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A Look at Windows Server Outselling Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the deeper-and-deeper-way-down dept.

THG writes "CoolTechZone.com has an interesting look at Linux's position in the market now that Microsoft has sold more Windows Server software than Linux. From the article: "The most important reason that Windows based servers are doing so well could be that programmers find it extremely easy to work on .Net and other related technologies (seamless integration). Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers. When Windows Live comes in, we will see further integration between the server and online technical support areas, thereby making the troubleshooting process easier for in-house administrators and reducing overhead costs for the company."

39 of 450 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by 75th+Trombone · · Score: 5, Funny
    CoolTechZone.com has an interesting look at Linux's position in the market now that Microsoft has sold more Windows Server software than Linux.

    Okay now wait, I'm confused. Are Microsoft's sales of Windows Server higher than Microsoft's sales of Linux? Or are Microsoft's sales of Windows Server higher than Linux's sales of Linux? Or are Microsoft's sales of Windows Server higher than Linux's sales of Windows Server?

    Because, y'know, without clarification, I might think someone didn't know what someone was saying.

    (At least we can feel safe knowing that once we figure that out, any stats involving both "sales" and "Linux" will be perfectly clear and accurate and meaningful.)

    --
    The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
    1. Re:Hmm... by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because, y'know, without clarification, I might think someone didn't know what someone was saying.

      I am fairly certain they knew what they were doing as they were trying to add to the continued confusion of Linux server "sales".

      Microsoft wants everyone to believe that their TCO is lower than Linux when everyone knows it's not. By funding/writing misleading press releases, they can further blur (in the general public's mind) the lines that don't exist.

    2. Re:Hmm... by Golias · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And just who is this "Linux" company which Microsoft seems to be competing so well against?

      The thing I know of called "Linux" is a free operating system (which behaves a lot like UNIX), sold by dozens of different companies as a server environment, and also available for free. If there's some company out there called "Linux" who is just selling to the IT server market, it is no wonder MS is outselling them, as they must be very obscure.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    3. Re:Hmm... by Red+Alastor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yup, that's purely the truth and it's purely FUD. In other news, Linux servers are outdownloading Microsoft servers.

      --
      Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
    4. Re:Hmm... by dougmc · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Microsoft wants everyone to believe that their TCO is lower than Linux when everyone knows it's not.
      No, everyone doesn't `know it's not'.

      Certainly, in some cases, the TCO of Linux in a certain role at a certain location will be more than the TCO of a Windows server (or group of servers) serving the same rule. I'm not saying that this is always the case, or even that it's usually the case, but at least some of the time, this will be true.

      Is it just me, or did Microsoft pretty much `invent' the TCO term strictly to counter free software like Linux? Did the term exist before Linux did, or was it just Microsoft making it popular?

      In any event, I'm not here to argue that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux. I'm just saying that it's not as `obviously' wrong as you make it sound.

    5. Re:Hmm... by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Informative
      Is it just me, or did Microsoft pretty much `invent' the TCO term strictly to counter free software like Linux? Did the term exist before Linux did, or was it just Microsoft making it popular?

      Yes. "TCO" has been around forever. Mac zealots regularly rolled out the "MacOS has better TCO than Windows" arguments back in the early (and mid, and late) 90s (in reference to a single TCO comparison of MacOS 7.x and Windows 3.0, IIRC).

      "TCO" is a pretty well known term in a business environment (which is probably why so few people on Slashdot have heard of it outside Linux-Windows fluff articles).

    6. Re:Hmm... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Insightful
      "TCO" is a pretty well known term in a business environment (which is probably why so few people on Slashdot have heard of it outside Linux-Windows fluff articles).

      Indeed, but insisting on quoting figures for Linux server "sales" indicates only a deliberate intent to mislead, since the majority of Linux servers out there are running on distros downloaded free of charge. Yes, I do know about RedHat Enterprise stuff, but I don't know anybody who uses it...

    7. Re:Hmm... by killjoe · · Score: 4, Informative

      TCO is pretty much bullshit because most businesses don't even keep track of the expenses on their servers. All they do is depreciate what they can and that's the extent of it.

