Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "By some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments, Walt Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the computer industry caters too much to big businesses and their IT staff, Mossberg argues: 'The computer industry loves, and caters to, the IT segment because it buys machines in large quantities and is run by a geeky priesthood that speaks the industry language. By contrast, the non-IT camp, even though it is larger in the aggregate, buys one, two or three machines at a time and tends to be nontechnical. ... This focus on the corporate world can have real, and sometimes negative, consequences for consumers and small businesses. For example, some of the big security problems in Microsoft's software in recent years came because the company included features used only by corporate IT staffs in the products it sold to everyone. One was a communications feature, meant for network administrators, which sleazy operators misused to bombard people with ads. Why was that on my PC in the first place?'"

Comments

Messenger

[doofusclam]

I take it by 'communication service' the article was on about the Messenger service. I agree with this completely, but the reverse is true too - I installed Windows Server 2003 on a new server at work last week and IE has all the usual MSN radio links built into the favourites. WTF? And why is the indexing service built into a consumer OS when nobody uses it?

I usually don't care for Microsoft bashing but they especially need to learn how to differentiate a consumer and corporate OS rather than through having different splash screens.