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Just Say No to Microsoft
Ben Rothke writes "Load up a computer today with a basic set of applications software, and there will be a de facto Microsoft tax on that computer. Add roughly $100- for the Windows XP operating systems and $350- for Microsoft office, and you have a significant initial financial outlay. If one would use an open source operating system and set of office applications, the cost savings would be enormous. That is why the option of open source is so financially compelling to the both the consumer and organizations have thousands of computers. And open source is corresponding such a threat to companies such as Microsoft. The idea of saving money and never having to worry about a blue screen of death is the proverbial win/win scenario." Read on for Ben's review.
Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think
author
Tony Bove
pages
243
publisher
No Starch Press
rating
7
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
159327064X
summary
Open source alternatives to Microsoft operating systems and applications
With that, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think would seemingly be a most valuable book in helping consumers and corporations rid themselves of the Microsoft tax. Unfortunately, the book spends far too much time slurring Microsoft and Bill Gates.
The books main charges are that Microsoft has been far too predatory and that Bill Gates is not the technical genius that he is made out to be. Microsoft's questionable business tactics are not without ethical lapses, but it must noted that Microsoft is simply one in a long line of companies that have used their size and deep pockets to quash the competition. Microsoft is not alone and joins companies such as American Airlines, Ford and General Motors, Wal-Mart and more that have engaged in practices that while good for their stockholders, have not been good for the competition.
Bove is correct that Microsoft's practices over the years have discouraged innovation and stunted competition. But then again, that is true of Ford, GM and other such companies. The innovations of Ford and GM for example have been mostly superficial, without any significant improvement into crucial issues such as gas mileage and more.
Two of the companies that Microsoft has been accused of destroying are Novell and WordPerfect. Yet much of the blame for the demise of these two companies goes to their management that did not know how to properly market their products nor deal with a competitor such as Microsoft. This is not meant to imply that Microsoft is blameless, rather that Novell and WordPerfect had plenty of opportunities to fend off Microsoft, yet did not rise to the challenge.
Aside from the pervasive anti-Microsoft tone and style and the book, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think provides a good starting point for those that are looking for a cheaper and safer alternative to Microsoft products.
Chapter 1 start with an overview of the history of Microsoft and how it grew to be the largest software company in the world. In chapter 2, All You Need is a Mac, Bove feels that the quickest route to Microsoft freedom is by purchasing a Macintosh. While a Mac is not necessarily cheaper than a Wintel system, the Mac OS X is considerably more resilient against attacks. In addition, the concern of malware such as viruses and spyware are much less of an issue on a Mac.
Chapter 3 deals with what worries Microsoft the most - Linux. Bove notes that large companies that deal with thousands of end-user desktops are discovering the advantage of migrating to Linux in a big way.
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with Microsoft Word and Excel. Word documents have become the de facto standard for document exchange and are what has locked many people into staying with Microsoft Word. Excel has a similar power in being the de facto spreadsheet. Most people think that the only alternative to Word is WordPerfect and simply don't know about OpenOffice Writer and Calc or other open source alternatives. The two chapters show how it is possible to effectively collaborate on documents without having to use Word.
While the book does not get into every open source alternative to a Microsoft product, Bove's web site has a comprehensive list of open source alternatives to Windows products at www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/home.html#windows
Chapter 4 concludes with a look at the technical and practical problems with PowerPoint. Bove notes that the corrupting power of PowerPoint is so strong that otherwise normally articulate speakers turn into zombies mumbling the bullet points that appear on the slides behind them. It is not clear though how Impress, the open source alternative to PowerPoint is necessarily better from a presentation perspective.
The next few chapters deal with Outlook, the application that has launched countless viruses and worms, and also detail other network-based problems with Microsoft protocols and applications. Issues such as the never enduing cycle of Microsoft patches are also discussed.
Chapter 10 provides a 10 step program (fashioned after the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program) to free the reader from their Microsoft addition. While the steps are brief and effective, it would have been better had there been more technical details on how to migrate out of a Microsoft environment. For the person with thousands of documents and files in various Microsoft formats, it is not as effortless as to simply copy your old files onto a USB drive and move it to the new open source based host.
The book contains four parts, and there are four cartoons at the begging of each part that Bove wrote. The cartoons are quite funny in their own right and Bove should also consider a career as a cartoonist.
Ned Ludd said that the machine was the enemy, and Tony Bove feels the same way about Microsoft. For evidence, check out his campaign to stop the spread of Word documents at www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/stopdoc.html.