      I once asked a CIO if I should keep track of what the software we installed on a server costs and whether we should balance that against the monetary benefits of the said software and he just looked at me like I was nuts. Apparently you are not allowed to actually keep track of TCO, you are just supposed to read about it in gartner reports.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    8. Re:Hmm... by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 4, Informative
      I think you will find TCO was being taught in business school in the 1960's (at least in the UK). Gartners may be staking claim to public domain property, but I dont think that is a new concept either.

      TCO in relation to servers probably did not exist before servers.

      TCO is widely taught in sales courses as a marketing tool used by people whose solution is too expensive to justify the additional cost. Its in the same boat with "Yes we are the most expensive, its cos we are the best".

      The whole point of getting an MBA is so you know to use these things on the competition, and not have them used on yourself. Of course, if you got your MBA from one of those places offering them for $5 on the internet, you might not have to do any actual learning.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  2. Gartner... by krray · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Gartner, Inc. recently reported:
    First, the study says that Windows based Servers accounted for 37 percent in revenue. Now traditionally, Windows based systems are more expensive than Linux based systems, so even if vendors sold lesser number of Windows systems, the price difference could ensure that Windows sales revenue was higher. This implies that, in terms of pure numbers, Linux could very well have outsold Windows.

    Enough said. Nothing to see here. Move along...

    I've recently redone the server end for [yet another] office (Linux based, of course) for which they certainly won't show up in Linux or Windows based sales "reports". Ever.
    Linux is doing just fine...

    1. Re:Gartner... by MaelstromX · · Score: 5, Informative

      Absolutely right, and to attempt to gauge Linux's success or popularity by sales is completely futile. As a matter of fact, the article recognizes all of this.

      First, the study says that Windows based Servers accounted for 37 percent in revenue. Now traditionally, Windows based systems are more expensive than Linux based systems, so even if vendors sold lesser number of Windows systems, the price difference could ensure that Windows sales revenue was higher. This implies that, in terms of pure numbers, Linux could very well have outsold Windows.

      Furthermore the article says that Linux servers account for 31.7% as opposed to Windows' 37%. To paint this as anything other than a success for Linux (which is either free, as in the case of the parent, or likely cheaper than the Windows alternative) is a little strange.

      Personally I'm not seeing the point of posting this blog entry but learning those numbers was a little interesting I guess.

      --
      audioLibre - freedom of music
    2. Re:Gartner... by sillybilly · · Score: 5, Funny

      Duh. Linux can be had for free, without a sale. You could even say linux had zero sales and you could still be missing the point, because some people might find it very useful and might be using it very happily, for free. This is not the front to attack linux from.

      If you wanted to have a point to what you say, you could say about linux that people who made it were too lazy to make it good because they weren't paid, and I could believe that with good data backing it up, but it must be hard to prove that point, or we'd see it all over the place. You could also say that linux was submarined and made defective on purpose, that there was significant effort invested by the competition to bring it down, or to bring down its creators, and I would even believe that with even less data, but I'd get very pissed. "Ideally" (according to some people,) people who get paid lots of money to program should come up with better software than those that only make a comfortable sustenance at it, and are mostly fueled by compassion and the love of their art, and the recognition of their peers. Money can only buy you so much recognition in a linux coding community, but if you're the creator of some cool kernel feature, or device driver, or super optimized smp code section that everyone admires to read, now you're talking.

      For the other side, there was a story on PBS about two gun-inventors, from about the 1960's, one in the US, the other in the USSR. I forget the actual gun names. They both invented roughly equivalent guns, that were robust, could be dragged through mud and still work, and the US version even saw action in Vietnam, where soldiers preferred it to the more sophisticated guns that just broke down at the slightest touch of dirt. So basically, the US inventor got very rich, while his Soviet counterpart got a medal. This is the most important difference, according to the Soviet guy, as he commented on it years later. Sooner or later that aspect catches up with people too, especially if they are like an ex soviet, currently living barely at the edge of sustenance level. Hey, after the collapse of USSR, there were PBS reports showing a guy with a family to support, whose job was to guard the nuclear warheads, saying he hasn't been paid for six months by his government, because it was so bankrupt it couldn't even send a spaceship up to the MIR space station, and an astronaut was stuck up there for like a year, until the US Space Shuttle made a trip to pick him up. So yes, soviet gun inventors care a lot about not getting paid, especially when they are hungry. Basically, if you want the freecoding linux programming community to care more about getting paid, you should find a way to starve them, but as soon as they make enough to have food, and shelter (but not soap, clothing, combs, etc, such things are unimportant to happiness, unless you want to get laid) off they go again, out of your control.

