networking class pirate, even the ones who are Windows enthusiasts. Of course, they all build their PCs, I suppose it is really people buying OEMs getting hosed.
Where can you find it for $45. Every place I see it for sale, an UPGRADE is in the $80s to $90s for the home version. More for the Pro version. WTF
No.
It isn't even worth $0. I don't want it near me.
No, really, I'll get a restraining order.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
There are choices for consumers and if they refuse to vote with their wallets, I have little pity on them,.
...does that mean I should pay less money each year for a QT license if they don't release a bunch of new features? ;)
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Windows may take $45 dollars per year, but trust me... it certainly takes a lot more, when you factor in all of those lost papers, doomed databases, and the dozen hours each of us loses from meddling with its problems.
(I'm posting the text because the online access will go away in 7 days for non-subscribers)
Do We Get Enough In Innovation for What We Give to Microsoft?
It's 2004; do you know where your computer dollars are going?
One can learn a lot about the computer industry by looking at the breakdown of manufacturing costs in an average desktop PC, as compiled by iSuppli Corp., a market-research firm. Excluding labor and shipping, and leaving out the costs of a monitor, keyboard or mouse, the typical desktop PC these days costs the Dells or the H-Ps of the world roughly $437 in parts.
The biggest portion of that -- 30%, or $134 -- goes to Intel for a Pentium processor. The disk drives, including whatever CD or DVD is installed, cost around $104; the RAM memory is $54; and the remaining hardware items -- power supply, case, circuit boards -- total $100.
The final 10%, or $45, goes to Microsoft for the Windows operating system.
Because these prices are never disclosed, the figures here represent best guesses. But you can start to see the contours of the computer industry in that bill of fare. Specifically, you begin to understand how Microsoft could amass its $61 billion in cash and other assets. It's easy when you collect nearly 10% of the cost of every PC that's shipped, while having no manufacturing costs of your own.
Most technology companies that do well justify the money they make by saying that is what is required to fund innovation, that were it not for all the profits they were accumulating, the industry would be standing still.
The claim is suspect. The disk-drive industry, for one, manages to release drives with ever-larger capacities while often barely breaking even. And the technical challenges they face are among the most formidable, involving squeezing more and more bits of data onto ever smaller portions of a rapidly spinning magnetically charged platter.
Intel is no stranger to big profits. Analysts estimate the Intel CPU costs more than a comparable product from rival Advanced Micro Devices. What about the added charge? Think of it as an Intel tax on each PC.
Even if you're not an Intel shareholder there's arguably a benefit associated with that tax. Intel is like a research-and-development operation for the entire semiconductor industry. The manufacturing processes it uses for its latest-generation Pentiums are the most advanced in the world and cost billions of dollars. Eventually, though, these processes become widely available to everyone in electronics. This is one case where trickle-down economics seems to work.
That leaves Microsoft, and the question: What does the world get for the 10% Microsoft tax on every PC?
No one could ever say Microsoft is sitting idle. That was clear last week at a Research TechFest the company held at its Redmond, Wash., campus. Microsoft has an advanced research operation that employs about 600 people all over the world. These are some of the smartest people around, and they don't work on specific Microsoft products, but rather on long-range ideas, usually matching their own interests.
The TechFest was like a science fair. Researchers set up booths, and the managers of Microsoft's many products milled around, looking for useful ideas they could deploy in future products. The number of people doing the milling was in the thousands.
But is the innovation from Microsoft commensurate with the awesome resources it has been given? The average Microsoft customer probably wouldn't say so. Indeed, the advances the company lists for its new products all too often involve fixing shortcomings of earlier products, such as security and reliability in the case of its operating systems, and ease of use with its Office suite.
In fact, you can argue that genuine innovation is the last thing monopolists want, since it threatens to upset the very applecart that made them rich in the first place.
When asked which research from its labs has made its way into M
if you had an option to either pay it, or buy a PC without an OS. that it's forced upon you when you buy a PC (via OEM agreements) isn't fair regardless of the cost. I bought and iBook just because I wouldn't pay for Windows, since I would never use it. Yes, I pay a little for OS X, but it's something I may actually use (via MOL in Linux).
CBV
free ipod and free gmail!
So either you get users pissed off that they have to spend MORE to get similar functionality, or you get them bitching about how user-unfriendly Linux is (though free).
Not much of a choice between all three, really. What there ought to be is a free OS that is as comfortable an environment as MacOS and supports as much software as Windows.
They say I'm a dreamer, but my heart's of gold...
I have been pwned because my
I'd pay $45 for Windows. I'd pay $60 if they let me not install most of what I don't want.
Not sure about the math, but last I checked, Windows cost a lot more than $45.00. Then again, if it only cost $45... as in I could go to the computer store and buy it for $45.00... then perhaps it would be worth it. Then I could take the money I normally have to spend on Windows and use it to buy VMWare instead (vs finding keys for it on astalavista.com) and then I could still have my Linux system with my Windows via VMware config all for a more *reasonable* price.
This post is a sarcastic attempt at irony and humor and not meant to be an admission of guilt for software piracy that would lead to the BSA knocking on my door.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
Does it matter if MS is innovating or not? They still get the 10% in the form of the "Microsoft Tax" whether they innovate or not. When I bought my Dell (which I won't do again, now that I've learned how to build my own from scratch), it came with Windows XP. I then upgraded to Red Hat Linux 9 (OK, technically I changed...), but MS had already got their bucks out of me for WinXPH. Mayhaps FTC should get involved in this (again)?
#define DRM chmod 000
I'd say Windows would be worth using if THEY paid ME. And, seeing as how I'm a sysadmin at work, I guess they kindof are.
Still, it'd be nice if I could get our company migrated to Linux or at leat Mac OS X.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And look at OS X... think of how fundamentally different it is than OS 9. Then think of XP versus 2000 or 98. Not that much of a difference.
IAALS.
It seems to me that essentially what Microsoft does is wait for someone else to come up with a cool new idea and take the risks of making sure it works, and then implement the same concept themselves in an integrated fashion so that the lazy and/or uninformed will just use theirs. I think a prime example of this is ICQ, which of course was followed by MSN.
Usually I would be the first in line to bash Microsoft, as would the vast majority of the slashdot group.
However, I do have to give them credit for Microsoft XP, being the best thing they have done in a long time, and for allowing me to use a form of Windows that can actually have a nice interface if you tweak with it a bit.
And for making a Windows that is easier to install, and doesnt crash quite so often, as Win98, WinMe, Win95, ad nauseum did.
So basically Microsoft needs to just wait, work on Longhorn, make it stable and release it once it is completely finished, with much much more stability and Bill Gates will just have to wait before becoming a quadro-gonzo-bobillionaire.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
Just 'upgraded' from 2000 to XP and besides a lot of eye candy I don't really see squat that is new enough to warrant beind called an update.
..."I'd buy *that* for a dollar"
*Shrug*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
"ram memory", ha ha ha
doinker
I think their estimates are off a little. $45 for a copy of Windows seems a little bit underpriced. I know an OEM installer, and he says that every copy of Windows they get (and they have to get multiple ones) costs on the order of $99. Granted, he's not a _big_ OEM builder, but he's still an OEM builder.
He also has a monopoly on the area's new PC market, but that's okay.
I've paid a Microsoft tax on two of my 11 PCs. Five of the others are too old to run Microsoft software, two of them are relics that will never leave my house. One is incapable of running any Microslut OS and it would be preferable if it stayed that way. One is a hunk of silicon which I didn't pay microslut taxes on. One other, my Quadra 630CD, runs a Microslut OS, but I didn't pay the taxes on that one, AAPL did way back when. (consequently, that thing runs Windows 3.1 on its 486/66 processor better than my native 486/66 did, with less RAM)
This is not the sig you're looking for.
I've purchased Slackware too, and it was about that. $45, considering retail off-the-shelf Windows is what, $200?, is quite a deal. The Windows you get with a new pc is quite likely to run just fine on all this 'innovative' new hardware. It's not like you pay $45 for Windows 3.1 with that shiny new pc. Is there really a point here?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
But that doesn't mean it SHOULD be cheaper. If you don't like it - go out and create your own. They're doing what most other corporations do - looking after their shareholders first.
You expect me to believe the average price of a PC is $450?
You can certainly buy a decent PC for that price today, but I can't believe that's the average.
It's a lot more than that, when Dell is selling it's low-end machiens for around $399. XP Home costs over 25% of the cost of that new PC. Pro is almost half!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Closing line of article >> "Of course, Microsoft's research group is still young, and its best years may still be ahead. They had better be. PC taxpayers might start rebelling."
Might start?
I am pretty sure that the trend of "OS-less" or free *nix preinstalled PCs is not going to lessen. I have bought many, many "mini-pcs" based on the micro-atx form factor over the years to use as a distributed server grid in some of my colocation cages to control Lucent MAX-TNT servers. They came with some noname distro of linux... and were cheap as dirt and worked just fine.
With more big name PC vendors taking this approach.. It will be very interesting to see *just how many* consumers really want Windows when the choice is put in their hands.
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
When 90% of the web, 90% of the peripherals, 90% of the applications are all geared towards a platform then unfortunatly Yes it is a necessary price of admission.
Not to me, maybe for some. ... or maybe they're spending with the wrong people.
But definitly is not how much they spend to make
Windows may not be worth $45, but Linux is certainly not even worth $0.00.
What kind of an open-ended frag-fest are you trying to start here?
Here's a synopsis of the next 900 posts:
One: Windoze suX0r!
Two: Windows Rulez! Linux Sux!
Three: Uh, well no. It has its own....
One: Windoze Sux!!!
Three: Um, guys...
One and Two: SHUT UP!!
I'm posting this as an AC for obvious reasons...
Dell pays $4 for a license to WindowsXP home and $11 for a license to WindowsXP Professional. They have to pay this fee for every CPU*Computer they sell, regardless of what O/S it ships with. Those massive 64-way machines cost us^H^Hthem $256 in Windows licenses even if we^H^Hthey ship them with Linux.
When asked which research from its labs has made its way into Microsoft products, the list from Microsoft officials doesn't exactly bowl over a listener: better software-verification techniques, digital media-player technologies, additions to the SQL database language.
Sorta says it all.
<grrr>
Taken as a whole... I haven't used much of M$'s *enhancements* since Win98. I still just use a web browser (Mozilla), an office suite (Open Office), and a few other tools. I don't use Windows Media Player. I don't use MSN Messenger (I prefer Trillian). And I don't use most of their additional options, though I do use Visio and Project, but those are part of the core OS. Taken as a whole, I've upgraded each time... from 95 to 98 to 98se to win2k to XP, but I still use it for the same shit. I browse the web... check email... etc. But at least they get faster with each release. Or do they? My hardware definitely gets faster as I get upgrades and new systems. So if I've upgraded each time but still use the it for the same old shit, perhaps I'm due a refund?
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
what are they supposed to do- release feature patches every month the same way that hardware makers release revised editions and incremental models? Would you trust a microsoft patch which upgrades the filesystem? I'm not talking about a new media player or email client but some patch to the actual OS.
;)) so at least the whole system has been tested to be compatible with itself. If everyone else has a similar attitude then I guess the best we can do is wait the 1-3 years between versions and be grateful for what we get. One thing microsoft doesn't need is more pressure to rush their software to market.
I would rather wait for a new OS version than add another card to the teetering tower (ok, XP ain't *that* unstable
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
I recently was on the hunt to purchase a laptop. I had no use for Windows as Linux suits all my needs. I went immidetly to the pro-Linux shops: HP, IBM, Dell.
I was very disapointed to find out that not ONE of the vendors would sell me a laptop without an operating system. ESPECIALLY IBM! I eventually gave up and went with my first choice which was IBM.
I guess my point is, sometimes you don't have a choice. You're stuck paying the MS tax.
Daniel
To everyone who's saying that the 45$ price is way out of touch with reality... READ CAREFULLY... The 45$ is what the WSJ is guessing that the computer manufacturers (eg: HP/Dell/Gateway) pay microsoft due to custom liscencing agreements. We may not be able to buy windows for 45$, but the computer makers wouldnt stand being charged full retail price when they use so much in terms of volume. Read carefully the article and the subtleties you will soon understand.
I have always wondered what the world would be like if a company with
...
better technical leadership had been handed the PC operating system
monopoly by IBM oh so many years ago. Perhaps it would not have been
possible for that company, whoever they might have been, to achieve the
level of domination that Microsoft achieved because such a company might
have put too many resources to the task of technical innovation and left
the business (i.e. monopolization) side of things to falter. It is quite
possible that the only company which could achieve the kind of dominance
that Microsoft has achieved would be one which, like Microsoft, cannot
innovate or excel technically, because it would take too many resources
away from the business side of things to focus on the technical.
I guess this would mean that the companies which achieve monopoly status
are by definition technically inferior? This would certainly seem to be
the case
Some people would argue that Microsoft is not a monopoly because it does
not in fact have 100% complete control over the operating system market.
But Microsoft does have a monopoly in one *very* important market -
operating systems capable of running Microsoft Windows software. You
see, I think that the fact Microsoft's operating system's are the only
ones which literally trillions of dollars worth of software can run
on means that Microsoft is by definition monopolizing an absolutely
enormous market. While it may sound flippant to say that Microsoft
has a monopoly on Microsoft operating systems, I think there is something
really important behind this. No one company should be the producers
of a commodity which so many other companies depend upon to sell their
product. It's not healthy for the market and it's certainly not to the
benefit of consumers.
Analysts estimate the Intel CPU costs more than a comparable product from rival Advanced Micro Devices.
Oh, that must have taken some real analytical skills...
The funniest thing is that they had to make an "estimate" here. lol
No.
_____ There seems no plan because it is all plan. -- C.S. Lewis
No, but Microsoft is worth 45 stories on Slashdot every month. That has to count for something.
$45 is a price the OEM manufactures pay for it. Before you start crying about how MS is ripping off people at Best Buy, let's use another product analogy. Let's go with Coke.
A typical 16 oz can of Coke costs 70 cents nowdays at a convenience store. But yet if you buy it bundled as part of some Happy Meal, it's cost comes out to about 35 cents. Think about this. Sold by itself, of course it will cost more. But sold as part of a bundle, it will cost less.
And you buy bundles ALL THE TIME. Take your car. The radio in it would cost more if you bught it solo than when bought as part of the vebicle. Don't believe me? Try building your own car, by buying each part piecemeal. Let me know what your total bill adds up to.
Ooh look an MP3 player, ooh look a computer device that can talk to the internet? Where is the techonological innovation?
Sure, $45 = 10% * $450, and 10% = $45/$450, but that's circular thinking. You have to explain where either the $45 or the 10% comes.
Windows may not be worth $45, but Linux is certainly not even worth $0.00.
Linux is worth $0? Tell that to Linus, a millionaire. Anyway, I think GNU/Linux (damn you RMS!) and its associated software is well worth a price similar to what Microsoft charges for Windows. In fact when Mandrake 10.0 comes out I plan on purchasing it, after being a freeloader for the last six years. Right now I can justify being a freeloader because I am broke, but I am about to get a promotion and finish my truck loan, so I cannot justify freeloading with an extra $550 a month ;-)
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
People are paying for a product that just works out of the box. They're not paying for innovation. Most people don't give two shits about innovation, and change is scary. Is Windows worth $45 to me? Nope. Is Windows worth $45 to someone who is buying their first computer, or in an office which requires it run? Yep.