The only negative to the book is that there are far too many anti-negative stories of Microsoft's predatory practices. A few stories would be adequate, but there is no point in belaboring the issue in a book that is meant to be more technical and practical, as opposed to political.
For many people who don't know better, they expect that a blue screen of death and monthly patching is part of a standard computing environment. Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think is an interesting read that will open the eyes of those users to a cheaper, more secure and robust open source solution.
You can purchase Just Say No to Microsoft from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
With that, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think would seemingly be a most valuable book in helping consumers and corporations rid themselves of the Microsoft tax. Unfortunately, the book spends far too much time slurring Microsoft and Bill Gates.
The books main charges are that Microsoft has been far too predatory and that Bill Gates is not the technical genius that he is made out to be. Microsoft's questionable business tactics are not without ethical lapses, but it must noted that Microsoft is simply one in a long line of companies that have used their size and deep pockets to quash the competition. Microsoft is not alone and joins companies such as American Airlines, Ford and General Motors, Wal-Mart and more that have engaged in practices that while good for their stockholders, have not been good for the competition.
Bove is correct that Microsoft's practices over the years have discouraged innovation and stunted competition. But then again, that is true of Ford, GM and other such companies. The innovations of Ford and GM for example have been mostly superficial, without any significant improvement into crucial issues such as gas mileage and more.
Two of the companies that Microsoft has been accused of destroying are Novell and WordPerfect. Yet much of the blame for the demise of these two companies goes to their management that did not know how to properly market their products nor deal with a competitor such as Microsoft. This is not meant to imply that Microsoft is blameless, rather that Novell and WordPerfect had plenty of opportunities to fend off Microsoft, yet did not rise to the challenge.
Aside from the pervasive anti-Microsoft tone and style and the book, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think provides a good starting point for those that are looking for a cheaper and safer alternative to Microsoft products.
Chapter 1 start with an overview of the history of Microsoft and how it grew to be the largest software company in the world. In chapter 2, All You Need is a Mac, Bove feels that the quickest route to Microsoft freedom is by purchasing a Macintosh. While a Mac is not necessarily cheaper than a Wintel system, the Mac OS X is considerably more resilient against attacks. In addition, the concern of malware such as viruses and spyware are much less of an issue on a Mac.
Chapter 3 deals with what worries Microsoft the most - Linux. Bove notes that large companies that deal with thousands of end-user desktops are discovering the advantage of migrating to Linux in a big way.
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with Microsoft Word and Excel. Word documents have become the de facto standard for document exchange and are what has locked many people into staying with Microsoft Word. Excel has a similar power in being the de facto spreadsheet. Most people think that the only alternative to Word is WordPerfect and simply don't know about OpenOffice Writer and Calc or other open source alternatives. The two chapters show how it is possible to effectively collaborate on documents without having to use Word.
While the book does not get into every open source alternative to a Microsoft product, Bove's web site has a comprehensive list of open source alternatives to Windows products at www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/home.html#windows
Chapter 4 concludes with a look at the technical and practical problems with PowerPoint. Bove notes that the corrupting power of PowerPoint is so strong that otherwise normally articulate speakers turn into zombies mumbling the bullet points that appear on the slides behind them. It is not clear though how Impress, the open source alternative to PowerPoint is necessarily better from a presentation perspective.
The next few chapters deal with Outlook, the application that has launched countless viruses and worms, and also detail other network-based problems with Microsoft protocols and applications. Issues such as the never enduing cycle of Microsoft patches are also discussed.
Chapter 10 provides a 10 step program (fashioned after the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program) to free the reader from their Microsoft addition. While the steps are brief and effective, it would have been better had there been more technical details on how to migrate out of a Microsoft environment. For the person with thousands of documents and files in various Microsoft formats, it is not as effortless as to simply copy your old files onto a USB drive and move it to the new open source based host.
The book contains four parts, and there are four cartoons at the begging of each part that Bove wrote. The cartoons are quite funny in their own right and Bove should also consider a career as a cartoonist.
Ned Ludd said that the machine was the enemy, and Tony Bove feels the same way about Microsoft. For evidence, check out his campaign to stop the spread of Word documents at www.tonybove.com/getoffmicrosoft/stopdoc.html.