  3. Re:from a different viewpoint: by gui_tarzan2000 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Especially since so many Linux servers are running free versions. Our Linux OD didn't cost us a dime, the support is what we pay for (but rarely need).

    --
    Have you hugged your penguin today?
  4. Is it April Fools alreay? by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers

    Hassle-free? Rapid? Man I gotta get whatever these guys are smoking....

    Every try to report a bug in a Microsoft product and get a fix? You'll likely be waiting on the order of months. That is, if you get a fix at all.

    1. Re:Is it April Fools alreay? by DanteLysin · · Score: 4, Informative

      I know this audience is largely anti-Microsoft. However, all of my service tickets with Microsoft (regarding server support) were resolved quickly. The Product Support Engineers kept me apprised with daily updates. One time, one of the Product Support Engineers took 2 days to get back to me.

      In my career, I've experienced poorer support with other software vendors.

      Then again, the company I work for is a Microsoft Partner. That could make a difference.

    2. Re:Is it April Fools alreay? by mfifer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I call BS.

      We've worked with Microsoft's $245/call service several times with obscure problems and two things to Microsoft's credit:

      1) they never gave up on the problem
      2) they came through with a fix (longest wait time was a really odd Office/Windows OpLock prob and we had a fix within 10 business days).

      Man, I think MS is the devil as much as the next guy (Apple guy here, for reference), but I've put dollars up that they've refused to take.

      FUD you're speakin', I'd say...

  5. Cred, where on cred is due... sigh by yagu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article:

    The most important reason that Windows based servers are doing so well could be that programmers find it extremely easy to work on .Net and other related technologies (seamless integration). Plus, you have hassle free and rapid support from Microsoft, which is a comforting feature for corporate customers. When Windows Live comes in, we will see further integration between the server and online technical support areas, thereby making the troubleshooting process easier for in-house administrators and reducing overhead costs for the company.

    Is this really true? The teams I worked with on .NET and Windows technology hardly found the integration seamless. As a matter of fact we had a full-time staff of Microsoft consultants on-site as well as on call to help provide workarounds for all of the glitches with the .NET technology, and there were a LOT of them.

    I do wish there were less license for this kind of publishing. It is the complement to libel, i.e., it gives undue credit to someone for something not true. Weird. And, it still does damage to third party simply by virtue of lending credence and credibility to .NET and Microsoft. Sigh.

    1. Re:Cred, where on cred is due... sigh by killjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FUD articles like this usually ignore the fact that java exists. Java does exist and .NET is just a ripoff of it. Java has a better ide then .net (yes eclipse, netbeans and idea are all better the VS), has a richer library, integrates fantastically with the OS (syslog etc), has a much more robust and active community and costs nothing to use.

      Look at what happened with VS.NET 2005. After years of being half as productive as eclipse users MS finally gave them a decent build sytem, a unit testing framework, and something like javadoc. Needless to say they blatantly ripped off ant and junit all the while making their product incompatible of course. Somehow they forgot about ripping off hibernate and xdoclet though which I found odd.

      Anyway after two years of working with primitive tools which didn't have any refactoring support or half the shit java developers have been taking for granted they now have a product which is 80% as good as eclipse. FOr the next two years eclipse will continue to pull ahead and the VS.NET people will not know any better because they finally got a few new features in VS and are soooooo happy and proud.

      --
      evil is as evil does
  6. Well... by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 4, Insightful
    When your product is gratuit, it's very easy to "sell" less than a competing product that costs money... In fact, you're selling none at all.

    It's very easy to sell more than nothing. You only need to sell it once!!!

  7. Not to mention.... by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... that whenever a company buys a bunch of servers from say, Dell, and doesn't bother to specify on the order that some are Linux servers (since it doesn't save you any money for the hassle of making two orders, especially if you are using Debian or some non-supported distro anyway), they get counted towards *Windows* profits, even though they will be wiped as soon as they get to the company.

