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Interview with Tony 'Say No to Windows' Bove
An anonymous reader writes "XYZ has an interview with Tony Bove, author of the upcoming book, "Just Say No to Microsoft". From the article: 'With this book Bove intends to help readers rid Microsoft from their life- this is easier said that done, but it is certainly possible. The book goes on to list alternatives to the Microsoft programs on which people have become dependent and probably think they cannot give up.'"
yeah, you can rid yourself of everything microsoft until some jerk offers video content exclusively in .wmv, and you really need to view it.
:(
and they don't take appeals, and you can't install linux/mplayer.
proper-fucked frownface
"The just say no or linux only group always propose stuff for you to get by without ms, but some of us need to do more then use word and excel"
Then they are not talking to you. On the first page of TFA he is asked what his target audience is, and the answer is not 'everyone'.
There's Novell-backed OpenExchange
There's Germany-backed Kolab
There's RedHat-backed eGroupWare
There's all-open OpenGroupware
And that's just the tip of it. There are also commercial products.
Seriously - if you think there are not alternatives to Exchange out there, then either you have not done your homework or are seriously misinformed, or both.
Prior to graduating high school (2002), I had never used anything except Microsoft Windows. Now, I use Linux almost exclusively. I say almost only because I play games occasionally and I have one class that requires(!) me to use Windows. A major concern of mine is that game developers will have to stop using OpenGL, making it far more difficult to release games on multiple platforms, reducing the chance of there ever being a Linux gaming market. Why? Because Microsoft is planning to reduce the performance of OpenGL in Windows Vista:
t ory/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000001
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/cgi_direc
If you do not want Microsoft's strangle-hold to continue, you should be concerned about this.
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=853
Enjoy
Mod parent down! This book is offered on Amazon for only $16.47 (not $199). The article advertises a Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld, which is obviously not his book, but an ad for something else.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
If you're looking at scrapping Exchange, or starting from scratch and you need to offer some of the functionality of Exchange, then these are great.
None of them are a drop-in replacement for exchange.
I'm looking at all of these in hopes of moving away from Exchange. Users want to continue to use Outlook the same way they do now. I can't put any of these in place and *guarantee* that they will have a happy time. I can upgrade this crud 5.5 box to 2003, and I *can* offer that guarantee.
This sucks for the following reasons:
I am probably going to be the only person who would have a chance at moving this company off Microsoft products, but Outlook is the clincher. This means that there will be another company running a crucial business service another 7-10 years on a Microsoft product.
I won't be the only person in the world in the position to replace proprietary crap with open software, but won't actually be able to do so due to labor contraints, the inability to handhold and retrain Executives, and the lack of convincing evidence to slap on the desk of the (gratefully) Open-minded Ops director.
There's not a singular OSS package that acts as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Server Products (printer sharing, samba, mail, etc) in the same boring "just works" fashion. We get more configurability, but we also get more configuring to do.
I want to "Set it and forget it." From my desktop. Without having to install any additional software.
Perhaps this is because some us find working on Windows the most mind-grating thing ever.
I really don't understand this fascination with Visual Studio. From what I've seen (which is not a trivial amout) of the 2003 version, it rather sucks in comparison to some of the latter day Free IDEs. I've heard from a friend at Microsoft that 2005 got a major upgrade in many areas (like refactoring) so that IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans don't eat their mindshare/lunch. MS KNEW that they were weak there.
In contrast, with *NIX I pretty much get a development environment out of the box. The one sore point is Java, which really is no different than installing it under Windows...it's just that most repositories do not include it. Besides this, it is trivial to obtain a shell, perl, python, gcc, ruby, and countless other libraries. I also haven't seen a half decent (free or otherwise, but less search for the latter type) virtual workspace manager for Windows.
The one notable exception (which is a large one) is developing Windows applications. For this reason alone (with games, but those aren't productive, so they don't count) I must boot back into Windows now and again.
df
Open-Xchange - The Beta Outlook connector is free. The stable version only costs $10.