Those bastards should be paying ME for unsing it !
If you consider ridiculously draconian DRM schemes and amusing little JVM ripoffs (cough*cough*.NET*cough*cough*) and the intentional freezing out of competitors innovating, then yeah, they're really innovative.
Through the funding of the SCO lawsuit and the suspicious Win2000 SP1 source leak (which some MS flunky may still try to get into the Linux kernel), I'd also say that MS is getting pretty innovative when it comes to unethically cutting off it's competitors at the knees.
I know lots of people who hate their Windows machines, but are probably never going to switch to anything else. I know one guy who looks longingly at my mac all the time. Whenever we discuss it he says, basically, "I'd love a mac, but I just can't afford to buy new versions of all my software, I can't afford the time to transfer all my files, and I can't spend the time tweaking the system to get it working right."
He can't justify losing the investment in Windows. And frankly, Macs aren't exactly cheap, and Windows mostly meets his needs.
Same thing with Linux. Everytime Microsoft "improves" their license structure or otherwise finds a new way to extract cash from people, IT folks everywhere start whining. Web sites and magazine letters are full of people saying "this is it, I'm switching to Linux". But of course, most of them don't. They can't just rip out and re-implement all those poorly documented servers, retrain employees, or spend time trying to see if ooo can open all their existing files. For now, Windows works, so stick with it.
You get the picture.
Microsoft has a huge lock-in advantage. Sometimes this is mentioned in interviews and the microsoft official laughs it off and claims they are fighting for every sale. Yeah RIGHT. I see differently around me.
Windows is "good" enough. It's priced just low enough. They aren't stupid over there in Redmond.
The moral of the story? If you're just starting a business, don't get locked into proprietary solutions. Even if you are using Windows, always think about your "escape plan". Vote with your wallets.
Not much you can do about it really. I can't think of many other products that are like this. You don't have your life's work locked up in your refrigerator or stereo the way you do your computer.
$45? Yeah ... It's worth that much to me. Easily. It lets me run the apps I need. $45 isn't really all that much. Heck, that's like one semi-nice dinner without wine.
Look at Norton, Symantec, or other PC Utility / etc software companies. Alot of them charge between $40 and $60 for their software from the retail floor or their website.... not to mention the price of games and productivity software.
... I'd be busy doing so and not posting here about it :)
Paying $45 for the center piece of software that 'powers' all of that seems reasonable.
Do I want the option of what software comes pre-installed on my pc ? Most definately yes.
If I wanted a Windows based box, would I find $45 to be unreasonable when compared to the other utilities that any normal Windows user would go out and purcahse ? Most definately not.
If I don't receive Windows on my box and I'm still effectively paying for it, would I be ranting and raving ?
First off you don't get Windows for $45 or even $450. You just get a license to use it with all of Microsoft restrictions and invasions of privacy
and then they should charge $1 for every patch released.....
That is if you haven't activated it yet.
I have purchased three PCs in the last four years with Linux preinstalled (one a laptop). I have purchased PCs with FreeBSD preinstalled. Don't tell me you can't find these on the web, numerous vendors are in this market.
only with a $100 cash rebate
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
I think it's interesting that the Wall Street Urinal is questioning Microsoft's pricing, since they are generally philosophically aligned with the Capitalism Can Do No Wrong school that excuses most of Microsoft's excesses.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
. The 45$ is what the WSJ is guessing that the computer manufacturers (eg: HP/Dell/Gateway) pay microsoft due to custom liscencing agreements.
Get a clue. $30 to $60.. it's the same damn ballpark.
I purposefully run 98 and seem to have avoided being touched by any of the worms and viruses that have ravaged people I know using XP. Though many would disagree and say that XP is a real innovation, I am happy with the 'inferior' OS. Furthermore, were one to get a discount on the box at time of purchase, from your average vendor, I think millions would select a cheaper OS, all other things being equal.
it's all about the partners. Without Microsoft no hardware would have ever advanced. Mono is a gift. Nothing less than an object. exit
This is the most on-target article on the subject I've seen in a long time. The only thing he didn't emphasize enough is that there is a deference between software research and hardware research. The sort of research that Intel does CAN'T be done by small companies or people working at home (for the most part). Intel, IBM, AMD and a very few other companies have the capital to do these kind of hardware innovations, and they may be helped a bit by government funded universities etc.
Software research can be done at all levels, by individuals, small companies, groups of individual working together. There is, and always will be Open Source software. I can't forsee there ever being an "Open" architecture CPU, that could be manufactured on a small scale (it would be a great thing if there was though!).
Microsoft's day are numbered unless they find a new business model. I don't hate them, love them, or feel sorry for them, thats just the way it is. A free economy will eventually favor value. It moves at a snails pace sometimes, particularly when impeded by monopoly practices and governmental indifference. But one way or another things will change, and anyone or anything who blocks that change will find themselves bypassed or submerged.
The article "does the math" that I'm sure even Bill Gates is capable of following. I just don't' think Microsoft has figured out how to respond yet. The stock market will punish them until they offer a response, and this article wouldn't be appearing in the WSJ if that were not the case.
I saw this topic and started to drool.
This is like shooting ducks in a barrel for the slashdot community.
*DrugCheese rants*
I don't know about anyone else, but when amortized over the three to five year lifespan of the average Wintel PC, I think Freecell alone is worth that $45. I can't think of any other piece of software that's given me so much enjoyment for between $9 and $15 dollars per year.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
They Steal. Examples: Norton Desktop /OS2 desktop
Norton Speeddisk
WinZip
I.E.
Windows Media Player
The only thing they've come up originally is the Blue Screen of Death.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
Innovation isn't required for a purchase. If I choose to buy a piece of coal, I can give the guy money and get the piece of coal.
There is no requirement that Microsoft be innovative for them to charge the $45 OEM price. All they need to do is provide a good or service, and they do.
Is that the preferred we-do-what-MS-says OEM price? When I worked for an OEM, we paid $169 for an OEM copy of Windows, and we were required to buy them in 10-packs.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Microsoft may not have originally developed many features of computing that we take for granted today, but it is responsible for bringing them to the masses and making them popular. Even today, most GUI elements in Linux are based on what we are familiar with in Windows (yes, I know, M$ did not create those, but we wouldn't be using them today if not for M$).
I hate the fact that everything from M$ is ridiculously overpriced, but I appreciate the fact that even the most non-geeky person on earth is comfortable using a computer today thanks to the marketing and comparitive ease of use of Microsoft and Windows. (I know, Apple has a great OS, but I'd have to be Bill Gates to afford one - I'd never use anything but Linux for my servers, but if I had to give a computer to my grandmother, guess which OS I'd use).
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
This is capitalism, it's about "what the market will bear"... Is a baseball card worth $10,000? To some people, sometimes. The problem isn't innovation and judging value based on that, it's about lack of competition, lack of standards that *everyone* agrees to follow. There's a TON of reasons for saying Windows isn't worth what Microsoft changes for it, but innovation has the least to do with it.
True, I don't think it's worth it's retail costs... but how did this situation get this way? Because OEM's refuse to offer all their configurations with options for alternatives. By doing this consistently, they ensure generations of users are familiar with only one desktop solution, and then only that one is in demand.
Now I know some do or have, but you can't tell me there's a true choice -- I can't go to Dell.com and get what I want with Linux... heck, I can't get hardly anything with Linux.
Windows isn't overpriced just because MS is greedy. It's also overpriced because the OEM's have painted themselves in a corner.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
yo, fanboi. getting an award from Time don't mean shit.
Microsoft's OS design gives us only the menu-centric launching interface starting with Windows 95. It did one thing that the Mac OS hadn't (and still doesn't, being icon-centric in navigation of apps)--allow a quick way to launch an application.
Slowly, Microsoft added OS features that allowed plug-and-play hardware detection, and peer-to-peer networking. That's about all I can think of from the OS level. Again, nothing fancy--the Macintosh hardware was doing this since 1986 with the Mac Plus.
The Office suite was a nice integration of packages, however I don't know if that qualifies as innovation per se.
Has Microsoft matched its software pace to the rest of the computer industry pace? No.
SECURITY: While all other operating systems and hardware have presented and adapted new techniques to keep bad guys out with greater ease and reliability, Microsoft has merely patched and patched, foregoing any true complete redesign of any of their products for tighter security. A quick way to fix this would be to drop the W32 architecture as their primary architecture, pick up a Linux distro (they're free!), then have a new OS that runs UNIX apps, has UNIX-style security, yet can still run W32 apps. Remember that MS bought the Virtual PC emulation software, which is a much better WINE than WINE? (Mac users can testify to this). Running the flawed Windows in a virtual machine can isolate any malware inside the environment in the same way that Mac users run Windows in their version of VPC. That way any infections stay there, unable to affect the UNIX OS that runs the virtual machine.
PHILOSOPHY: Microsoft has never learned the KISS principle. Their software is too bloated with features that the designers thought people wanted without keeping focused on what was only needed. This bloat extends into the OS and its millions of code and all apps. Also, Microsoft is a "Not Invented Here" company that stifles competition (read: inspiration) that encourages new ideas and products. MS would have never dreamt of the hyperlinking browser--and they might have bought it up before CERN could get the idea out and buried it in a file cabinet if they thought about it.
I can go on and on, but I bet that others have a few more ideas that support what little I've said.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Microsoft provides updates, that's gotta be worth something.
Well they must be innovating at an incredible rate! Look at how fast the size of their software grows.
Every extra Gigabyte consumed on disk and megabyte allocated in memory holds useful new stuff as the OSs grow from release to release, right?
> Then think of XP versus 2000 or 98. Not that much of a difference.
If you don't think the WinNT and Win9x family of OSs are Very different, you aren't well informed about them AT ALL. They are as different as Mac OS 9 and X.
Is there a new troll.slashdot.org category? If so, this story needs to reside there.
Lets look at this objectively:
Oracle Enterprise Edition processor cost (from price sheet): $40,000
Cost of PowerDVD Deluxe: $70
One month of Cable TV programming + Cable Modem: ~$110.
A fricken diamond ring for your wife before you marry her: $5000 or more!
This is not a constructive post, and it sounds a lot like whining.
Why is innovation necessarily what we are being charged for? Lots of commoditized products have been essentially the same since the beginning of time, so should they be free?
Which is somewhat ironic when you consider it's just Yet Another MP3 Player App bundled/tied to an online store and a portable MP3 player - none of which were particularly "new technology" at the time.
And look at OS X... think of how fundamentally different it is than OS 9. Then think of XP versus 2000 or 98. Not that much of a difference.
Windows 2000 and XP (which are roughly analagous to OS X 10.2 and 10.3) are just as fundamentally different to Windows 95, 98 and Me as MacOS Classic and OS X are to each other.
Frankly, you can't consider the customer (the OEM) to be the consumer (that's me) of the OS on the sold PC. They have one use for it: it sells the PC. Not to everybody, but certainly to the great majority. Most folks won't buy a PC without an OS, and aren't willing to take the effort to install one themselves.
I'd say that $45 is probably worth having the windows logo on my machine.
And when people pay $20 more for "Plus" or $79 for XP Pro, I'm betting a fair piece of that is profit for Dell/HP/Gateway/IBM.
So what does that $45 buy the consumer?
* A well-known brand name
* A pledge of trustworthyness and reliability.
* A long cycle of pretty much free updates: service packs and patches don't cost you a penny, if you've got broadband already
* Compatibility with just about every device you can buy, and a bunch you can't anymore
* Compatibility with lots and lots of software
Yup, it's worth the $45 to me.
Design for Use, not Construction!
is in practice, simply coming up with new and distracting ways to utilize the word "innovate".
MS products? the only innovation going on there is new innovative ways to use MS products to send spam, propogate worms and viruses and lower the bottom line of every company using it through the costs associated with stopping all that damn "innovation".
Windows if free, would still be overpriced
The article states that M$ does not innovate enough to justify the cost. I read that as a call to the community to do some real innovating when it's our turn. So far we've done precious little than copy someone who's not innovating.
Windows XP not much different from Windows 98? I couldn't disagree more. That's like saying a car from the 70's isn't much different that one you buy today because both have a steering wheel and a rear view mirror.
Say what you will about Microsoft's business practices or even where it gets its "innovative" ideas, but WinXP is an excellent OS.
It is easy to use, stable (I pound my work and home PCs and both are rock solid), and it works great on a laptop. WinXP uses the NT kernel which even Linus Torvalds has complemented. Win98 crashed quite often, freaked out if any component quit working (such as a modem or sound card), and for its core was stuck on DOS.
WinXP vs. Win98? No comparison.
shut up
"It's easy when you collect nearly 10% of the cost of every PC that's shipped, while having no manufacturing costs of your own."
this guy is a total asshat. how can he say that windows has no manufacturing costs? 3-4 weeks ago on slashdot after the windows source code leak, folks were saying "holy shit guys - look at the 4.5 million lines of code that becomes windows! what a crappy, bloated OS!". now this dumbass claims that it costs nothing to manufacture. how many man-hours did it take to write windows 2000? windows xp? the media it is shipped on costs very little, but one-time cost of writing is also counted in the total-cost. so unless it was written by non-paid interns (which we know is not the case), this guy is grossly underestimating the profit.
i bet he's just another disgruntled mac user...
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
I'm so glad I don't have to use win98 anymore.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
And look at OS X... think of how fundamentally different it is than OS 9. Then think of XP versus 2000 or 98. Not that much of a difference.
Mac OS X is based heavily on NeXTStep. Really, it isn't *that* much more innovative than NeXTStep. Considering how long ago the NeXT was introduced, shouldn't we have much better operating systems?
Personally, I think the NeXT is proof that Microsoft has set us back at least a decade. Although there are differences in application, and the underlying hardware has improved immensely, both Apple and Microsoft are only now approaching the abilities of the old NeXTs.
Oh, well. I guess youth and exuberant ignorance will re-write history; OS X is "groundbreaking," and Microsoft paved the way for commodity computing. (Never mind the revolution was already well underway.)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Apple didn't innovate iTunes. They bought the SoundJam MP software from Cassidy&Greene and dumbed it down quite a bit. perhaps they've innovated from version 1.0 to 4.x, but the first release was hardly innovative or a new technology...
or are we talking about the iTunes Music Store? I seem to remeber a company called GoodNoise (aka eMusic.com) doing the same thing in 1999. they didnt have the slick interface, or the major label support, (or the DRM) but they were selling digital music...
(note i use and enjoy using the iTunes app and Music Store. but they're hardly innovative. just new versions of old products...)
and there may not be as big a difference between win2000 and win98 as between Mac OS X and OS 9, but it's a lot bigger than the difference between 98 and 95 (or Mac OS 9 and OS 8 for that matter...)
(also note i use Mac OS X and windows 2000 regularly as time goes on i have less and less preference for one over the other)
The only Windows that gives you a half-way unrestricted license for single use is a box set. Worth $45 bucks for a box set even if the "box" is a cd with .pdf manuals? Sure. Then I can afford vmware to run it on linux.