    1. Re:Not to mention.... by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slight correction: those short-lived preinstalls aren't just counted as Windows profits, they are Windows profits. In fact it's a very profitable sale of Windows, as there are no support issues whatsoever. Pretty sweet for Microsoft, I'd say.

    2. Re:Not to mention.... by Linker3000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have been purchasing OS-less HP Proliant servers in the UK for around two years through the regular end-user sales channels. They end up running CentOS as mail, intranet and database servers.

      --
      AT&ROFLMAO
  8. Misrepresented Statistics by n0dalus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A common problem in trying to count the number of servers running an OS is defining what a 'server' is. Most Linux servers I've seen run ten times the number of virtualhosts that Windows servers do. Do you count a Linux server running 1000 sites as 1 server or 1000?
    I wouldn't be surprised if there were more physical servers running Windows, but if you count virtualhosts instead there would be far more sites using Linux.

  9. No, it gets even better. by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First off, they admit that they don't know what the UNITS are, just the revenue (and they admit that Windows costs more than Linux).

    THEN they go off about WHY Microsoft moves more units than Linux, even though they admit that they don't know that Microsoft DID move more units.

    You'd think that "cooltechzone" might be a bit suspicious that units are not mentioned. Just a bit suspicious.

    1. Re:No, it gets even better. by bit01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You'd think that "cooltechzone" might be a bit suspicious that units are not mentioned. Just a bit suspicious.

      Probably a marketing front site. Many marketing parasites are far more devious and deceptive than even most /.'ers give them credit, let alone the general public.

      It's common practice to create and maintain plausible looking "alternative viewpoint" websites designed to manipulate opinion. and to submit posts and moderate on sites like /.. Marketers aren't stupid, they're quite happy to put in strawman viewpoints and other material just to make their marketing propaganda look plausible. On /. a classic is "I like linux but ..." and then proceed to trash any viewpoint except the one they're paid to push.

      There's millions of dollars involved; do you think the ethics of a large percentage of marketing parasites is going to stop them from doing damn near anything they think they can get away with?

      ---

      The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

  10. What Rubbish (Not Troll...Serious comments!) by cloricus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At my work place we are (painfully) slowly moving away from our existing Microsoft Windows Servers and replacing them with Linux and Solaris solutions. Note things like our Exchange servers are staying in place as there are no suitable equivalents though most other things are being moved across. Why? Because Microsoft's support is a joke compared even to unofficial IRC support channels for FOSS, it costs far to much when compared to Free* (*plus training, installation, support) solutions, and we dislike the vendor lock in Activation and licenses that are forced on those using Microsoft Server software; we paid good money only to be treated like pirates and have to deal with those systems failing and causing server problems, it is Microsoft's problem and making it our problem is a punch to the face. Right now as I type this I'm converting a Windows 2k3 Server to Ubuntu 5.10 (yes I know...) for another company in towns that I'm mates with the boss as they simply can't afford to deal with support issues on a mission critical server. They need some thing that Just Works(tm) and that is Linux (I tried pitching Solaris 10! I really did!). From my look on the Industry (note I'm in Australia) I see it as being more of a case that people are looking at Linux seriously, testing the water, liking it, and then attempting to migrate their servers. Along with hardcore Linux users who refuse to move to Microsoft (Rubbish) Software I see this as the Linux server market growing and I seriously doubt Microsoft dominance over Unix really exists. (Then again...There are a lot of Exchange servers out there...) 2 cents

    --
    I ate your fish.
  11. Windows Troubleshooting by SQLz · · Score: 4, Interesting
    thereby making the troubleshooting process easier for in-house administrators and reducing overhead costs for the company.

    What I don't get with Windows troubleshooting is why the first thing you do is reboot. With Linux, if you have a problem, 100 reboots is not going to solve the problem. As a person who has administrated hundreds, probably thousands of Windows, Linux, BSD machines, I find Linux to be much easier to troubleshoot because there is basically no such thing as an intermittent problem.(maybe 0.01% of the time and 99.9% of the time its a hardware problem and not Linux) You either have a problem, or you don't. There is not of this crap where a machine runs fine for 30 days then all of a sudden has issues that go away when you reboot.

