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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.'"
The Army reading list
I personally switched to Mac for my personal platform in '03. I love it, it's great, etc, etc, etc. But I still use Windows at work. And I think it's probably the best solution given the alternatives. It just seems that there are so many services that Microsoft provides that simply don't exist (in an easy to use manner any way) on other platforms. Things like Sharepoint, MS Project come to mind, but we also use countless programs that simply aren't available for other platforms. I understand that other platforms ARE possible for use, but is it really worth it? Anyone out there using another platform that never finds themself asking, "man, if I only had Windows?"
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
Okay, I've been using Macs since the 80s (yes, you read correctly) and have been exclusively on Windows from between 1994 - 2004 (I'm a J2EE engineer). Last year, I belatetly hopped onto the OS X bandwagon and the only thing that keeps my Windows boxes at home running are dozens of apps that I have accumulated in the last decade. I know that I could replace most of my apps with Mac apps, but sometimes they don't support my workflow or I cannot interchange. With that said however (and with this not supposed to be turning emotional ;-) I must concede that my Windows days are limited. It has already started with iPods, Cinema displays, etc.. and my next system for sure will be an G5 or G6 (whenever it'll be released) - I happen to know Unix very well, so OS X simply rules for me. Finally, with the video iPod a new era in online video is being spearheaded (see yesterday's /. thread on the topic) and Quicktime is going to be the future. That will allow me to distribute my little shorts to millions of iPods all over the world - something Windows is lightyears away from doing. Finally, on the development front - I'm already 1/2 the time developing on a G4 and hopefully Windows is going to quietly go away in the remainder of this decade.
It is fair game to complain about the costs of Windows, Office and other MS products because that leads to a costs vs benefits analysis of whether it is a better value vs the time and effort spent by the users and the administration costs than other solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. It is fair game to complain about the security issues with Microsoft's products because they have admitted as much that there are issues there and regularly release patches and advisories to address them and are making the ability to run as a non-administrator level user a requirement of software written for Vista to further address it. It is fair game to quantitatively compare the performance of Microsoft's solutions versus other vendor's solutions because, as long as the setup is fair and impartial, numbers don't lie and are a useful tool for comparison of applicability and value of a solution to your needs and hardware. It is fair game to talk of particular bugs and issues you have with Microsoft's products because they have a responsibility to support their products such that they work as advertised. It is even fair game to argue subjective points like ease of use and ease of administration of Microsoft's solutions versus that of their competitors because these are things that people from desktop users to system administrators use every day as an integral part of their jobs and have some responsibility for making things as easy and productive as possible for all involved in the enterprise.
However, what is not fair game is this view of Microsoft as evil and their solutions are never to be considered and you need to "Say No To Windows." Beware those who will tell you that Microsoft is evil, that it's solutions are never better suited to your situation and who will say things about the stability and performance of the OS that fly in the face of the millions who use it without such issues day in and day out to get their work done. There are people believe in Linux and opensource almost as a religion and suffer from the logical fallacy that, if Linux is as better in every way as they believe it to be, Microsoft can only be maintaining it's dominance in marketshare by some sort of evil trickery and vendor lock-in. You are not going to get the answers you need from these sorts of individuals - the corporate solutions will never get any consideration no matter how easy to use, easy to administer, fast, stable and secure that they get. I am still waiting to see a truly fair and objective comparison on Slashdot that takes all these things into account for various situations. That is an article I'd read and the book I'd buy...
And from the average user's perspective, anything more than 0 steps is too many.
Now this is the type of arrogant ignorance I get series headaches from when I come across it. How many steps did you require to learn to use a Windows ? Ok, scrap that. What you mean is that you got so so mentally stuck and so unable to change, to learn and to adapt, or became simply too fragging lazy to even consider using anything else than some good/bad [doesn't really matter] app you got used to ? If that's the case I really deeply feel sorry for you, but all I can say is that all you get is what you deserve. God forbid you happen to drop into a situation where you need to learn new things. What will you do, hang yourself ? Bah, I'm outa here.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I dunno, I seem to be doing pretty well running very popular karaoke shows on weeknights and weekends in a college town using an all-digital system entirely based on free software running on a notebook.
64-bit Ubuntu Linux starts things off, Enlightenment manages (very effectively) the desktop I run during the shows (part of the screen is shown on a big-screen TV so folks know who's singing and who's next; Firefox (!) does that display work), XMMS does a beautiful job (moving to amaroK for this purpose though; it's even nicer) playing both filler and karaoke music, crossfading smoothly between tracks and managing all the audio bits for me, SingIt runs the CDG karaoke lyrics, and my own home-grown Python code manages the singer rotations for me. Sure seems like more than Word and Excel to me.
Sure, I'm a "geek" and I know what I'm doing. No need for Windows on this machine.
Essentially out of the blue, two weeks ago my mother called and asked me if I could bring a Linux Live CD by next time I visit. She's sick of how slow her machine's getting. She's sick of constant root-level vulnerabilities being discovered and needing patching on her workstation. She knows all about not running spyware, about keeping the antivirus software updated, etc., but otherwise she's a polar opposite from me — she doesn't program, she just uses her computer for assorted "computery" tasks.
She's what you'd call a member of "the masses," and even she's ready to switch. It's not a question of "getting by" without Microsoft's software. It's a matter of people saying "holy shit this thing is so much faster / more stable / more useful without that Windows crap on it!" and realizing they've been fooled for years. I don't "get by" without Microsoft; I prosper without them.
And as an aside, plenty of specialized industrial software is still developed for and supported on platforms other than Windows. Show me a heart/vitals monitor in a hospital that runs anything from Microsoft on it. Visit HP's hardware testing labs and witness the Unix-driven measurement and control systems.
Read my stuff.
What sucks is that people get accustomed to doing things the Microsoft way. Let me illustrate with an example.
.NET framework. Only then will I be allowed to upload this data.
I have to communicate some textual data --- a small amount (less than a page) --- to a company. This company has hired a team of developers to produce a 50MB program to enter this data into their system. In order to use the program, I have to install a database and the
This, IMHO, is more along the lines of what the author is getting at. We should not be bitching about Microsoft VS Linux. We should be bitching that after decades of computing, we still haven't settled upon some kind of standard by which to communicate a mouthful of data in a form which everyone is capable of reading and editing.
In an age where we discuss quantum computing and space travel, this state of affairs is absolutely disgraceful.