And speaking of piracy, the most clueless Windows cheerleader I know has probably never purchased a copy and is still on ME. It'll be interesting to see if he's still feeling the value when he finally gets to experience activation.
does it matter? i'll just roll my own windows...
How's this for a kicker: the sysadmin at my current gig purchased about 10 PCs with Win XP Home Edition preloaded, and now we need to pay $179 EACH just to upgrade them from XP Home to XP Pro. (The 60+ systems were all in "Workgroup" mode, moving them to Active Directory so I can have security on the file shares. XP Home won't join a domain.)
Yes, I know there are some hacks to make XP Home join authenticate to a DC, but they're just that, hacks (and work about as well.)
After using OS X?
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Indeed. When I buy an operating system, its value is determined by how useful it is - not how innovative it is.
I recently bought a chair for about $45 which is not innovative in the least. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy with it.
Yes, to me, it is worth it.
/home folder on that device, and check for its presence at boot, never worked. I never did get that working -- and that's not even kernel hacking.
I'll admit that I'm a bit biased and didn't pay $45, or even $75 or $275 for my licenses of Windows -- I got them through Microsoft for Partners professional discounts, which gets me them for approximately $30/license (Professional) but there's so much more stuff in there that it's closer to about $6/license.
I'm not a new computer user. I've been using PCs, and the Windows architecture, for 14 years now -- since right around 1990, and Windows 3.1. I still, at this point, find Linux too difficult for me.
Case study:
Booting a *LIVE CD* distribution of Linux, it was impossible for me to make it detect my USB Mass Storage device. Then the autoconf script to place a
Then, fed up, I went on AIM (gAIM) to ask a friend who'd had similar experience. When signing back on with a Windows client later in the day -- my buddy lists were completely rearranged, groups were created with copies of people, and a handful of names were missing, for no apparent reason whatsoever. gAIM messed it up.
I'd love to use Linux, but I'm afraid to honestly, becuase of the fact that I don't know a thing about how to use it, and it doesn't seem to want to be used itself. I'll just stick to administrating Windows networks. Anything I've wanted to do so far, I've been able to do under Windows. That includes running Unix-only scientific tools - thank god for Cygwin.
>RAM memory is $54
RAM memory? That'd be Random Access Memory memory then, right? Just like my PIN number (Personal Identification Number number)...
At least the war on the environment is going well
buy a MAC?
How would one go about buying a new MAC address?
Come to think of it, I could use one.
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
The only window I know that is worth $45 is the one used to keep the snow out of my house during the winter. But seeing how I live in Florida, a $10 screen in the summer and a $5 sheet of plastic in the winter seem a better way to go.
Finally, it's been written in language the suits and bean counters can understand. They may not understand the details of how everything works, but they can count costs.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I would rather pay to purchase a copy of a linux distro and support an open source cooperative than pay to purchase a liscence for a microsoft product and put another gold toilet in the Gates' House.
If more people felt the same way then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have to put up with another IE popup asking us if we want to enhance some random body part......
That really is my homepage, no kidding.
1. I build my own stuff from scratch.
2. I do not use MS products. Period.
3. I use and sell Linux. More bang for your buck.
Windows, out of the box, does nothing but get you online so you can get infected and download warez and pr0n. Oh yeah, and mp3z...
No word processor, no spreadsheet, no much of anything.
Linux comes with too many things to list.
Yeah, Linux has it's shortcomings but it's benefits FAR outweigh it's shortcomings.
I just can not justify paying for trouble.
I had a guy today ask me to sell him a system and install a pirated copy of windows on it.
I told him I don't do that, I don't have any copies of windows, and I wouldn't do that to someone that I like anyway.. I offered him Linux instead. He declined, I lost the sale. Life's tough..
Actually, if windows xp home was available for a mere $45, it'd be a steal. the $45, i guess, represents what the OEM pays for it, not the price that consumers pay for a boxed copy. nonetheless, even $100 ain't bad. let's review;
red hat enterprise liunx workstation starts @ $179.00.
mac os x is $129.00.
i know there are free (beer) variations of linux and bsd, but you don't get much support. i know everyone rags on MS for the extent of their support, but let's face it, they do still support their software. MS just recently ended support for windows 98. windows 98, people. six years of downloadable updates.
when you grab the cheapie pc @ best buy for $400 that comes pre-loaded w/ win xp home, i don't care if emachines is paying $4, $40, or $400 to microsoft. i know i'm getting a pc w/ a legal os, and i'll get support for several years.
is MS evil?
sure.
is $45 too much to pay for an OS?
no way.
"What does the world get for the 10% Microsoft tax on every PC?"
K. who buys a new computer for $450?!?!! Also -- generally, you can choose to purchase a computer from one of the larger companies with no operating system installed (this is SORT OF a server option... but not really). point is: it is a convinience, and a tool which ENABLES a user to use thier computer with the interface and conventions that they have been using for years.
You could always buy a lindows pc...
$45 bucks is nothing. I get a PC with an OS installed, as well as a bunch of mediocre software. My time, which is billed out at an hourly rate is not wasted on a basic install. (Yeah. I may format it a week later anyway - but still - its a convinience.)
If you build your own system you're super screwed...
Windows 2000 professional is $249.99
This is more than an AMD 2100, decent motherboard, and a Geforce 4 4200Ti combined...
They have finely honed the science of getting the most for the least. You can't fault them for not being innovative. They have, perhaps, the most effective marketing operation in the world and are a paragon of capitalistic vice.
Problem is they hired chimps to do the programming.
More like $200. Go ahead and try to Shop for Windows XP Pro. Maybe you can haggle with the vendor.
What exactly is that $200 going towards? USB2 functionality, perhaps? Coffer padding? Monopolies are fun.
Stashed in Bill's desk-drawer there's plans for a sky-scraper money-vault. You know, he could swim in gold-coins Scrooge McDuck-style.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Is Slashdot worth $45... ;)
--red0x
I remember a couple of years ago, in my country (Argentina), before the devaluation, you could get a PC with printer, scanner and all for like $600. Of course, i'm talking of all-onboard celeron/duron k-mart computers but anyway, thats what most people buy.
Now, after devaluation all PCs cost like $400, and only include monitor and a copy of fucking Corel Linux or Conectiva, both almost obsolete distros. "BUT THEY ARE IN SPANISH".
That's because they try to cut down the price in any way, even if that involves using less screws for the covers.
Now lots of people go around asking "Why cant I install Word on my machine?" and you have to explain to them that office doesnt run on Linux (FUCK OFF WINERS, I CAN'T TEACH A FUCKING NEWBIE HOW TO RUN OFFICE ON WINE).
IBM, too, is famous for its research, and it has five Nobel Prizes to show for its work.
:-)
Just wait until the government in Sweden gets a nice deal on Windows and Bill Gates will have his Nobel Price too!
(If you don't believe, compare it with the deal the government in the UK got and that he immediatly after it got knighted
bash$
Where can you find it for $45. Every place I see it for sale, an UPGRADE is in the $80s to $90s for the home version. More for the Pro version. WTF
RTFA.
Innovate? Innovate? Waay too myoptic there buddy. Windows may innovate as much as go-faster stripes, but the fact is it sells computers. Yes, absolutely, MS bullies it's way into the showroom in a lot of ways, but the base benefit remains. That's why it's sold with PCs. Because it sells PCs.
I'm not saying that's wonderful, I'm not saying I don't want that to change, I'm just saying there's a straw man running around at the Wall Street Journal.
I would pay that and maybe double for professional. Beyond that I am sticking with Linux.
Yes, $45/PC seems high, and is high considering what we currently get with a Windows OS. But I have to wonder what the period is that we should be looking at for recouping that tax. Basic R&D is notorious for taking years, even decades to pay off, and it sounds like that's what all of Microsoft's R&D funding is going towards. At the very least, I'm sure that Bill Gates is expecting it will take 5-10 years before his research department really gels. You can't just hire a bunch of smart people and give them money and put them in a room and expect nobel prizes to flow from it.
As much as Microsoft pisses me off (our network is MS), I wonder if we'll be thanking them in a decade or two for the long term investment in computing.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Some guy will spend your $45 on a windows license, throw the disk in the trash, and go to Taco Bell
and get real fat on the extra $15 and extra 15 minutes he has cause he doesn't have to install an OS.
seriously. Considering that AOL is partnered with iTunes, it's almost as meaningful as a "father of the year" coffee mug.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm wondering personally, what is the cost an OEM customer (Dell/Gateway/etc.) actually pays for Windows XP Home?
I've asked Dell before what discount they could give me if I wanted a Laptop with no OS installed, and the answer was "none." When I tried to get them to elaborate on it, I wasn't really met with a positive response in any way.
It seems almost as if users really don't "pay for" Windows XP Home, which is $99 retail, but rather they are rewarded with a free copy (or at least super cheap copies) simply because they are helping maintain the MS Monopoly.
This is where the vast majority of Windows based PCs come from: large OEMs.
Personally, I believe a more fair price would be $50 for home and $100 for pro. MS may even get more people to upgrade from 2000 or 98/ME with those prices.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
"It's easy when you collect nearly 10% of the cost of every PC that's shipped, while having no manufacturing costs of your own."
I have to think that MS has _some_ cost associated with producing Windows that could be considered manufacturing costs.
The article's author implies that MS has no cost associated with producing Windows and that seems to be misleading.
I am suggesting that the author's implication that MS does not spend $$ to make $$ is misleading. I am not suggesting that anybody else is or is not being misleading.
MS does spend money on creating Windows. It does not spend as much money to create Windows as receives after creating Windows. I know there's a word for that process. Some elusive word. Oh, what could it be?
It seems that MS has not only figured out how to collect underpants but also what to do with them to get to profit.
...It's easy when you collect nearly 10% of the cost of every PC that's shipped, while having no manufacturing costs of your own. ...
:)
Why do people always assume that the Manufacturing cost has anything to do with software ? Alot of times, software companies make the grunt of their money doing R&D work for other companies. A prime example is the video casino market where a particular client may want a particular style or a new idea and want to see how it pans out... but don't have the resources to test the ideas...
Microsoft has alot of money spent in R&D. If it's well spent or not is up to you, but I imagine all of those offices filled with coders don't come for free... lest I can have one, too
98 to 2000 was just as much a jump as 9 to X. Maybe not in eye candy (though XP has that), but it went from DOS to NT.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Don't think about the cost of the Microsoft OS - think about how it drives hardware obsolescence - the average user only buys a new machine because they need a new version of Microsoft Office, which needs a new version of the latest Microsoft OS, which needs a faster CPU, and more memory. (Or, more recently, getting the latest Microsoft OS because they can't keep up with the patches).
This drives computer sales - versus what would happen with Linux - users would still buy better peripherals, but Intel wouldn't be where it is now - because the peripherals would use embedded processors, and Intel doesn't rule there. Memory wouldn't sell as much, because without OS bloat, we wouldn't need as much memory. So in summary, I'd say that Microsoft does serve a purpose - marketing of new computers.
is called Apple Computer Inc.
Okay, they're not a branch. But what "innovation" in a Microsoft OS hasn't come from either Xerox PARC or Apple first? Microsoft doesn't need their own version of Bell Labs. They just steal from everyone else.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
and why would you even bother using windows? apple.com - 'nuf said.
Are you serious? Or is it the fact that most things are backwards compatible that leads you to say there was no innovation?
Comparing 98 vs 2k/XP is insanity - they are nothing alike except for the appearance of the start menu, desktop settings, and compatibility - which you can't dream of for .
XP has updated VPN abilities/retooled, a similar looking yet configurably different user interface compared to 2K, updated MANY components of the O/S and utilities. The core is same/similar (i.e. stable) but they are not identical. If they were incredibly different and incompatible, nobody would use it (I'm forced to use XP at work, but choose to use 2K at home for gaming/web and linux for server stuff).
MS mice/kb's are the best/most robust - miles above the craptacular Logitech hardware and drivers (worst.shit.ever).
Show me what Linux/Mac has that is comparable to COM/COM+ - CORBA does not come near it. I whole heartedly agree that .NET wasn't very innovative compared to the birth of Java, but damn - develop in the language of your choice (delphi, vb, C++, C#) - whatever you are comfortable with rather than 1 broken language (Java) and your stuff can use older COM objects too, without having to re-write.
Mandrake 10.0 is now out - join the Mandrake club and download it, because that way, Mdk get all the money which they would otherwise have to spend on postage,packaging and manuals.
As harddrive manufacturers add to the storage capacity of the drives MS innovates in occupying more of that space. :-)
I have just come from a week of meetings with a major european aerospace manufacturer. They use Windows XP in their control systems and they told me, guess what? You have to reboot XP at least once a week, just to get rid of memory leaks.
I've been hearing this "rock solid" argument since I went to the International Telemetering Conference in San Diego, in October 1998, and it has always been the same thing. You still have to reboot Windows regularly. With Linux one reboots either in a previously programmed schedule, to update the kernel, or when the external power supply fails.
Given the current exchange rates between US & NZ, you would think that it would be $90 - $100 NZ, it is actually more like $200 (retail). So as the subject line says, count yourselves lucky over there.
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
The article calls microsoft's profits from each sale a 'tax'. What a load of bs. How dare a company make money!
I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, you're right, it's completely wrong, the material is copyright of WSJ and they've got a right to do what they wish with it.
On the other hand, it's pasted here for people to discuss it. The discussion won't make sense without being able to see it (cue 10 comments about /.ers never reading the article anyway...). It won't take away from their business model as nobody looking for WSJ articles will trawl through /. for them, there are just too few of them here.
I know that doesn't negate the fact that it is a plain and simple case of copyright infringement. But practically speaking I don't think it does any real harm...
How much is it worth to you?
Buy it or don't.
> That has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
I see where you're going with this, but I don't know if its that clear cut. For instance, three weeks ago I was talking to one of our NOC guys at school and essentially they're going to phase out Novell because MS is giving them so much free software (upgrades to XP and server2003) they can finally shift to AD and drop Novell.
Now how is MS able to pay for this generosity?
1. They abused their monopoly and are arguably paying for this kind of thing with their ill gotten gains.
2. They're just a good company. *snicker*
I'm leaning towards 1. Novell has money and doesn't want to lose customers either, but they can't afford to supply an entire 20,000 person campus for 2 or 3 grand.
If you think XP is just a rehash of 98 then you know very little.
As for inovation there is tons of new things, most of it at the kernal level, but lots of new stuff. Find me a SINGLE *nix resource that can even come CLOSE to matching the depth of the MSDN library.
Yeah.
Ok, go ahead mod me as a troll. :)
XP is fundamentally different from 98. 2000 and XP could be argued as very similar.
Personally, I think that MS tax was pretty cheap compared to what I got.
I haven't upgraded this machine since 2001, and have gotten OS updates and features, and not paid another cent. Some new versions: DirectX, MovieMaker, WPA Auth. (There are probably more I can't think of.)
However, if it was OS X, in the same period of time I'd have had to pay $129 twice (about once per year) to get similar updates.
Now, it does steam me that for a linux laptop I couldn't avoid paying the tax. But for the gaming machine that $45 was well spent, and I probably won't have to buy a new OS for another two years.