    Maybe others have different experiences, I don't know. I've worked a lot of different places over the last 10 years and this has held true everywhere.

  12. NO OS couints as Windows at Dell by bstadil · · Score: 5, Informative
    No it is not false

    If you buy a blade server without OS specified It comes with something called "No Operating System Microsoft Configuration [Included in Price]" and is counted as Windwos servers

    Look for yourselves Dell Bladeserver"

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
    1. Re:NO OS couints as Windows at Dell by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's also a selection "Red Hat Enterprise Linux - No Operating System Installed", for the same $0 price.

      --
      If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
  13. Re:Here is the 3Q breakdown by Glonoinha · · Score: 4, Funny

    the rest is servers bought without OS Guess what is being installed on those?
    Windows 2000 Pirate Edition?

    --
    Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
  14. This article is a Misleading troll. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative


    It's bullshit. Nobody is shocked that Windows outsells Linux. Windows Server has ALWAYS outsold Linux. Linux outselling Windows would be NEWS.

    And Linux doesn't account for 31% of total server revenue.. It accounts for fucking 12% of server revenue.
    http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/23/server_sales_q3_ 2005/

    The only news is that NEW linux sales (as in more sold this quarter then previous) rose 34+ percent, or something like this.

    This has been 12 straight quarters which new server sales for Linux growth has risen double digits. There have been quarters were Linux growth has been 54% NEW sales over the previous quarter's sales. Linux is increasing it's precense in the datacenter and in the server room like a fucking rocket. Always has been, but until recently Linux has been a very small fish in a big pond. Now it's the second most common OS that your going to see anywere.

    The news this guy is refering to is that Windows outsold UNIX, not Linux. Linux is recorded in a seperate catagory..

    This isn't due to anything wonderfull Windows does. The main reason you'd want to run Windows Server is that you run Windows Desktop because Microsoft's products don't integrate with jack shit. But everybody runs Windows desktop and windows desktop only works well with windows server unless you have a mixed enviroment then you use Linux as glue between MS stuff and everything else.

    The main reason that Unix servers sales have flagged is because Linux, not Windows. Linux is MUCH cheaper to use then Unix.

    Hell in this quarter alone Sun has dropped from 7+ % of sales to under 5% and that's due to Linux. Most of Oracle licenses and such that are sold are sold to be run on Linux.

    However that has had the side effect of making Windows the largest market in terms of sales..

    Which is still bullshit because if you take Unix and Linux together, which you should since they are mostly compatable and run all the same software, then Windows server is still the minority and always has been.

  15. Netcraft's data says by dorkygeek · · Score: 4, Informative
    The mandatory netcraft post: the current web server survey does show a market share of 70.89% for Apache, 20.24% for Microsoft. Looking at the curve shows that MS market share has been stagnating since feb 2004 (after a rapid decline from their all time high of about 30% in feb 2002). Apache's market share is on a steady upwards trend.

    --
    Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
  16. Yeah and the moon is made out of green cheese. by WindowsWasher · · Score: 5, Informative

    What the hell kind of ignorant, 6th grade, piss-ant research article is this?

    Of course, this comes from the same man (Varun Dubey) who said:

    "XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it. In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem! Give me a break guys, Linux is light years behind Windows XP and I am sure it will be further back biting the dust when Longhorn (now Vista) comes out."

    Dumbass.

  17. Extra Extra! by aywwts4 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ciggarettes outselling Air!

    And In other news...

    Tanning Booths outselling Sunlight!

    Its a mad mad world.

    --
    Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
  18. Windows 2003 is solid by Create+an+Account · · Score: 4, Funny


    Bill? Is that you?

  19. Re:Gartner...Money for nothing, labour for free. by Elm+Tree · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maybe you should look at

    http://news.com.com/Subscription+boom+boosts+Red+H at+profit,+revenue/2100-7344_3-5178057.html
    http://www.signal42.com/soaring_linux_sales_double _red_hat_profit_for_bcg.aspx
    http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,623 69,00.html

    then. Apparently some people are making money from it.

  20. I'm sure Gartner was also including ... by Jerry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the copies of Linux that were not purchased from retail channels but were downloaded free of charge.