The only negative to the book is that there are far too many anti-negative stories of Microsoft's predatory practices. A few stories would be adequate, but there is no point in belaboring the issue in a book that is meant to be more technical and practical, as opposed to political.
For many people who don't know better, they expect that a blue screen of death and monthly patching is part of a standard computing environment. Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think is an interesting read that will open the eyes of those users to a cheaper, more secure and robust open source solution.
You can purchase Just Say No to Microsoft from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
And if you're going to just say no to Microsoft, Apple isn't necessarily the way to go. You're still locked into all sorts of proprietary software and apps.
Perhaps a more useful book would have been "Just Say Yes to OSS", detailing all of the neat replacements for popular closed-source software, not just Windows and Office. A lot of this stuff has been ported too, so you can phase yourself over, trying out various apps on your Windows box, getting more comfortable with OSS, and gradually moving toward a closed-source-free existence.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I stopped reading right there. What a load of crap. It's roughly 50$ for Windows XP Home and 100$ for MS Office.
The OEM cost for pre-loading XP on a new box is significantly less than $100, as is the cost to pre-load Office. Retail end-user costs in no way correlate with OEM costs.
Even more telling is the fact that many large OEMs charge the same or more for boxes without Windows, because those systems generally prove to cost them more in the end - more support calls, more returns because their distro doesn't support the particular DAC codec, whatever. Sometimes the whole is much more than the parts.
And the whole "never worry about blue screens" really put the icing on the Lamecake. The whole blue screen argument is so 2002, and if that's what the anti-M$ bots are still spouting, they need to update their playbook.
I would be astounded to see one article on Slashdot that ever shows Microsoft in a positive light. Microsoft isn't inherently evil, they're a company. They make things. It took hundreds of thousands of unwashed linux programmers over a decade to make their operating system, and Microsoft only takes a few years for each version, which yes, of course, like all things, has flaws. How about just stepping back, taking a deep breath and realizing that, yes, Microsoft makes good things?
From TFS: So...there's too many positive stories of Microsoft's predatory practices? I'm confused...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
How can paying for an OS be considred a tax? Now, if you wanted to buy a box from Dell without the OS and they won't, then yes that's a tax...well kinda. But stick it to Dell by buying from someone else or making your own system. There are plently of places to buy a computer from without having Windows installed.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/an article or two won't convince a newbie or a Joe Manager. Besides, a book might make a perfect gift for an office (pun intended) coworker, or even your boss.
I don't love MS either. But when was the last time you got a BSOD on XP? I have crashes on XP about as often as I do on my debian server. The only BSODs I have had on XP have been when I ran VERY BAD software. Interestingly, the last one was two weeks ago when I was using a driver to read an ext2 volume mounted over USB. Yes, I have crashes on my debian box- the latest was somthing that rsync did that locked me out of both local and ssh connections. (Seriously. I have no idea what was happening and had to kill the machine) And no, I am not a linux guru. But if I have problems like these with my intermediate level of knowledge, then you'd better belive that joe blow will too.
This dude isn't a PC gamer.
Shouldn't that be a non-win/non-win scenario?
[rimshot]
...how the claim that other people have used tactics like those of Microsoft excuses Microsoft, as the reviewer seems to think.
The real price, not the bullshit open source idiocy price, is more like $30 for Windows
Or $450 to upgrade to a new machine every eight years or so.
That $30 Windows install is like the first hit of crack. Everything after that costs you more and more money.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Microsoft's platform has offered millions of programmers a fairly amazing platform to make software that not only works in a standard way familiar to users, but also interacts with other programs.
A fairly amazing platform for programmers? I beg to differ. Ever since I started to develop for Windows in the mid-80s I saw what a mess the platform was in so many ways. There were other GUI systems available (even for DOS) that were cleaner and simpler. There was, of course the Mac.
My company only maintains a few Novell servers and we HATE them.
We love them. They are rock solid stable and virtually maintenance-free.
WordPerfect was always terrible except when it was running solely under DOS.
Terrible how? We still have users who use WordPerfect/Corel Office under Windows and love it, as it is far more tailored to their use than MS Office.
My users (nearly 90% in our last questionnaire) love the Word interface and look-and-feel.
I couldn't let this pass! (1) Have you shown them anything else recently? (You have to bear in mind that users will always prefer the familiar) (2) What do you mean by the Word interface? The thing keeps changing every few years, often in ways that makes it different from the main Windows GUI.
Microsoft has been on top for a while, but it isn't anything unnatural -- they've created a product that billions of people LIKE using.