Its really the damnedest thing, runs great, soon as he steps within ten feet of it, it goes stupid.
Maybe it doesn't like the magnet in his pocket.
Seriously though, I've seen quite a few kernel panics, on the machine I'm using at this moment. Every last one of them was a direct or indirect result of bad RAM. I'll take this opportunity to point out a wonderful tool called Memtest86. It diagnosed the problem in minutes.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
What about the last two versions of OS X? They weren't exactly cheap. Plus the hardware premium.
_nfotxn
The question I think should be asked isn't whether it's worth it, but rather, "How many times do I have to pay for windows?".
Several people purchase computers to replace the computer they already have. The old computer gets junked. Lets forget about the possibility of people switching from windows to linux. Lets just ask an even more clear issue. Why can't the user use his old copy of windows on the new dell? Can't resellers ask for proof of previous windows version to not get billed for the software?
A little while ago I spent roughly this amount on a game called Uru. (For those living in caves, it's the latest in the Myst series.) I seem to remember paying quite a bit more for Windows, but maybe the price has come down since then. No matter.
When I'm playing Uru, I wander through a variety of odd (but usually very pretty) environments, often sitting for hours on end contemplating alien mechanisms that I don't understand. Sometimes I click on a control or two (or ten), and sometimes things start working as a result. Other times I wander for days, trying every knob and button I can find, peering suspicously behind doors, retracing paths I've been down dozens of times, and in the end I still haven't figured out how to make some odd machine power up or work properly.
Which pretty closely parallels many of my experiences trying to get Windows to do things.
So...ummm...I guess by analogy, if Uru is worth the money, then surely Windows must also be worth it. ;-)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
I think $45 is a fine price to pay for Windows. Now, the problem is that it's not the retail price. Retail Windows is like $250.
Considering it's a fine platform for media and games that just works $45 is a fine price to pay. Jesus, you pay more than that just for a single game. What about an entire underlying OS.
But that's like the minimum price you're going to see someone pay for Windows. The average, I assume, is much higher.
This is for all the years that PC owners pulled out hundreds of dollars for OS upgrades that were little but fluff on a flawed, goofy design to begin with(Win3.x,Win32S, NT anyone?), and for the years that "soon now" MS would take them to the NT promised land (what, it took 10 years?), for the "IT" PHBs that decided conclusively that no other OS/PC combination was important or appropriate for the office desk, and for those home and business users who could afford a PC that cost THOUSANDS (sometimes TENS of THOUSANDS; remember the 90's?) of dollars, but could not figure out how to turn it on or off properly. No, you should continue to pay, and quitcheryerbitchin because you got what you payed for; I aint listening.
It doesn't cost the same without an OS. The price list below should show you why I bought mine with no OS and installed Mandrake 9.2:
- Windows 2000 Server with 5 Client Licenses [add $799 or $21/month1]
- Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition 32-bit Factory Install [add $799 or $21/month1]
- Linux 9 Professional [add $169 or $4/month1]
- No Operating System, Microsoft
- No Operating System, Red Hat Linux Configuration
- Windows 2003 Small Business Server, Standard Edition [add $499 or $13/month1] Dell Recommended
- $100 OFF! Windows 2003 Small Business Server, Standard Edition [add $399 or $10/month1]
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v.3, 1 Year Red Hat Network Subscription [add $349 or $9/month1]
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v.3, 3 Year Red Hat Network Subscription [add $799 or $21/month1]
And in the case of an operating system, the context is tool. For instance, my job is not installing and configuring the latest OS. My job is, however, writing memos and TPS reports. Now, forty years ago, memos were typed on an IBM Selectric 2. Nobody had one at home - they were prohibitively expensive. And no one expected the TPS report to be completed outside business hours. Then, twenty years ago, DOS and WordStar replaced the Selectric. But since then, the memo-generating tools and TPS report tools haven't really changed. They certainly haven't even gotten any faster, as my brain and hands tend to be the limiting factor.
The innovation in hardware, however, has changed the tool context. Now my boss wants the TPS report on his desk in Tokyo on Sunday. So I complete it on a PDA connected through the Dupont Circle Starbucks wi-fi. Very little software innovation - it's still Word and TCP/IP. The change in context is hardware (and firmware). Hardware innovation has made the specialized tool an ubiquitous tool.
Where can a software company add value in the 'ubiquitous tool' context now? Security. Microsoft recognizes this; they are rushing to try to show value in that context. They have failed so far, some would say miserably. It remains to be seen whether they will succeed.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Can't understand how anyone can pay those licensing fees even for something as good as QT apparently is - it is really sad though, since QT Designer et al seems good and competent enough to be a Visual Studio killer (for some purposes at least), but with that pricing, people will go with VS instead.
:)
Of course, it is great with the free edition thingys, but they are not allowing you to do anything for Windows unless you pay tons more than you would need to pay MS - a very strange practice.
I would like to be able to develop tools under Linux that my co-workers could then use on Windows - I can't, unless I shell out tons of money (more than the win, anyways I don't have that kind of budget).
I would like to be able to develop cool and free stuff, and if I for one reason or the other decide I would like to make something commercial too (you know, to eat?) I would like to be able to purchase a license and re-release my stuff. I can't.
I would like to use QT, since Trolltech are generally the good guys (esp. comparing...), since I really like their tools and interface, and since I know I would have a chance to create great products (falut would not be with lib at least).
I can't. Not under those conditions.
I will still do work with QT for Linux, but some apps will not be made, I will not pay those hilarious sums. Actually, a free version for Windows with the same GPL/QPL tterms would be enough for the most part, but how am I supposed to be able to use QT when I can't target the platform coworkers/customers use? It's so very stupid and counterproductive.
Rant mode off.
Why does the cantor diagonalization argument fail when proving that all rationals are uncountable? I know this has nothing to do with windows but I would like to know. Thanks
I agree what what you say! And Microsoft by far as to support the largest combination of drivers and hardware... so of course they have the most problems.
I think everyone wants but does not realize that modern OS is not 'hardware proof'. They don't test drivers and hardware, they just assume they work... and fail badly when they don't. FreeBSD 4.9, Redhat Linux 9, Windows XP -- all the same. In some respects, Windows XP is actually doing more to adress the problem - the crash reporting component helps Microsoft narrow down which 'real world combinations' are problem. I wish they were more in sharing the results... but that is more a 'corporate America' problem than anything...
Microsoft has achieved would be one which, like Microsoft, cannot
innovate or excel technically, because it would take too many resources
away from the business side of things to focus on the technical.
Isn't it funny how much, MUCH smaller shops. operating on much, MUCH thinner budgets, manage to do that very thing (innovate)?
I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, you're right, it's completely wrong, the material is copyright of WSJ and they've got a right to do what they wish with it.
/.ers never reading the article anyway...). It won't take away from their business model as nobody looking for WSJ articles will trawl through /. for them, there are just too few of them here.
On the other hand, it's pasted here for people to discuss it. The discussion won't make sense without being able to see it (cue 10 comments about
I know that doesn't negate the fact that it is a plain and simple case of copyright infringement. But practically speaking I don't think it does any real harm...
I agree that it does little harm, and I have mixed feelings too. But I think that there was no benefit to posting the content -- in the case of a slashdotting, it makes sense since the original content is not available in a timely manner. In this case, the content is available.
However, in this case, the content was pasted to slashdot to preempt unavailability 7 days from now. It undermines the desire to read WSJ online, as referenced from slashdot - interferring with two revenue models for them:
1. banner ads, and
2. over 7-day access.
As an open forum, I don't think it would be good, much less practical, to prevent people from posting contents. But certainly I think that there are situations, such as this, where it should be discouraged.
The 10% figure applies exclusively to the cheapest of PCs. For a high end PC (around $4500), it would be a mere 1%. With volume licensing factored in, the percentage might be even less.
Thus MS is not collecting "10% for every PC".
I should to be PAID to use Windows.
-------
FM Clan
...i should get a choice whether i want to pay it or not. forcing it upon me will only make me seek alternative methods of operating my system. I also don't see them giving a rebate when my operating system crashes. I guarantee you if my car had a defect that caused a malfunction in the operation of the car, the manufacturer would be held responsible for shotty craftsmanship.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Windows isn't even worth 45 cents!
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I am on smaller OEM and typicaly buy XP home OEM for $50-54 and XP Pro for $65 or so. I purchase 10 packs to get a price like this and go through 2 or 3 packs of home a month and a pack of Pro every six weeks or so. Dell buys direst from M$ while I go through a middle-man. I am pretty sure that since the big OEMs are buying 10000 the volume I do they get a better price.
Though they usually do opt for Windows as well. I looked at percentage of PC sales a while back and was confused. The numbers from all the big (and a couple not so big) manufacturers added up to around 50%. WTF? Was the data screwed up? No, turns out that still about 50% of sales are at local stores, or chains that do custom builds like CompUSA. The big OEMs have made huge inroads, and of course have the largest singular percentage slices, but they are NOT the only option, or even the most popular.
So ya, if you don't like the OEMs sticking Windows on there and not giving you an option, go to the mom and pop shop and get your computer there.
Windows 98 is still supported by Microsoft, but its six years old. Most software that old you probably wouldn't be able to find, let alone get it for dirt cheap. Yet I could walk into Staples or related and find 98SE Upgrade still for $80. How would you choose that over a similar price XP? I decided to look around at prices for Windows 95 since its no longer supported. One site had it for $40. Unbelieveable. I know the OS is intregal part of a computer system, but sheesh.
ahh screw it buy a MAC
Interesting you should bring up the idea of purchasing a mac. Without anything for comparison, determining value can be difficult. As a rule of thumb it's easier to estimate value based on price by comparing similar products. OS X and Windows are both desktop operating systems (primarily). OS X (box set)at pricewatch is around USD125. MS win xp pro (box set) about USD130.
conclusion: Yeah, MS Win XP is priced about the same as the other desktop OS. So what is all the arguing about?
Pioneers get shot in the back by the settlers.
That's how it was and that's how it is now.
Who paid $45 fo the last version of windows? I put down $100 for my crummy copy of XP home in the hopes of benefitting from being an honest customer. Was it worth it, what with real OS's out there like FreeBSD available for download for $0.00? Hell no.
Given that Windows is a mature product that has not seen innovation for some time, $45 would be fair if it trickled down to retail price.
Microsoft's retail pricing is unreasonable. In Canada, a retail full install copy of XP Pro at Staples or Business Depot is almost $499.00, while the retail upgrade is $299. An OEM version of XP Pro at typical independant parts shops range around $229-279.
Any other company would have withered away by now, but that monopoly power keeps that loan-shark pricing justified.
If you run UNIX on Windows, give the new Services for UNIX 3.5 a try. It's free now and from our inital testing at work, seems to be quite fast, faster than cygwin generally. Since it's free, it's worth checking out at any rate.
Mind, it depends on what your definition of "innovate" is. Microsoft and Dell both look to Apple for inspiration, and always have. Saves them R&D costs.
Clippy needs his residuals from the Office sales!
That is all.
(the parent)
</fark-referential-goodness>
I am all for Microsoft and GNU/Linux and for that matter anyone who makes Open or proprietary software. The GUI is what counts. 65% of all people are visual learners. Maybe Microsoft did not invent the GUI, but they sure got it to my house faster than anyone else. Of course good training and education in computer science helps too.
It seems like the author is taking the GUI for granted. The author is also not considering where it came from. The author is also forgetting the risk involved and the overhead of the corporation that markets Windows*.
I happily paid $128 or so for Win2K Professional at a store that was going out of business.
I have 98,ME,2K and XP. The only one that wasn't worth what I paid for it was ME and that was $50. Although it useful as it bridges the upgrade path. The upgrade version of ME will install with an upgrade version of 98 and then I can install 2K on top of that.
XP I got free from the university.
I wouldn't pay for it since I have 2K. If I didn't have 2K then I'd be willing to pay for it.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Is Windows XP worth $45? Microsoft obviously doesn't think so.
I'd buy it in an instant if it were that inexpensive, but they seem to be insitant on selling it to me for $250. (That's XP Pro, OEM, Canadian price.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
You keep buying/copying/using WIndows because it is the least "thinking effort" path.
And you don't really mind being called "pirate", an obviously wrong label. In fact, you even don't mind when news are heard about someone or a company being harassed by "pirate hunters".
Would it be difficult to use Linux? Yes, it would.
Like it was difficult to adapt to Windows in the beginning. Remember how Windows was utterly useless, even as of version 3.0? But someone led the way (maybe you yourself) and others followed.
Linux is just the same. Other programs, other shortcuts, other people, other ways... but the same results, or at least close enough for a productive day.
Don't be a conformist, nor a masochist. Stop, think, and use what works without breaking, costs zero or it's cheap to acquire, keeps your freedoms to share with others in need and, mainly, doesn't call you a pirate.
Ever.
From the breakdown of those prices, the price for the cpu seems to be the one breaking the bank. 134 dollars!?! The crappy low end P4's and Celerons they throw in there are not worth 134 dollars. That's more than I paid for my high end Athlon XP without the OEM discounts they get. I paid about the same for my cpu and my ram. I'd say this is about average for most. This breakdown has cpu's at almost three times the price of ram!!! What kind of bottlenecked systems are they building!?! In real terms of relation, this would mean an Athlon XP 3000+ or P4 2.5 ghz and a stick of 256MB of ram.
I guess it's easier to market a high mhz machine, but I'd much rather have a system with balanced ram and cpu.
I decided that I have to comment here. Sure, Linux is free, and XP has all sorts of problems that I read about on /. every day of the week. But I use XP. Why? Because it works. Sorry, folks, but XP isn't buggy, and it works well on any machine with enough RAM, and it's easy to use. Sure, there are worms, and the occasional security vulnerabilty that I hear about from Windows Update even before I read about it on /. But, dammit, I LIKE XP. It works well for me, and it's very reliable in everything I've used it for.
/. groupthink, but it's good enough for me, and no, I haven't been ripped off, and I haven't had my computers at home and at work riddled with viruses.
So enough with the Windows bashing already. Is it worth $45? Hell, yes. It is worth $99.
Maybe XP isn't good enough to pass the muster of
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Why would I want to pay any more for poorly engineered software from a company that has gone to the ends of the earth to kill open source and any other OS/applications (drdos, and 3rd party apps like lotus 123)....I have never pirated MS OS stuff, why bother, if there are enough apps that need XP or win 2000, I will buy it, but, right now win98SE is going to last me a long time...in the mean time, I'm going to set up a system with lots of linux stuff
If it was impossible to pirate Windows, would the people who previously pirated it buy it? Probably not...
P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
I manage one shop of a local chain where I live. a 300 pack of windows breaks down to 71.50 per copy for me home and 122.50 for pro (xp). and by the way Ill be more than glad to build computers and put linux on them if someone will buy them. If intersted please e-mail me esales@nacsales.com
Hey, it's hard work copying all those new features from Apple... there are so many...
