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Microsoft Windows: A Lower Total Cost of 0wnership
bahamutirc writes "Dave Aitel of Immunity, Inc. has written an excellent report detailing the lower Total Cost of 0wnership Microsoft Windows has over Linux. Dave takes a unique approach in comparing the two operating systems, and the results are not surprising. The paper was submitted to Bugtraq today and is available in PDF and Open Office."
RUB creates a proper boot sector, which on rare occasions, windows XP cant understand (like i said, its XP apparently thats a fault)
I understand that completely. That doesn't solve the problem, though. Mandrake apparently, can resize the NTFS partitions (very cool). If it can resize the NTFS partitions, it's definately designed to squeeze onto a hard drive with Win NT/2K/XP. How could they miss something so huge? Ultimately, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Fact is I can't risk losing a machine, and it quite honestly, makes Mandrake look *very* unprofessional.
The single product in question, "The Microsoft Operating System", according to their copyright labels has been around for what? 19 YEARS! (1985-2004). All businesses work to lower their operating costs and increase their profit/growth (i.e. ROI, another buzz term :p). Luckily their 'benefit' eventually does pass on to the customer (i.e. as sold as TC0). Businesses don't create an environment that allows customers to save money unless that business save money as well (and makes more money to boot). So, making the business case to customers using the lower TCO strategy is misleading. It's a facade to customers. It sounds cool. To a consumer, TCO shouldn't be a valid measure of value IMO.
For a potential customer, in economically judging and determining the superior OS, or "the better buy", one should look at what I call "the rate of TC0"--i.e. TCO over the product's lifetime. Yes, Microsoft has "rewritten" the Windows kernel a couple of times, but it still identified as the "Microsoft Operating System"--even since the days of MS-DOS (the Ford Mustang automobile comes to mind). And we all know there's got to be some old DOS code in XP Professional somewhere. It took almost 20 years for Microsoft to get where they are with Windows. Graph it out and I bet it's a nice linear rate--a controllable rate (TCO trending downward) that MS is able to handle and survive and beat the competition. NOW, look at the rate of Linux? Much, much better for the consumer IMO in the current market conditions and Linux has only been around for what? 5 years? And every major version of Linux is leaps and bounds from the last. That rate's probably exponential and so good it can intepreted as a threat such that is can make operating system a commodity to the extent no one makes money (i.e. Get Win2012 for $9.99, via developed in Baghdad). That usually promotes new services, growth, and innovation in the industry, which is all good.
Although, I'm currently disgusted of RedHat Linux 8, it's runs great, but my apps (i.e. eclipse) crash quite a bit, the UI is not as good a XP, but for an OS that's been around for less than 5 yrs, it still beats windows 98 and NT. Linux maintenance is going through the same phase as Win98/NT did a few years back, but with the maintance costs of those times (higher), and it's expected as Microsoft does have a head start (10+ years) in fixing bugs. The next version of Linux (and UI) is sure going to be up there with Win2K/XP and likely better where as Longhorn looks like a "repackaged" (bug free?) version of XP.
That is what the business community should be aware of, but unfortunately the community is fed information (from Market Research firms) based on which vendor's has the deepest pockets and short term goals. Gotta love capitalism :)
To the non-business consumer, TC0 is still: $149 Windows XP vs. $0 (and some setup time) for Linux.