You make a good case for Microsoft but your arguments are mostly personal (experiences) and are unreferenced. It's debatable whether Microsoft got to "be on top" because people like there system or because they had no choice.
I'd suggest reading the Findings of Fact from the Microsoft antitrust case. It's quite revealing. It details, for example, exactly how Microsoft threatened vendors with severe consquences if they even considered selling computers with competing software.
This book is very similar to the Parable of the Broken Window by Bastiat.
I agree, but it's the microsoft tax that is the broken window.
Also, Microsoft employs more than 12,000 people. These people likely buy products or use services that your employer produces.
Yes, and broken windows help employ glass makers.
If you actually understood the parable, instead of just trotting it out to look smart, you'd realize that the money wasted on microsoft would flow into other areas of the economy, providing a greater net benefit than just giving it to microsoft.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If by "Insightful" you mean "Hopeful", then the parent post moderation is correct.
Ten years ago, I downloaded Slackware for the first time, made a towering stack of 3.5" floppies out of the downloaded files, and installed it. I couldn't believe it -- not only did I get the OS, but I got compilers, utilities, games, all for just the cost of Internet access and time spent siphoning bits down the phone line.
Since then, the price of Windows has just gone up. When, exactly (or even generally!), is Microsoft supposed to buckle under the pressure?
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Did you pull these numbers out of your ass, microshill? Let's see, windows XP professional OEM costs $146.95. You can get a slight discount by buying a 30-pack for $4,249.95. A pre-installed version from a Dell or HPaq (without the media, so you can't reinstall and configure it yourself) would cost a little less, but certainly nowhere near $50.
Office 2003 professional (again, OEM, not retail) costs $319.95. Yes, it's also a little cheaper from a big vendor but nowhere near $100.
Please show me where you can buy windows for $50 and office for $100.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Let's assume, that by some miracle, some subcontractor, ShitSoft (MS) manages to break a deal to sell shit (Windows) for food (OS) for McDonalds (IBM) customers for their fastfood restaurants (PC) sometime in the late 80ies so ShitSoft gains monopoly on fastfood restaurants and thus the food market.
There are 12'000 people involved in devising the best methods to fling shit at the customers, to feed them with shit, to serve shit in the most appetizing way.
Because people don't know anything better, people buy ShitSoft's "product". ShitSoft must be producing a huge market many hungry people rely on, right?
ShitSoft is a nice friendly company, so it donates less than 1% of its profits to help combat diseases, so this is why we should keep eating shit.
Also, ShitSoft also has around 12'000 employees, whom are contractually obliged to eat shit.
ShitSoft has been on the top for a while, they clearly created a product that everyone LIKES, because they don't know any better. That product has created jobs for millions of food specialists, contractors and plastic cutlery producers. (Because they would be totally out of their jobs if people would eat something different, right?)
But as in every fairy tale the bad, ugly guy appeared: community owned greenhouses started producing quality vegetables. They gave it away the plans of building such greenhouses and the seeds for the vegetables, only asking to share them with everyone who wants those plans and seeds.
ShitSoft had to do something: they started their "Get the feces" campaign, where they involved several independent researchers, with only a few million shares from ShitSoft or being a board member at ShitSoft. Those researchers claimed that everyone who uses community owned greenhouses must be a communist for not supporting Real hard working American produced quality branded shit wrapped in nice shiny package, but preferred vegetables. They explained that shit has a much lower Total Caloric Overall, than vegetables and that ShitSoft's shit is produced by a trustable american corporation while the vegetables are clearly on the way to ruin the american economy.
The campaign is still undecided to be effective or not, but let's not forget another issue: ShitSoft's product created a huge industry to modify some of the product's erm, "features". Some customers wanted to decrease the value of the quality shit (no idea why would they want to do that), by buying products from third party companies to make shit lose it's smell and taste, and to drive away the flies. Can you not see how ShitSoft helps the economy?
There have been certain allegations before, that ShitSoft's product is not adequate for human consumption. Such a nonsense! It is a shame that we can't disprove that since ShitSoft's End User Shit Agreement specifically forbids the analysis of their latest, "eXPerience the Shit" product and all former versions. Some people slandered ShitSoft before by claiming that shit causes diarrhea and infections and that generally everyone just should refrain from eating shit, but ShitSoft dismissed such scandalous claims.