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I thought I'd read on the web somewhere that Intel no longer had the lead, but that AMD was the technological leader nowadays. I totally think that the Windows tax is unjustified whatsoever, but the Intel tax also seems unfair to me. What do other people think?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Always thought it would be cool to have a big party somewhere, like the Burning Man event. Except everyone gets together and burns their Microsoft licenses. Call them Roasters or some cute name like that.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Doesn't that reasoning make copyright kinda like military intelligence or jumbo shrimp?
I mean the final version, the current one is just a RC. And my other gripe is that subscriptions are yearly -- I cannot afford a whole year right this minute. One month, yes, but twelve, no.
Anyway, I think the money is worth it assuming I had it at the moment. Linux software is full of innovation and worth paying for, despite being free.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Processor - $134 ok.
Drives, including CDROM - $104 possible.
RAM - $54 ok.
Power Supply, Case, and Circuit boards - $100?!?!?
What kind of cheap crap are they buying? I can find a decent case/ps for $60, but a MB costs at least $60 for a piece of shit for old hardware. You average $100-$150 at least for a decent MB for latest CPU specs. Then you have video which can't be had for $80 unless you are going VGA (yes, slight exageration).
Anyway, I want to know where they are getting their hardware because I can't find prices to compete.
NR
The limit of their profit margin tends to infinite, that's the easiest money in the world. There's no other market like this.
If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
But if the sight has already been slashdotted, how can you get the article text to paste it?
What does it mean "each year"? If you buy a new PC every five years you have to pay for Windows once and during all that time you get all the updates for free.
The truth is most people would rather not bother with it, which would probably be a boon for Apple. But if you made them do the same thing...it would be a boon for techies. Every store would have to have installers or people would take their machine to a certified installer to do it for them for a small fee. Would create some jobs for the tech types. Perhaps unnecessarily but it would make the choice a lot clearer.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have been doing some laptop shopping. So far I have not given microsoft any of my money, homebuilt PCs have avoided the microsoft tax. I would love to get an IBM or dell laptop, just don't want to get the microsoft crap that comes with the laptop.
Or in my case every 10 seconds because X-Windows got scrood up somehow. For both OS's, the reboot schedule is more depending on what software you run. I can generally keep my XP machine going strong for about a month. Then I gotta try out some new program and it's pretty bad. Generally some OSS project that is only in alpha. Or the latest game demo, or something similar. That's right, I play games and still only need to reboot on a monthly basis. Try and do that with your Linux distro and the binary video drivers that everyone complains about.
-]Phreak Out[-
He was an agent provocateur from BSA. This is their practice troughout the world. They are focused on Linux vendors primarily. Several affairs already happened in my country by this scenario.
I told him I don't do that, I don't have any copies of windows, and I wouldn't do that to someone that I like anyway.. I offered him Linux instead. He declined, I lost the sale. Life's tough..Fortunately, he was even more troubled, because he lost the case. You did ok.
There you are, staring at me again.
With open business licensing you get a license to use whatever MS software you use at work on your home PC. So if i have a copy of XP and Office 2003 on my work machine I can legally run it at home for free. So $45 nothing, I'll take it fo free
The "normal" price for Windows XP Home is $199 and that's the price they threaten the OEMs with. Anyone who knows where to look can find an OEM copy for about $100. A quick check found this store selling it for $108 but if you read the fine print at the bottom you will notice the "catch"; to comply with thier OEM license they must ship it with "a non-peripheral hardware component". Any dealer is careful to include some kinda hardware (usually a small cable, left over from a white box build).
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Yes, I do that, with the NVidia drivers. Yet, I still get some 8+ months uptime in Linux. But no more than 10 days or so in Windows XP. Guess it's not just an "alpha project" stuff. It must be some more fundamental cause, memory leaks, perhaps. Or, maybe, just that "many eyes" thing ESR keeps talking about.
I believe that there *was* benefit in posting it. The article may be unlikely to be slashdotted, but in 7 days time the comments become unreadable because the article is unavailable. I don't think that anybody will be subscribing to WSJ based on a link from slashdot. The banner ads comment is a more serious issue.
I still recognise that this isn't right though, it's the same logic that people use to infringe copywrite on software ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway") and is really no more defensible here. But it isn't causing much harm (solutions to the banner ads issues would be interesting...), and I personally think it does some good for people looking back on this.
The first windows version I used was NT4. It gave me a lot of functionality and it was certainly worth $45.
Then came along win2k. It gave me nothing new that I couldn't do with NT4. Well, perhaps there was some small innovation but it was absolutely nothing I could make use of to make any extra money.
Win2k did the same old things that was possible in NT4 only slightly different. That meant there was education costs involved. New boxes also had to be integrated into existing networks applications needed to be tested etc. Sometime there even was some loss of productivity until people got used to the new system. All this was far more expensive than $45. Yet there was no benefits to my business.
The same story goes for windows XP. It does the same thing for me as NT4, but it creates a lot of hazzle and costs in the upgrade process.
Of course I have the option of not upgrading, but in the case of NT4 we have a end of life situation where the OS is no longer supported with security patches etc.Installing NT4 on new boxes would also create costs as they normally already would have windows XP preinstalled. There would also be problems with new applications needed to conduct my business.
All in all, I very much doubt that it is possible to get any return of investment on upgrades of windows NT4 to win2k or XP in most companies.
It is just a tax we have to pay because of the end of life thing.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Some examples are:
- Bug-laiden(R) operating system
- Chock Full O' Security Holes(R) web server
- What're Standards?(R) protocol compliance
- Buy Em' Out!(R) business practices
- Go Ahead, Hate Us(R) registration
- Assume You Want Everything DRM Protected(R) technology
- We Wallpaper Our Offices With Your Money(R)... that's it
The list goes on.Inovation hasn't come out of Redmond in years
Windows is a total ripoff. $40 of that $45 should be going to the shareholders of the company buying the PCs for their employees, not adding to a $61 billion empire of criminality.
Mac? Not if you have to run windows apps.
Linux? It's not there yet, and doesn't run windows apps reliably, even under the latest wine.
Pirate? Okay, break the law and you company is liable for god-knows-how much to the BSA, and Microsoft.
What a bullshit post. The people who modded it "Informative" are completely on crack, Microsoft Crack.
it was a nice WSJ style piece, which like their radio show in the morning, has lots of fluff and not much substance. I'd like to see an article written detailing the actual 'advances' (or lack thereof) that have been made since Windows 1.0. The article was smartly written, but I didnt expect it to end as quickly as it did.
There Can Be Only One...
45$ for Windows XP my God that's a bargain!
I don't know if you folks in the US know but here it's 169$ CAN for upgrade and 269$ CAN for full version stand-alone. People will throw themselves at this price if you told them it was 45$ for a special offer with a brand new PC. Or the enthusiasts will say no thanks and go buy clone parts and assemble it themselves.
But i have to admit i haven't payed for a MS OS since... ever. So i have all the advantages of open source (cost) with the universality of windows and my favorite games. Anyhow, MS prefers you pirate their OS instead of forking over to Linux.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
In reality MS is like McDonalds...McDs invents the burgers and puts up marketing, but other people pay to put up and run stores eeking out a living selling burgers. In reality MS only has several thousand customers...Or think of an oil refinery...they sell gas to stations..not You and I. because of that they're allowed to "hide" their tactics behind contract law unlike your local cable or energy company which sells to US directly...and is held accountable for every dime!!!
The real problem is that sw patents do last too long. If they where lasting 1 year (at most) this would really help innovations, and would still stop other companies to copy ideas within 1 week. But what's up now in US is just to allow someone (Microsft) to live with what they whote 10y ago... , this is a really medievel thing!
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
Those who don't release Linux Distros are doomed to reinvent it. With Microsoft's new Secure Computing baloney, look for new "inovation" in the form of lots of new widgets and wibbles that act a lot like linux. Longhorn isn't just a DRM model, its a major revamping. Look for unix-style browsing of devices and periphials in the root folder, and other Unix lookalike behavior. Its coming. The future is the reinvention of unix. And you can bet they'll be applauded for "innovation" and the "best update since microsoft Bob"
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
> which is intended to be used on that machine
> and that machine only
Ok, I have a computer with windows on it, I then upgrade the video card, and sound card and since Im already there, I get a dvd burner instead of hte CR-Rom I had there.
Two months later, my board dies and I buy a new one, this one has built in ethernet, usb, DV, and so on... problem is, my old tower is too small so I change the case too.
At what point in this process did this become another machine?
If I changed every component in the computer one by one over lets say, a year, , when do I become a 'pirate'?
The overall result it that I have a brand new computer but I never 'changed' for a new one?
A friend at work said that once you change the CPU/chip, you are dealing with a different beast but I disagree. If i have a mb that went kaput, I sure as hell aint paying for another license. ANd that goes for any piece.
Reminds he how california vw fanatics get around (unless they changed it) Cali smog laws to get a new 'old' beetle.
They bring in an old run down one to a mexican shop, its stripped down to the bone and as long as the little registration tag is still by the front dash frame, you cahnge absolutely everything on it , and when you come back across the border, you are driving the same car (with %99.99 new parts).
My main desktop machine at home is a Mac, and I haven't so much as fired up Classic in months, if not over a year. Every page layout designer I know sure does, though. Even though most of them agree that Mac OS X is "better" in every way (at least on current hardware), they're going to keep using the crappy old OS too, because it's the only way they're going to have access to the applications they need to get their work done.
P.S. Macs don't run Visio; they don't run Access; they have Entourage instead of a proper, modern Outlook; and if you're into such things, they can barely run more games than Linux can.
Breakfast served all day!
i cant believe people think that. what about activex? and internet explorer? ms outlook?
i love Microsoft (something that shouldn't be admitted on slashdot apparently). i like the layout (and so do the gnome and kde guys it seems), i love the consistancy, not having dependancy problems and I love the integration.
Yes, they crush the little people. Yes anti-trust blah blah! WMA sounds good listen to but is shit because I cant listen to it on my bsd box. Ditto activex.
Credit where credit is due. What has M$ innovated? A hell of a lot more than Linux. Linux can't even get package management to work (with the exception of Debian - Gentoo?). I'm not a opensource hater/microsoft lover! i love freebsd! but it shits me that windows is bagged so much. its not windows 98 people!
my 2c
I am currently running Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator 10, (Not Outlook but it can be installed), Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft IE on my Crossover Office install, and it enables me to finally do my job on a linux box. I don't really care about the hardware drivers, because I buy hardware that works with linux.
Games...Well. That's something else entirely. I've got Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tourney at the moment, and I used to have Warcraft III on my WINE install before I got bored by it, but really, I think it's better if I don't play many games. It's such a timesink!
So, just because you choose an alternative option doesn't mean you can't have those applications. By the way, if you're squeamish about paying for Crossover Office, you can get all these applications running under WINE, via these great tutorials on frankscorner.org.
I'm scratching my head over this one. I'm a Mac user, but Apple charges $129 for the upgrade version of OS X, making $45 seem like a bargain.
Best Buy can have you arrested
do you understand the concept of flamebait?
in this case it is the TRUTH, not flamebait.
if it were about linux, it would be a LIE, and hence intended merely to piss people off.
get a freaking clue, dipshit.
The MS price works out to $10 or less a year for the machines I use (4 year lifespan).
That's well worth it considering that the software included in the price at no extra charge, Office, is worth at least $5 a year also.
So, my $500 Dell CPU is a good deal considering it costs $125 a year.
Putting linux on it will only reduce the cost by $10 a year.
Given that most of the basic application areas were covered by the software included in the machine purchase, there is no real reason to go with linux. The availability of win32 builds of most linux/unix packages helps greatly.
Even then, I can boot Knoppix if needed.
Linux end user aplications should concentrate on 1 thing and 1 thing only - usability including professional quality documentation, online help, and installation programs.
what? you mean people in the 3rd world can get MS stuff for free?
I've been paying Rs30 for my CDs (thats about 50 cents, US).
Now you tell me....
Is $45 too much to ask for Windows? No, you do get a decent operating system. Does Microsoft overcharge for its product knowing that they could charge a fraction of that and still make an excellent product? Yes, Microsoft will make a profit anyway.
People are always bashing Microsoft and its Windows line of operating systems due to the old blue screens of death every 5 minutes and security flaws up the ying-yang. When you finally pull your head out of your ass, you will realize that Windows doesn't crash anywhere near as much as it used to. Windows 95, 98, and ME were originally built on 16-bit DOS technology but times changed and Windows XP shows how much better things can be. I remember back when I couldn't even use a decent (keyword) webbrowser on my Macintosh without the common "Error Type -11". As for the security flaws, yes, there are a lot but when you are on top, everybody attacks you from the bottom. There are a lot of Windows computers out there and most of the losers that exploit the flaws in Windows are Windows users themselves (why else would they know how to exploit some minute memory buffer or something like that) so it makes sense that there are a lot more Windows viruses. Besides, I paid $99 for a Windows XP Home upgrade in 2001 and so far, it looks like I won't have to pay it again until 2006 when Longhorn comes out. Why did I even bother upgrading, cause Best Buy gave $200 of free stuff when you bought Windows but it was still worth the cost.
Apple on the other hand charges people $129 a year (10, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3) for 129 patches to their operating system that should have been there in the first place. Yes a few new features have come out that I love (expose for one), but $129 dollars is a rip off, let alone having to pay it once a year. Don't argue that you don't HAVE to upgrade cause you do. Shortly after Panther came out, they released a Panther only upgrade for Safari which includes several SECURITY fixes. So yeah they were quick about releasing a patch but require that you upgrade your computer to get it.
Linux finally is yes, free, but costs more time than anything else. As a desktop platform it is maturing but still lags behind in funtionalty from comercial operation systems. I hate having to recompile the kernel for a simple update, driver, or to change little things. Yes, it is nice that you have that power but for a single desktop computer user whose time is money, you are better off forking over those $45 to Microsoft and letting the Windows Update run it's course, which if more people did, most would rarely get attacked. As a server or in a beowulf cluster, Linux is excellent. Why pay thousands of dollars for copies of the same operating system when you can download Linux, get one system setup how you like it and then image the rest which is great for a cluster or even a computer lab of web browsers or word processors. As for a server, install Linux without the GUI, choose the servers you need, install, configure, and almost forget. My Linux server has been on for over 100 days and I haven't even seen it since I installed RedHat 9 over 200 days ago. Check out the proof at http://www.eyesorerock.com/phpSysInfo Why the downtime at all? Linux's fatal flaw common to all computers, power failure and the UPS was about 2 minutes short of the power being restored.
In the end, each operating system has it's advantages. Is $45 too much to ask for a fairly stable OS that is being very much actively developed? I say no. Now yes $299 is a complete ripoff for XP Pro New User and Microsoft should burn for the price of Office and the frequency of new versions of it too. MacOSX is a great operating system but no, $129 is just too much to spend a year for what really amounts to a patch. Linux is great for a server, cluster, routers, and specialty boxes but until drivers are easy to compile and install and there aren't a billion different, oldly named packages (emacs, LaTex, pine, pico, libc, gcc, g++, top, squid, to name the well known ones that all Linux users should know by heart their first d
Most of them don't know about the choices or don't know enough to make good choices. The only thing a Windows user knows about a Mac is that it "will not run my software" and it is expensive compared to a PC. The arguement that your paying to much for Windows falls short if all you see is the price tag for a Mac.