Oh well, what the hell...
I think the mac = photoshop thing is a myth. It was that way in the 90's. Most everyone I've come in contact with in the industry is using windows.
Render farms, however, are an exception.
Another thing to remember I guess is personal preference. On art teams for example, some houses will let you model on whatever you want as long as you export to a common format. It all depends how the studio is set up and how much support there is for the applications you're using.
"Lead my skeptic sight."
and my next system for sure will be an G5 or G6
I'm sorry to say that there will not be a G6 chip in Macs. In case you haven't heard, Apple is moving away from IBM and is switching to Intel chips.
Actually, Maya runs very well under Linux - At my last job almost everybody (we're talking a couple of hundered TDs/Animators here) moved over to Linux from Windows. Photoshop was another matter though - although some people used it via Crossover Office, most people who had to use it a lot had a second machine just to run it on. There's really no serious alternative.
However I'm talking Post Production here. Now I'm back in the games industry I'm back on Windows again.
I've been told by business areas that two clicks in a user interface is one too many.
Seriously, users just want it to work. They generally don't care what program/platform/religion it is. They just don't want to click more than once.
Thanks for pointing out the typo in my resume. I am, actually, an "expert" on iTunes, as I wrote "iPod and iTunes for Dummies" (3rd edition just came out). OK, all you flamers, light your torches about how much of a dummy I am...
Thanks for reading.As someone who has spent most of his life being diabetic, I have never needed my glucose meter to talk to my computer. My latest glucose meter, a One-Touch UltraSmart, has all the logging and information functions I need inside it, including some basic information on diabetic exchanges. My diabetic care team poke a couple of buttons on it, get the averages from the menus, and hand it back to me. *chirp* Done.
Before that, I had this nifty device called a diabetes logbook, with the optional "pen" attachment. Worked great for logging.
This doesn't even adress the fact that the majority of "average users" woulf be totaly oblivious to what desktop they are using until it was time to send it to the repair shop. Then they call all thier smart friends and tell them thier running windows 2000 because 2000 was the year ME came out. They say the interweb isn't working when they really mean the system won't boot. The claim they toasted the cpu when they mean the powersupply is bad. They claim the moniter won't work when they actualy unpluged the tower to run the vacume cleaner and forgot to plug it back in.
Dell and HP, Gateway and other make a good living because people are too lazy to even learn how to use a computer. Untill microsoft put the security center on the desktop to nag you, most users didn't know you needed an antivirus or firewall or that the one wich came with the computer and expired 4 years ago needed to be updated. Linux isn't any harder then windows to the "average user". The average user get thier internet running (usualy dhcp on a cable or dsl modem) sets up thier email and surfs the interweb. Ocasionaly they chat with some chat softwareand play cardgames. They write stuff in wordpad thinking it is office and print it out on the printer that came with the computer. When it breaks they call tech support and give enough wrong information that it usualy requires placing the restore CD into the drive and restarting the computer.
The shop that sold them the upgraded video card or hardrive usualy gets them comming back to have it installed (in windows) so what would be the difference if it was linux? I'll tell you, the half assed self described windows gurus that solve problems by eventualty clicking the corect sequence of buttons to get it working would actualy have to know a little about something other then left and right click. I don't know how many systems I have had to fix because someone "knew what they were doing". As for gamers? Well untill reletivly recently there were alot of games that required updated video drivers, updated directX, patches form the game manufacturer and other workarounds. I havn't been a "gamer" for a year or so now so it might be a little better.
I guess my point is that once a linux system is set up, it is just as easy if not easier then windows. You don't need to learn anythign outside what you already know except maybe a few different namings to click on. If dell or hp was to offer an entry level (low end) PC for a relitivly comparible price as thier other offerings (read adds for $300-$400 pc with monitor and cheap printer) Most average users wouldn't know the difference after thier interweb and email was working. This is because most users only use the computer for surfing, instant messaging, playing slingo and other browser based games, email and writing (printing)some documents.