Be patriotic, support ShitSoft, down with vegetables!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I've always found it strange how so many anti-Microsoft arguments will include some reference to PowerPoint and how it is somehow responsible for bad presentations.
PowerPoint is a fine program for what it does, which is probably why it's so popular. Yes, it can be used poorly, so what. It's not Microsoft's fault. Microsoft didn't invent presentation software, and isn't forcing people to give bad presentations. Other programs like Impress serve the same function, and can be misused just as easily. Used properly, these tools can be very beneficial for both the presenter and the audience.
Adding poor arguments like this one into the mix with good arguments only weakens the better arguments. There are plenty of valid reasons out there for disliking Microsoft and Microsoft software - PowerPoint is not one of them. It doesn't help spread viruses or introduce malware, it doesn't hinder workflow, and it doesn't seem to have as many irritating stability issues as the other programs in the Office suite.
I think it's well agreed upon that the proliferation of PCs is at least in part due to Microsoft, whose products are easy to use, even for novices. No matter what you want to think, Linux is NOT easy for inexperienced users.
How exactly is the PC revolution all thanks to Microsoft and their "ease of use for novices"? The PC revolution was well underway before the existence of Windows. I remember helping customers use software I'd written for their 286 notebook luggables running DOS 3 well before Windows made it with WFW.
If you really want less money to go to Microsoft, good sir, then I suggest you run down to the pub, gather up all your friends, and get to work on a product that genuinely replaces Windows. A product that gets the job done on high-end servers, cheap notebooks, and PDAs. A product that may not be perfect (or even close) but one that makes sense to the AVERAGE user. I wish you good luck, and remember: Linux does not meet the above requirements.
*sigh*. Yes. It does. I've converted MANY friends and family to Linux and I have far less support calls than with Windows. You see, the problem lies in the "Power Users" group - people who think they know about computers when in actual fact they only really think they know about Windows. They expect to load up an alternative operating system and have it work just like Windows. Your average Joe User can happily use a setup Linux machine without noticing too much difference because using Thunderbird/Firefox/OO on *nix is not much different to Outlook/IE/Office on Windows (seriously, how many of those whizbang office features do you think your average person uses?).
What we need to do is educate people rather than make a clone of Windows - if you let Microsoft set the rules we'll be playing catchup forever. Getting something else on OEM PCs would help since Joe Average can't exactly replace the Windows he's given now, can he?
The general followers use phrases like "whining Windows ex-pats" and come off as total assholes.
I think it's a good description of the Windows users who tend to complain that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" based on the 5 minutes following an Ubuntu/Fedora install and before returning to Windows.
And as for the asshole comment, you're a dick :-)
It starts with a bunch of machines that people don't want to replace because it co$ts and managers don't get bonuses from spending money.
/. asking for help with Samba. :-)
The eventual demise of Microsoft will come from the same source that saw the rise of the 'compatible' PC. It was cheaper than the alternative.
It doesn't matter how well your system is running, Microsoft is living proof that quality is not that important, but how little you had to shell out for something 'good enough.'
Cost of replacement and the slowing of the replacement cycle is going to be the death of Microsoft and give rise to cheap Linux boxes.
Books about OpenOffice (or NeoOfficeJ for older Macs) are telling people that its okay NOT to have to shell out the bucks for Microsoft (or even Apple).
I suspect that Vista will be an utter failure because people have a vested interest, read lots of bucks, in their existing machines.
When 'Joe Consumer' is faced with hanging on to his machine under Linux with OpenOffice or spendin '"beaucoup" bucks' he'll wave Microsoft 'Bye Bye' before he tosses all that green on all new hardware.
Would YOU like to have to cough up money to buy a new 64bit processor, gigs of RAM, a new mobo and a new video card, just to run an incrementally 'better' Windows experience.
Fuck that... My wallet and I voted for Linux years ago, though I my wife still owns an aging Win2K Windows box and I still own a couple of OS X 10.4.3 Macs. My last machine is an ADM64 Athlon running slackware.
People are going to vote just as they always have, with their wallets.
Not just Joe Consumer, but the corporation bosses who are stuck to buy 5K, 10K, 15K, or 20K boxes at a shot. We're still running Win2K and would still be running WinNT if we could.
Books about HOW TO DO IT for less are EXACTLY what's needed. They're not written for you. They're written for 'Joe Consumer' and to get the idea to the corporation bosses.
Just brace yourselves for all those AOLers and other newbies getting on
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