Linux is unknown to Joe User. 99% have never heard of it.
Piracy - tried to do it but that damn WPA caught me. I see pirated copies of 98 all the time XP is much more rare. Only geeks pirate that.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Consider PowerNotebooks.com. I'm using one right now (a PowerPro) and it works well running Fedora Core GNU/Linux. You can get PowerNotebooks to install some GNU/Linux distribution for you or you can get it without an OS and avoid paying the Microsoft tax. I don't work for them or make anything for referrals.
Digital Citizen
Or in my case every 10 seconds because X-Windows got scrood up somehow.
:p
Restart X, not reboot
How many of you running a Windows partition to boot into just case that you actually *paid* for? I have had every copy of Windows except for Multiple Errors, paid for one with a pc and one when 95 was getting cleared out of a store that couldnt sell software. Was it worth 20 bux, yup. Anything else, talk to my burner.
Hell, bet this article was submitted with a pirated version of Windows.
I hate having to run all my old Windows 98 applications in the Windows XP emulation environment.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
You hav estolen software. Don't come in here and give us your false righteousness. Tell us straight up that you have never copied a game, installed a pirated OS, or used Napster.
All of this anti-pirate mumbo jumbo is laughable, the entire /. crowd is in fact the early adopters of this tech.
court case on Linux via sco ?
gravity is a myth, earth sucks
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: XFree86 is dropping support for *BSD. The remaining core group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
It's Office that you lose on. Microsoft makes most of their money on Office. Arguably, Microsoft is a company that sells Office; everything else exists to sell Office.
i run windows 2000 Server on my home system. it even came with 10 client licenses. and i got it free. how?
a friend of a friend at microsoft bought it for us at the "Microsoft Employee Store". supposedly, he paid $10 for it and shipped us 2 copies.
makes me wish i had more friends.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
in israel an oem copy of windows XP pro costs $175 (just calculated it)
practically allowing for piracy to be the only option. there is a large share of computers being sold without any OS installed at all.
i am one of the few people i know actually owning a legal copy although i still believe that the microsoft vision of enabling anyone on the globe to use a computer with windows is self contradicting with its current pricing. and will be hit hard by linux in the next 2 years.
capitalism (at least in the US) has been built up around the ideas of a manufacturing society and that the bulk of the cost of producing a product lie in its manufacture. Manufacture is not design. Software costs money to create, but not to manufacture, in that the number of copies sold has little to no relevance on the cost of producing them.
;-)
/. geeks can understand the inefficiencies of running really old hardware with a really old OS, 30 patches attempting to bring the system up to modernness, and modern applications on top of that. It's like ... hot swap mass storage devices going on Win 95. It doesn't work well, if at all. Without regard to the quality of Win95 upon its release, it's a piece of crap trying to run modern stuff. It was designed for a different environment. And that's where the significance of the $0 cost of manufacture comes from.
Perhaps you should understand the definition of the term manufacture before you try to criticize its use.
As the bulk of cost for creation of anything becomes the R&D behind it, all of our rules and laws and checks and balances become largely irrelevant. This is why everything is so screwy. The system we built up was designed for something else entirely than what we are moving into.
I'm sure a bunch of
Manufacture is the cost per unit after the first one has already shipped. And in software it is effectively $0. Since capitalism fails to ethically associate the cost of development with the price of the product, the more noble of us go on and produce software that is free in every regard. This means that we need to do other things to allow ourselves to exist and survive in this capitalist world, but it also means that our efforts to produce good software do not eat away at the capitalist framework in which we live. Hard on us, good for everyone else, good in the long run.
Go ahead though, re-create all of capitalism to account for 0 cost manufacture systems alongside classical manufacturing models and I'd love to read about it. Many millions of people would.
-theed
Microsoft may turn a blind eye to home user "piracy." I recently wrote an article on this:
HereRemember a few weeks ago when the Win2000 source was leaked? Microsoft went balls-to-the-wall to crack down on its distribution over P2P networks and other means. If it has the capability to do this, why hasn't it cracked down on the illegal distribution of binary copies of Windows an Office? That's the big question, and until it remains without a reasonable answer, my guess is that Microsoft doesn't care about home user piracy because it encourages upgrade sales down the road and increases its installed base.
-JemI have the box for Suse Linux Professional still sitting around (because I'm a slob) and the sticker on the front says $79.99 (USD). I'm lazy, so let's call it 90 bucks.
What did I get for that 90 bucks? An OS that I have been able to successfully install on two computers. I'm so giddy with the installation success, I'm thinking about raising three more computers "from the dead" to install the OS on them...
And, by the way, did I really need to pay the money for SuSe Linux Pro? Probably not... I'm too lazy to get cable modem, where I could have gotten a Linux distro for free.
For me, the important thing is that the OS works (damn well, thank you very much...) Even at the price I paid (for a "free" product), it was well worth replacing Windows with.
If one looks at just the two computers I have installed SuSe Linux Pro on, where looking at 45 bucks per installation (which matches the supposed MS price).... Not to mention Open Office, etc. The fact that I can throw this distro on as many computers as I choose? Hell.... where's the cost?
To me, the $45 for an MS OS is like getting a quarter-pounder from McDonald's for five bucks. For the same price, you can get a Filet Mignon.
And, oh yeah, did I mention it's "all-you-can-eat" Filet Mignon night?
This is a Wall Street Journal article, not a computer focused article
It's also Lee Gomes article. If you can, look through his previous missives. It's fairly apparent he doesn't care for Microsoft at all, and never has. Maybe it's interesting in the sense that there are die hard Microsoft haters outside of /. as well.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Here in Germany you have to pay more than 100 Euro for the Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM edition, if you want to buy a laptop for example. There are only a few laptop manufacturers, which sell their machines without pre-installed OS. Just in case you don't need that OS, here are some legal ways to avoide the *Microsoft tax*.
Seriously, this guy is effing stupid. Don't quote the lowest most crappy computer prices ever, then say windows is 10% of that cost. And to say that Microsoft doesn't innovate? I think I've seen just as much improvement in the last 10 years in Microsofts operating systems as I have a computer chip. Lets see....Windows 3.1 to Windows XP. That seems like quite alot of innovation to me.
But since when did price go to innovation? Has the concrete industry really innovated anything in the last 10 years? Nope, but they still make money. Just like post-it's make plenty of money with no innovation. So yeah, my point is, Microsoft has the best operating system, thus they make alot of money. There is ABSOLUTELY NO COMPETITION. So anyways, whoever wrote this article, is a big fob fobertson.
Nobody will sell me a brand laptop (Dell, Sony, etc.) without Windows on it. I don't want Windows on it. I never plan on using it. I am forced to buy something I ethically don't want to, to get something I need. I don't want to be forced to pay the MS tax.
Isn't this anticompetitiveness? Why is nobody picking this up as an antitrust case?
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm prefixing this strongly, because it's important that people understand my position. I abhor Microsoft's practices, and detest their muscling around of other companies. Heck, Microsoft became a success due to what could be construed as Corporate Theft.
Now, that being said, I believe in the importance of stating valid arguments against Microsoft. There are many, MANY valid arguments that can be made against them, but the argument above is (sadly) not one of them.
When it comes to Operating Systems, especially ones that end users count on, innovation is detracting. A typical end user wants something predicatble, and above all, something that they don't have to reinstall, upgrade, or pay for in often occurring intervals.
The hardware industry gets away with innovation because they can appeal to 2 select groups of users that doesn't mind having to pay at closer intervals than the mainstream: gamers and high-end businesses. And through them, it filters down to the masses who are convinced by their zealousness that buying a new computer is good (when, most of the time, it's not needed).
Operating Systems don't have that luxury. How many things can one add to an operating system before A) You run out of things or B) You run out of things that won't put you into the realm of Monopolizing (for example, take the integrated Web Browser debate). Add those up, and it's hard to come up with reasons to innovate in the OS world.
Now some OSes are inclined to be more innovative. By design (and cost, if you consider that distributions can be downloaded for free), Linux can position themselves to be innovative, and often is. More reason to use them. But for Operating Systems that cost money, and already run the risk of Monopolization, it's just not a good idea.
-Vendal Thornheart
Actually, I haven't. I buy my own CDs, I buy commercial games if I like the demo or rental, and my OS either came with the system (before Linux) or was purchased separately where necessary. Since I've run Linux for the past 9 years, the only MS OS I purchased was NT 4 to put into a VMware session. FWIW I didn't use Napster either, I prefer to create my own mp3s from the aforementioned CDs.
I'm not saying that I'm any sort of paragon of virtue, I'm certainly not. Your assumption that everyone has pirated software is however a generalization, and generalizations are usually (if not always) found to be wrong. That a great number of people have done something does not make it right either. OTOH, those who choose the freer alternatives are not only able to use them with a clear conscience and no fear of being caught, they're also helping to bring the software to more people. Some even choose to contribute, increasing the pool of software for everyone.
I think what makes Open Source attractive to a lot of people is our ability to share it with others. It's quite a stark contrast from the "everything you learned in Kindergarten about sharing was wrong" mantra of commercial software. It's like a technological renaissance really. Knowledge is shared and propagates more knowledge. Everyone wins except those who want to hoard it for themselves, and even they get at least their fair share.
Certainly some people will ignore the moral aspect of stealing software that wasn't licensed as free, and there's nothing we can do about that. What we can do is continue working towards creating alternatives which are at least as compelling as the restrictively licensed applications that are being stolen today. Someday we may even be rid of Windows, but as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. I do believe the time will come.
here
Have you checked how much you spend every month on things like DSL/TV/Phone/Cell Phone (about $150), or on dining out (about $120, I'm moderate in this regard) or on groceries (about $450)? $45 isn't even worth talking about.
If Microsoft charges less, they face the "anti-monopoly" crowd. If they charge more, they face the "ripping-off-the-world" crowd. Microsoft doesnt have much choice in the matter, so they just keep the prices they have.
Almost. It's OK to steal Windows if you're researching remote exploits. However, we do NOT advocate stealing BSD, because BSD is dying.
Sincerely,
The Slashdot Troll Hive Mind
Dude, I bet you've never even been with a drunk sorroriety girl!
No, seriously. You clearly haven't.
Same argument can be used to say that Cable or Satillite isn't a monopoly. There's Dialup, Wireless, Buy your own T1, do without.
Isn't it obvious?
Microsoft research is no more than a patent factory - no more, no less.
They hire away talents so that they a) doesn't work for the competition. b) can expand on MS's strategic patent portfolio but not, as the article rightly points out, to actually produce anything usable.
What a shame!
Doesn't that reasoning make copyright kinda like military intelligence or jumbo shrimp?
"Microsoft Works"
"I agree what what you say! And Microsoft by far as to support the largest combination of drivers and hardware... so of course they have the most problems."
Sounds like an argument FOR open-source drivers than closed-source. Accept closed source drivers so Linux will be popular-->Linux becomes more popular-->Mainstream releases more closed source drivers-->Vicious cycle with problems galore. Something about history forgotten.
"Fabricating chips costs serious cash. In comparison, once the design work is done for Microsoft, they have a new version of windows - the only manufacturing cost is stamping CDs."
Make masters for each machine.
Insert CD's in cardboard sleeves.
Wrap with plastic wrap.
Put several bundles in bigger box.
Store in warehouse temporarely.
Ship out via truck to OEM's.
Retail's similiar except for sleeved CD's go into bigger box with documentation. Then that goes into a bigger box.
And let's not forget our friends in the QA department that makes certain all of the above runs smoothly.
I've simplified a bit, but your "only manufacturing cost" is not true.
As much as I detest the Beast of Redmond (and I *am* a Linux user), I have to admit that Microsoft Research does a huge amount of really good research in basic computer science and mathematics. And a *lot* of this research ends up in actual products.
I know for a fact that some wonderful research in statistical machine learning is actually being used on the XBox, while some equally great theory in stochastic processes is being used for image super-resolution.
While the end user might have to wait for a bit for the benefits of all the research to trickle down to the actual products themselves, from a pure research standpoint, some of that money that they squeeze out of their customers actually ends up getting spent in the right places.
"In mathematics, it's not enough to read the words -- you have to hear the music"
That's extortion, you want to go to court or pay me an out of court settlement fee of say $1 million (I'll take $50 and $100 only) but only in the next 10 minutes ... going ... going ... tick ...tick ... tick ... hurry now time's running out!
....is that Bill Gates gets his wish. I really do. I home that Bill gets to see his DRM dream come true. Total and complete inability to pirate any software or OS at all, I really really do. For it is at that moment that a penguin shall crow signaling the true Dawn of Linux, as people across the world realize that all thier cracked/hacked copies of Windows and Office are the last ones they shall ever see again without paying cash out to Bill. Bill made Office the latin of the business world, and the home world as well, but it was done on pirated software as Joe Business took home the "work" copy of office for the night. Yup, I hope Bill's dream comes true, the sooner the better in my book.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
If it cost $45, I'd probably buy two copies, but it costs $444.73 from my local store (XP Pro, Retail).
The cost of anything is simple. What the market will bear. In the case of Windows, the market has to bear the current pricing structure of Microsoft's operating systems. It's this very market that is to blame for the price, the market decided long ago to pay what Microsoft asked. The market itself has locked in to this supplier and is just now beginning to see that it made a very stupid and short-sighted move.
None of the OEMs are in a position to bargain with Microsoft. Look at IBM. They've invested millions(billions?) into Linux and you can't even buy a laptop from them sans Windows. When the supplier of the base ingredient to your product has a ~90% marketshare on that ingredient you have very little to no bargaining power. Limiting yourself to just one supplier of anything is going to come back and bite you in your collective asses.
Since the OEMs are in no position to bargain, that leaves a government to step in. My government attempted to straighten Microsoft out but failed miserably. Time will tell how others fare. Regardless of the outcome, it will have no effect how Microsoft operates on its home turf. Microsoft will continue to strong arm clients and dictate the price of their products until they are stopped by the U.S. government or the market refuses to bear the cost.You've got an easy breezy wind at your back...most of the time.
Microsoft will always, always have a monopoly on the PC Operating System market. The simple reason for this is that VERY, VERY few people or companies would ever take the risk of installing an O.S that doesn't run the vast majority of software products already available and demanded on the market. After all, when it comes down to it, isn't a free economy all about choice? This gives consumers two initial choices A: Install and use Linux (forget for a second that for many people this is going to have quite a steep learning curve compared to Windows). What does the consumer get? More money in his/her pocket, but FAR less choice in software applications. B: Cough up a wad of cash and use Windows XP. Rest assured you can go online, or go to your local "software supermarket" and have millions of choices concerning software, compared to a much smaller number for Linux et al. Given the fact that a huge number of people choose "B", software developers aren't really encouraged to support Linux, but instead keep churning out new programs for Windows machines, thus repeating the cycle. I don't think any of us will ever live to see Microsoft as anything other than a monopoly. Sad, but true.
I run a bussines. And anything that can save me 1 hour of work is worth $45 to me. Simple as that.
Switching to Linux for the desktop would cost me a lot more time than that, as I would have to re-learn my habbits.
I can even afford to pay it every second year without breaking a sweat.