    They also, no doubt, included in the counting the number of times a single, freely downloaded copy of Linux was installed more than once.

    Yup, despite the fact that these "onsulting" firms income streams totally depend on advising on the use of Microsoft software, I'm sure Gartner analysts will be professional and do their best to tally accurate counts, eschewing the crass action of merely rubberstamping a Microsoft PR memo. After all, people who earn fees by being featured in Microsoft server sales videos shouldn't have too much trouble remaining unbiased.

    mmm... after thinking about it I'm sure they never counted the four Linux servers we recently installed at work. Maybe they aren't as accurate as I thought.

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  21. Clueless article by einhverfr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, this is a fun article to pick apart and see why people are jumping to all the wrong conclusions....

    First, the article makes the mistake in merely comparing Windows and Linux. In omitting any analysis in what is going on with UNIX, MacOS X (yeah, I know it has a UNIX-like kernel but much of the rest of the setup is almost but not quite entirely unlike UNIX), any context to these numbers is omitted. What is happening, however, is that three trends are occuring which are noteworthy:

    1) Proprietary UNIX's market share is shrinking.
    2) Windows and Linux are gaining market share in terms of absolute deployments on the server side.
    3) *Some* of these deployments are counted in the sale of new servers. but not all.

    Even so, Linux's marketshare is still up, as is Windows. These are the only two OS's to have been significantly gaining marketshare in server market (well, maybe MacOS, but it is hard not to gain from about 0% a few years ago). I would argue that WIndows is gaining because it is familiar, and Linux is gaining because it is like that it is replacing. Both operating systems claim to be easier to administrate than proprietary UNIX (I certainly think Linux is, but I think that non-trivial tasks in Windows are actually harder than with proprietary UNIX).

    Now, something seems fishy to me about this study in another way. In the 2000 IDC study (iirc) NT4 and 2000 accounted for about 37% of the market share by volume. Linux was much lower than that. If the IDC is correct and Windows market share has indeed been growing from 2000 to 2002 (when I stopped reading the study) then either they have slipped in market share, Linux sells for more, Gartner is underestimating Windows' market share, or the IDC is overestimating the market share of WIndows. Perhaps even some combination of the above explenations.

    Now... I used to work at Microsoft's PSS. I can tell you their support is nothing to write home about. They aren't someone you call because you need expert advice. If you are reasonably knowledgable, you call them for a second opinion. If you are a novice you call them for mentoring. But you can get braindead answers occasionally from them. I remember being on the phone with a customer and conferencing someone in from the SQL Server support team who said that it was not possible to set a value to NULL once it had been set to another value. Somehow I don't think that this was right but I have not had a chance to test it. Then there are the issues where the technicians advocate best practices whithout understanding *why* they are best practices. And this was all before so much of it was sent to India :-)

    Finally the idea that an ad-supported Windows would be the end of Linux is laughable. I think that this would be the beginning of the end of Windows, not of Linux. Hmm... 2 free products. One is adware the other is not. Which should I choose?

    In short this article makes mistakes such as:
    1) assuming that market share by revenue has any reasonable correlation to actual deployments.
    2) refusing to take into account the broader market trends that form the context of this study.

    This article smacks of MS shilling.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  22. Re: Microsoft does give good support sometimes. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think folks know that I pretty much think Microsoft is fairly evil, immoral, dishonest, (convicted of multiple crimes), etc. that wants to lock me into paying a monthly subscription for the OS and applications.

    Those creditials as a Certified Anti-Microsoft Geek (tm) out of the way:

    The one time I had a problem on Win98SE and called for support they:
    1) tried to have me reinstall everything (I refused since I'd done that myself twice).
    2) They said okay then, the call is going to cost you $35 bucks (I said, Sure).
    3) They then spent 5 hours, pulled in at least 2 senior programmers and eventually correctly diagnosed that the sound card (a really high end card I paid about $250 for in 1996ish) had not produced a new compatible driver for win98SE. Since they had me doing all the keying and mousing, I learned a lot about debugging the problem. It was indeed the sound card (which I replaced with a creative Live card).
    4) They said, "wow- that was a toughy. No charge!" at the end of the call.

    So as far as customer support goes, I have no complaints as a microsoft customer from my one hardcore experience with them.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.