And windows isn't that insecure. Shure if you only use MS products it is. But Apache, Mozilla etc. runs nicely on Windows too.
I prefer Linux as a server, but desktop Linux is still to bothersome for me.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Why the focus on innovation? It costs a lot just to maintain the rest of the business, support, documentation, etc. I mean, if you want to make this argument about $45 for innovation, then we're being ripped off on most things we do in society that cost us money and have no innovation. To me it seems that $45 is actually not bad for the cost and complexity that goes into buying something like Windows.
The point is really: is it a _mandatory_ $45 hidden into the cost of an OEM'd PC; or is it an _optional_ $45 along side other operating systems
For instance, I like .Net too... unfortunately, much of it's structure comes from Java's libraries.
Windows itself is, in a way, innovative (discounting the fact that Windowed GUI programs are "borrowed" from ... correct me if I'm wrong... was it Zerox? I can't remember the specific company), but only to the extent that it must be to even consider the next product a "new" product.
Now, you must understand as well, I don't consider MS's lack of innovation to be a bad move on their part. If I were them, i'd do the same thing... because in the end, the masses seem to pay for the familiar and rebuke the concept of constantly paying for innovation.
-Vendal Thornheart
Adobe Acrobat
If you actually mean Acrobat Reader, I have it on Knoppix. Is it the latest release? I don't think so because of a licensing issue with the latest release. Can I get the latest release on my own? Probably. But since I haven't run into a problem opening a pdf document yet, its not an issue.
Did you mean Adobe Acrobat, to create pdf documents? don't know anyone who uses it. I certainly don't need it. I checked a few pdf documents I have, and guess what? They used Ghostscript to create the documents, not Adobe Acrobat.
I also have Ghostscript on my Knoppix desktop. And Ghostview. And Xpdf. It seems Adobe doesn't have a monopoly on pdf documents, and that can only be a good thing.
And as for creating pdf documents, I do that all the time. OpenOffice can do it. I prefer the ease of creating the document in postscript so that everyone can read it, then using the command, ps2pdf nameofdoc.pdf to create the pdf. It's that simple, and that fast.
How much does Adobe Acrobat cost? My legal copies of Ghostview, Ghostscript, Xpdf, Adobe Acrobat Reader cost 700 MB ~ 2 Gig (uncompressed)
of download time for Knoppix (under 2 hours).
Adobe Photoshop
I'm not a graphics designer, and neither is 99% of the rest of the population. The Gimp works wonderfully for me. It takes a little getting used to, but that's because I don't use it daily. I had the same experience with Photoshop. It took getting used to, and that was because I didn't use it daily. Luckily, the previous owner of my computer did some graphic design, so it came with Photoshop already installed. So I didn't spend $1,000.00 on it. Have you?
Adobe Illustrator
Vector Graphics? My guess is that if falls to the below 1% general population use of Adobe Acrobat. Vector Graphics on Linux? Google comes up with Figurine, Sketch, Sodipodi, Kivio, Xfig, and I'm sure others. I've tried out Kivio, and it worked fine for what I needed. I'm sure some, most, or all of the others I've mentioned are on my Knoppix distro, except maybe Sodipodi was removed recently for space. But I could always install it myself if needed. And the cost? Knoppix download. Did you pay the $500 for Adobe Illustrator?
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook
I'll take that as a joke. And a poor one at that. The only problem I have with viruses and worms are the crap that you Microsoft users insist on continuing to send to my inbox as attachments. I haven't had any downtime attributed to viruses or worms EVER on my GNU/Linux computers. EVER. Nor has anyone I know using GNU/Linux. Yet I know individuals and companies that have had downtime, and resulting costs related to viruses and worms. And I don't spend a dime, ever, on protection money for the anti-virus syndicate.
Macromedia Dreamweaver
I'll come back to this one.
Miranda IM
Had to look this one up, since I didn't know what it was, though with IM, I correctly guessed that it was an IM client. I use Gaim, and it works fine for me. And it includes ICQ support. As to other plugins, don't know what they are, or what they do. Gaim allows IM'ing, the intended application, and it works for me. I'm sure there are possibly hundreds, or possibly thousands of other IM clients out there for windows. And maybe for Linux as well. Whatever. I did notice, though, that Miranda IM is using the GPL. Good choice. And that would make it possible for someone, if interested, to write a version for Linux, would it not?
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Another sad joke. Other than Microsoft web sites such as MSNBC, and Home Depot (possible to trick with Mozilla and Konqueror, though it sometimes takes an extra step or two) and a few other sites, what site have you run into that is completely unaccesible unless using Internet Explorer? There is some intentiona
There is something in what ergo98 wrote but also there is something in what you wrote.
I'm also the one who considers $150 for Microsoft Windows an unreasonably high price (even more if it means half of average monthly income in our country). But I'm also programmer so I also do not like the idea of putting hard work into something and then geting nothing back because of others copying my work without my permission.
But we live in physical universe so physical laws rules: if we live on our own, sitting on chair thinking about something does not bring us food.
So we (mentaly working) have to consider it a very lucky coincidence that there are some people who are willing to give us some amout of physical goods (results of physical work: food, clothing, housing, ...) for just thinking. We should be gratefull for that - if we are lucky enought, we do not have to touch dipper or hammer our whole life thinking all the time and still we will have food (and clothing, and house, ...).
If we start to ask too much (for just thinking), well those kind (physicaly working) people will let us starve and we will have to stop thinking and start really working - with our hands. :)
hany
that uses Windows XP uses CDROM burns of the [i]'corpfiles edition'[/i] originally sourced from pirate copies bought on South-east Asian holidays (except for one uncle that has a store bought PC)
Lets be honest, one of the biggest things hurting alternative software developers is pirated MS software under cutting them.
You can bet that the Lotus & Word Perfect office suites would have much bigger market share (as they both virtually more or less match MS Office but undercut it to a significant degree price wise) if it wasn't for CD burns of MS Office costing less than a dollar undercutting them.
Most posts go on about copyright protection, but I don't see an answer to the question. If I wanted to develop an closed OS like XP by hiring programmers, how much would it cost me? And how much does MS make on Windows every year?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
thanks
10.2 and 10.3 were released long after Windows 2000, in fact Windows 2000 was released about the same time as OS 9, which is an entirely different beast to OS X whereas XP is Windows 2000 with pretty colours and less security.
In Norway the cheapest license cost 128$ (899 NOK) (Win XP Home ED. Eng OEM) , and the most expensive OEM 217$ (1500NOK) (Win XP Pro ED. Eng OEM).
45$ is 315NOK, so your Windows License is rather cheap compared to our prices.
Another price compare:
Win XP Pro ED. Full RETAIL costs, 514$ (3599 NOK)
All prices inkluding Tax.
I work as IT guy at some company. I do the hardware, software, the whole lot.
:)
Quite recently we had to get a couple of laptops, cheap ones. The previous time we needed them, we got NEC laptops with FreeDOS, as we have an abbundance of M$ Liscenses lying around; the actual number of machine does not change, it's only hardware upgrades and replacements of broken machines (We still use 98, you only need the number of uses to be correct; you can transfer a license from one machine to another if you replace the machine)
At the NEC-online site they used to also offer Machines with FreeDos installed, compared to the ones with Windows 2000 or XP installed
The last time I looked into the prices, exactly the same machines with FreeDOS installed in stead of some MS-OS were actually MORE expensive than the FreeDOS ones !
So, As FreeDOS is 'free', MS must be even less than free ?
I called those guys and asked them how it could be so. They said that is because it was a non standard product, they had to take special attention to it, and that special attention had a special price...
Strange stuff, but a real world example of pricing...
Windows is worth a thousand Words.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
is there any figures with regard to ip license use of windows? microsoft pays a lot to other companies as well for their patents. just want to know if what fraction of the $45 goes to other companies.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
The article is misleading when it speaks of taking $45 each year. Why not every day, since PC's get sold every day ?
In reality many people still use older versions. A typical home PC is used for at least 4 years.
The turnover rate for Linux distributions is much higher. Many people use Windows 98 SE or Windows 2000 (both from 1999) but nobody uses a 4-year old commercial Linux distribution.
If the average home PC is in use for 4 years, $11 per year isn't that much. A game costs $45 as well and that only gets used a few months max before going getting uninstalled.
You have to go with the Dell Precision 360n:
e s. aspx/precn_360n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/featur
I'm a Linux and Mac user, but every now-and-then I need to fire Windows up on a box (usually to recover someone else's Windows box). I never owned a legit copy until Windows 2000 came out, then I went out and paid $200 for it, full retail, because I thought it was only fair. I still use that copy, sometimes I load it on my laptop to access windows-only stuff at work, sometimes I run it inside Virtual PC to proof web pages, and sometimes I use it at home to verify my SAMBA configuration.
I COULD have purchased a much cheaper OEM license, but I thought that JUST ONCE I should play by the rules and give Microsoft some money for what I thought was a great product (W2K). I kick Mozilla, the EFF, FSF, and Gentoo about $250 every year, I may as well fork over a fair amount for Windows every three or four. I even intend to purchase 'XP Reloaded' when it comes out, as long as it'll run on my 500MHz laptop.
And BTW, I'm not 'well off' or anything. I live alone and make just enough to get by and go out a few weekends a month. I just think it's fair to pay for commercial software, and good to donate for OSS software. Try kicking mozilla.org $5 every time you do an install or convert a user, it feels good!
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
It's interesting to see a breakdown that can attribute US$45 to every PC manufactured, but otherwise this is just yet another talking head article. It's subservient, and begins its wind-up with the classic:
The world expects a lot from great monopolies.
Need one say any more?
And if all this fantastic research is going on - research such as in Cambridge where they basically waste money - why can't MS take care of the essentials first? Such as producing a system that's stable, reliable, not a sitting duck on the net, doesn't leak memory all over the place, is coded with at least a fraction of the care Linus puts into his work, etc? Research? Windows users are paying for research?
Windows users, the poor lot, want the bugs out first!
How much is juice carton worth? Well, without the juice.
;)
MSWindows is just an OS, and rather shallow for that. I have to install several dozens third-party packages on it for it to become somewhat useful for me. True - these said packages quite often work only on this particular OS (I would estimate that is 40-50% of s/w I regularly use, bar games). But still - how can I say that Windows is worth so and so when it's totally useless without additional measures.
PS: note I said nothing (good or bad) about Linux distros there
Yeah, lets compare a fictionally low windows price to the most expensive linux enterprise edition. Lets see, if you add an sco license you could pump up the linux software to lets see thats $878. Personally, I'd charge you $1000 for the jewel cases and another $1000 for a manual so make that $2878. Go buy your precious winxppro off the shelf for $300 and than add the price of office and photoshop and compare that to $1.50 for a Mandrake download edition. Even at your fictional $45 that don't look too good.
Out of curiousity I looked up the web site of the place where I bought my PC. Windows 98 and Windows ME OEM both sell for more than Windows XP (91.25 versus 84.53 )!
Surely that should be the other way around?
>>>It's also morally wrong to use your "Intellectual Property" as a sword and not a shield... Wouldn't that depend on your modality of morality? (sorry about the verbiage..) I mean, from *one* Utilitarian perspective, using your IP as a sword and shield might protect a company's profits, thus keeping lots of people employed. You can also use the Utilitarian Persective to come up with an opposite verdict as well. One could argue that the GPL is also used as a sword and (more readily) a shield.. -DB in 2004 (not Dubya.. Delaware Boy..)
Anyone that's right-dragged a file in Win2k has probably seen the odd alpha-blending that Windows does. For those that aren't subjected to a dose of Microsoft at work, what it does it take the filename you've right-held on, invert the background (like normal selection in Win98) and then - this is the bit that gets me - alpha-blends it away from the point at which the mouse pointer "holds" the filename. And not just horizontally either, we're talking a full-on 2D alpha-blend. Ironically, I think it's supposed to make it look pretty, but with long filenames it tends to make the end furthest from the pointer unreadable.
Is Microsoft just adding twiddly bits and calling it innovation?
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
IMHO, Sir Bill should therefore be paying each and every one of us $4955 per copy! That is its true worth.
How can something that has significantly retarded the progress of mankind, and very substantially decreased office productivity, have any kind of positive value?
The Monopolist's contribution to society is equivalent to that of John Logie Baird, who contrary to popular belief did not invent television, in fact he retarded progress in that area by at least 20 years, yet became known to everyone as the inventor. Note that M$ in general, and Sir Bill in particular, has never invented anything except a new form of Criminal Monopoly.
I posted the content when I saw that the posted link was an "article e-mail" link -- subscribers are allowed to e-mail articles to others, and the way non-subscribers access the content is through the link. In a way, the submitter was trying to e-mail the article to the entire /. community. Also, there are some non-obvious points made in the article that are necessary for following the discussion once this /. article gets archived.
I pay for WSJ access, and encourage others to do so. I've got liberal leanings, but their reporting is top-notch, and their editorial page (which is freely available) has excellent op-ed writing -- they effectively hide weaknesses and focus on strengths of their arguments. At first it took me quite a while to see missing info, logic holes, and the like. While I agree more often with the NYT, in a classic debate they would probably lose to WSJ.
In hindsight, I should have just quoted the most interesting or insightful sections of the article -- it would have cut half the text and nipped any infringement accusations. But then I'd be open to accusations of snipping out parts to lay out my own interpretation of the article instead of letting people read the whole thing for themselves -- but then by the time it's an issue (7 days later), everybody would have already moved on.
Summary: Link aging is a universal problem, but google can solve many of those issues, except for subscription-based sites. I will try to quote more and copy less, but from the size of this discussion, I don't regret posting the content this time.
if WindowsXP only cost $45 I'd probaly buy a copy and run it on a PC.
as it doesnt, I dont run it.
I'd absolutely pay $45 for a full copy of Windows XP, no doubt about it. However in reality it costs $200 for a full copy of Windows XP Home, over 4 times the cost, and $300 for a full copy of Windows XP Professional, over 6 times the cost.
Thus, piracy reigns. People know when they're getting hosed.
MORTAR COMBAT!
You have habbits, I have habbits, everyone has habbits. And we all tend to like our habbits, otherwise we would have developed different ones.
Coming from above saying "Your habbital way of working will now cease to exist. This is the new way", ofcourse you will meet rebellion.
People want Windows and MS Office, because they don't understand computers, but have learned how to use these products. They necasserily don't understand any concepts, but they have memorized what they need to get their work done.
Now let's see it from a different point of view. Set up a Linux-desktop. Dead simple, as simple as it gets. You could even (and I realise this might be hard on your consiounce) rename Mozilla to "Internet (Explorer)", OpenOffice, to just "Office", and create a link to "~/Documents" named "My documents" on the desktop.
And that should be the desktop. Nothing more.
Install the KDE XP-theme if necassery. Anything to lower their eyebrows, really. Most users will want, maybe even need, recognisable visuals. That's how far their comprehension goes, and not inch further.
Now, try to explain to the poor user that due to security concerns and the economics of maintaining the old setup, they will have to cope with this.
Simply make them understand that this is not any more difficult than the old setup (cos it shouldn't be), but it may take some time getting used to. Because using a presetup Linux-desktop is not any more (technically speaking) difficult than using a pre-setup Windows desktop. Any difficulty encoutered at this point is due to old habbits not working on the new setup, and not because it's more difficult.
This at least goes for any basic "office" work. If they can't figure out how to install kazaa and play MP3s at work, well that's not in their jobdescription I would assume. That's not your problem, and you shouldn't accept it as such.
But people don't like their having their habbits interfered with, but that doesn't mean that habbits can't be changed. Just go softly on them.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
As the old saying goes: stealing crack doesn't make you any less addicted.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
If the customer is a business of decent size, they might not be interested in the pre-installed OS at all. They might allready have a license deal with Microsoft, and are installing fresh corporate-adapted ghost-images onto all new PCs that gets bought.
Paying for a pre-installed OS you're not gonna use, well... It would seem like a waste of money to me.
And you'd think that most big companies do have some sort of pre-configured OS-setup (usually Windows....) specificly for company-use allready? Or is it just me who have been working for companies doing things in an unusally practical manner?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
for Microsoft products is a reality.
Those we call "pirates" get it almost for free. Depending on who they are, they are subject to risks of prosecution, which represents a cost if you think about it in the insurance sense.
So MS charges large corporations a price, not too high, and it's heavily enforced. Then, sometimes people working at large corporations are allowed to take home copies for limited use, or to acquire things at a substantial discount. (A friend got the latest version of Office for $20 a little while back while at the store in the shrink-wrapped box it was about ten times as much.)
Smaller businesses and individuals pay another price, but some of those Windows and Office users get the piracy discount.
Third world countries - same thing, except there's more piracy discounting going on. Same thing at colleges and educational institutions.
All this goes to show that there's a tremendous pricing flexibility that MS has and actually uses. It's a consequence of monopoly control, pure and simple.
I don't know of any other products with this much differential pricing except for local telephone service, movies, CDs, cable service, electric service.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
People aren't going to buy as much MS OS, they'll just keep applying the latest patches. Can MS survive by selling new applications?
Hmmmm, let's see:
/etc/X11/XF86Config... compile what? KHz range of horizontal what? is that smoke? /etc/fstab and add an entry for /proc/usb, hand load kernel modules... quick inert drive... not fast enough, unload/load/inert! yay, device seen.. mount onto directory... now what did I want to copy off this? I forgot.
Windows XP:
- desktop not very configurable
+ desktop consistant and functional
+ detected 3d hardware out of the box
+ volume controls work
+ installed in 250M of disk space
+ media player works with MOST media types
+ file associations are managed from a central place, browser offers to make itself the default
+ thunderbird open, IE open with several pages, winamp playing with 3d-accelerated visuals on the desktop root, dvd being burned... 20% cpu use, 350M of 1G RAM in use. no noticable lag.
- weird random application failures
+ plug-in usb drive, shows up as a disk
- development environment == OMFG what a bloated PIG!
- stupid activation... WTF cares if I change cd burners?
Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3:
+ desktop configurable
- cut and paste between apps? hahahaha!
- hmmm, edit
- mixer? alsa? esound? why do I have to re-adjust settings when I change window managers?
- wants 1G of disk space, without installing source code???
- there's a media player for MOST media types
- file associations for gnome setup, kde puts them where? wait, gaim uses gnome's default, but thunderbird has it's own?
- thuderbird open, firefox running with several pages open, cd being burned, xmms running but fonts are unreadable, no visuals, cpu 45%, 300M of ram in use, but 500M of swap being used and system feels sluggish.
+ applications seem stable
- plug in usb drive, system locks! fiddle with
+ nice simple CLI development environment
+ no stupid license numbers to remember
Being a techie, I like linux, and I use it for all my servers (except my firewall, which is OpenBSD).... but I hate it as a desktop machine. doing the same things I do under windows, it feels slower, looks uglier, and doesn't do as much. Linux might be ready for the desktop in some IT departments... but I wouldn't want to try and teach someone how to use it.
So... Windoze costs $45. That's about 2 hours of my time. Will I spend 2 hours MORE fiddling with linux trying to get things working that "just work" under windows? If so, then yes, windoze is worth $45.
The article boils down to: what do you charge for software?
If you release over the internet, or for "free" with prebuilt PCs, then you have no manufacturing cost, and any number you identify as "price" is going to be a number pulled out from where the sun don't shine.
So if you don't need to cover costs, the remaining factor is: how much can we charge and still get away with it? Which is a question long since answered, I'm sure. They charge $45 because they can, not for any other reason. I can't really see any reason why they don't charge $450 or, for that matter, $4.50.
This won't stop an anecdote though. A friend of mine wrote a word processor and sold it for 50. He didn't sell many copies. He asked a consultant about it who said "quadruple the price". At 200 it sold like hot cakes. The price made all the difference to the perceived quality of the software. Naturally my friend wasn't complaining...
Microsoft is an enormous innovator. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic way that most /. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can us the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
We can refine KDE and Gnome to the point where the UI elegance is blinding. We can roll out the ultimate killer app. We can regularly have desktop uptimes measured in months.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
(Analogy unashamedly inspired by (though not really copied from) earlier post.)
Maybe I, and others should make a concentrated effort for a couple of months, trying to get this project I found: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/qt3-win32/ on its feet.
:D
In the long term they plan to make a GPL port of QT for Windows (not only Cygwin, but MINGW as well). This would be EXACTLY what is needed to provide a real, working, viable alterbative to Visual Studio. Get on the bandwagon, they need help now!
Basically, they are taking the QT GPL sources for X11 and start to replace Xcalls with Win32 calls. Should be doable...
Refuse to purchase from people that will not give you a no OS option. Your local mom and pop shops should be more than happy to build you a system without an OS. Likewise, custom build places off the web should do the same.
Dell chose, voluntarily, to ship Windows only, no options, on their desktop line. They did that because most (as in 90%+) of consumers want Windows and MS gives you the best rates if you give them an exclusive. However Dell isn't your only choice. Vote with your dollars and go buy a PC somewhere else.
And before anyone jumps on MS for the exclusive contracts, EVERYONE does this. Go to a restraunt some time, from a local shop to a large chain. Try to get both Pepsi and Coke. Not happening. Well why not? Because they've signed an exclusive, that's why. Both Pepsi and Coke will offer discounts, sizable ones at that, if you agree to distribute only their product. Basically all restraunts do this since soft drinks are a big money maker. Now you don't have to, gas stations and supermarkets demonstrate that. You can carry both, but they aren't willing to give you their best terms if you do.
For the sake of argument you can claim to be the Pope of software, but I bet if we look in the crystal ball of the past we can find you giggling as you Napster'd down an album or two.
You have it kinda backwards. What is Windows is not straightforward. What is Linux is straightforward.
Windows 3.X/9X/ME are Operating Environments that run off of DOS. The only job they don't suck at is running games.
Windows NT4, 2K, XP are GUI Operating Systems. Dispite what Microsoft may market them as, they make good Desktop OSs but poor servers (in general.)
Most Distros of Linux make good servers. Although the Linux Kernel now has DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure???) the X Window System just isn't designed to be a fast graphical environment. I know, the X Windows System isn't required for graphics or to run games. These things can be done by the program talking to the DRI directly. The one real gotcha I see for the Linux DRI is that the video card must be supported. Mine is not so I don't get any hardware 3D rendering.
So does Linux make a decent Desktop OS? I think it does, but most people would probably have an easier time with Windows NT4/2K/XP. Does Linux make a good gaming system? Well, I got Heritic II (Linux Version) running on my system after downloading a patch from Loki so it works but it can break because of any major change in its dependancies (libraries, the kernel itself!)
Linux does have the potential to be a decent gaming system.
So is Windows XP worth $45? If you have bought Windows NT4 or 2K and are just upgrading the hardware then I say no. Stick with what you got. I have not read the MS Licensing agreement for NT4 or 2K so I don't know if they allow you to purge it from one computer and install it to another, but that would be the best way to go. Why pay for the slower, more bloated, eye-candy XP? $45 is not worth the eye-candy.
If you want a new Desktop OS that doesn't make you think then Windows NT4/2K/XP is probably the best choice.
Do they still sell 2k?
Fantastic.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
By your logic SDRAM would cost less than DDR. Simply isn't the case anymore. Microsoft is no longer selling OEM versions of 98 or ME so its sort of dubious that you can buy them at all anyway. But if you purchase them through an OEM they are going to at least double the price. OEMs make nice profit on software unlike the hardware they sell
I mean yes, for the stuff the end user use most there isn't much innovation. However from a developer standpoint they are all about innovation. Did everyone just forget .Net. I mean thats a pretty big deal for developers. Also .Net 2.0 is supposed to have drag and drop web interfaces. There is definately innovation, just maybe not in the area end users would see very often.
Just my opinion though.
Does no-one else find it amusing that the first non-menu text on that page is "Dell recommends Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional"? Then again, I suppose they do recommend it, which explains why most of their computers sell with it (such as this one I'm posting from :s).
Dell clearly must be good business-people (in general), or else how would they have achieved such a massive market share? It makes business sense to recommend Windows in the present market, given that the majority of their target audience probably don't know that any (non-Apple) alternatives exist, and don't care even if they do. Maybe in a few years time, those "recommendations" (which, I suspect, must be part of the agreement with Microsoft, given the number of vendors who use the exact same wording) will disappear.
Dont forget thats for a home edition that comes with the machine, a boxed retail version is significantly more and a pro version (which is essential unless you want _total_ crap) costs much more. Microsoft Office is even more - again for the home version and thats something that for home users atleast - OpenOffice easily matches as a drop-in replacement. Only recently has Windows come with even basic firewalling, and we wont even go into the fundamental problems in the OS and its security fixing service.
However the hardware support is what keeps me here, but then its the other companies that write the drivers!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
No
Find me a SINGLE *nix resource that can even come CLOSE to matching the depth of the MSDN library.
Google.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
That bug infested, poorly architected, underpowered, virus friendly, anti-competitive piece of shit should carry a much bigger price tag. My time is worth more than $45 and Microsoft should pay me more to use the worst OS on the market.
The only thing XP has over 2000 is instant user switching. Other than that, 2k has it all: stability, good hardware support, and plays games well. Without all the activation or ET Phone Home crap thats in XP.
If you go to the Dell website www.dell.com, you will find that they do have Non- windows PC's available. Check under the small business section, and it does save approximately US$50.
this is a recent (within 30 days) change.
$45 ($60 CDN) is about what I'd be willing to pay for a copy of Windows XP. The last version of Windows I bought was Windows 3.1 back in 1993 and I got rid of my DOS partition in 1996 (when I switched to a spiffy new Pentium PC). It's been just Linux since then and for the most part, I have no complaints.
But I have a few bargain-bin games that won't run under WineX and there are a few other Windows-only apps out there that I'd like to play with so it would be handy to have a copy of Windows around. Also, there are a couple of programs I'd like to take a shot at porting to Windows. CDN $60 is about what that's worth to me.
A retail version of XP Home is $CDN 300 and XP Office goes for CDN $500, though, so I won't be giving MS any of my money. But if I'm buying a new computer anyway and I can get Windows at the OEM rate with it, then sure, why not?
If they want to try and force people to use their products, they should at least be free.
go ahead...mod me troll.
I used to be an MS pirate, but decided it would be a better value proposition to run a stable and secure free *nix system. Of course...a glimmer of morality as well. Stealing from a monopoly is still stealing.
I've worked as a purchaser for a large mid-west system builder where we were supposedly up there with the Dells and HP's and licensing cost, although considerably lower than retail, was never $45...
"This is one thing (of many) that I really hate about Microsoft. They don't adjust their prices based on the local economy (at least they don't do it here). Many other products sold here seem to have their prices adjusted based on the local standard of living. Not Microsoft software."
And yet when the movie, music and book cartel does this. They get vilified on Slashdot.
"Analysts estimate the Intel CPU costs more than a comparable product from rival Advanced Micro Devices."
I think I found where I want to do research.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Pay Apple tax to use software that can run on Windows: $2000
:)
Wrong decade, dude.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
> but Microsoft DOS had a critical role in the development of the modern PCs. We all owe it a lot.
> Prior to MS DOS, every operating system was sold by a hardware manufacturer, and they
> wouldn't sell the OS without a computer. But Microsoft changed that. With MS DOS, it was
> possible for computers from two different manufacturers to run the same application
> without porting or recompiling.
Do tell! According to MY memory; before MS DOS there was CP/M which could run on, not just different manufacturers machines, but entirely different hardware! Upon first install you selected what the character screen size in use was by chars across X lines down!
In certain cases CP/M (and the Z80 processor) was secondary to the original system OS!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
I completely agree with you. The author of this article completely ignored the developer community.
.NET and the MS developer tools, I was amazed at just how much more productive I became. I mean, the tools are incredible. And they work! And they work together!
And, up until about 6 months ago, my career was focused on Java/J2EE development. I was all about the open source community. I enjoyed finding out about all the disparate tools the community would throw at a particular problem.
However, when I started using
I plead with the author to attend this year's TechEd conference - I'd bet he'd be impressed at how much innovation MS actually does contribute.
I build computers on the side for freinds and family and church people. I "pirate" all microsoft software on each one of them that I built. Why? Because I have to compete with dell and the other manufacturers who have the best "deals". It costs them 45 dollars where as it would cost me over 100 each time. I personally use gentoo linux and as far as I am concerned microsoft can KMA! They need to spend all that money on some REAL programmers! I agree with basically what everyone else has been saying. Microsoft just fixes what didn't work the last version which was better then the last version which fixed the last version. I am forced to use windows machines at school and I have to keep up anyhow to be able to help end users. All that has happened to windows since 95/98 was improvement to the GUI and bug fixes.
What has M$ innovated?
Depends on which definition of "innovate" you use. In the "new to Microsoft" sense, lots of things. In the "new to the industry" sense, apparently absolutely nothing. Re the second, certainly everything you list was already being done by others. Re the first, equally innovative was the very first time you personally tied your shoes all by yourself.
Okay, I will grant, if it weren't for Microsoft, the virus and spam industries would certainly be much smaller, likely not exist. If you want to think of those as "innovations", hey, go for it.
I would bet that Microsoft would rather have a certain level of piracy (for home users especially), than have those machines run an alternative OS.
... Lots of text ...
If you decide to use Linux in dual boot, you can install Knoppix (or Mepis) alongside windows, and "dual boot", or you can buy SUSE or Mandrake, or another easy distro, with manuals, for a low price, or download for free from the links I provided.
You should have read my last statement before composing your essay: "Not saying these are reasons not to use linux, just mentioning some of the stuff I miss when I choose the "alternative" option when I boot my box." - That means I *am* dual booting.
I know about all of the workarounds and/or replacement applications you mention. Problem is, they are not complete replacements or just need more work than I think is justified getting them running (x-overoffice).
If you take a minute to search for "Linux" in the forum at Miranda IM's webpage, you will see that Miranda IM neither is easy to convert to a linux app even though it is OSS, nor does it seem to be a real replacement in linux land since many linux users ask the devs to port it to linux.
I stand corrected on one point: Opera. I must admit I haven't checked up on that one in a while. Last time I tried it out, the linux version was desperately lagging behind the windows version.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam