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The Hidden Cost of Using Microsoft Software
Glyn Moody writes "Detractors of free software like to point out it's not really 'free,' and claim that its Total Cost of Ownership is often comparable with closed-source solutions if you take everything into account. And yet, despite their enthusiasm for including all the costs, they never include a very real extra that users of Microsoft's products frequently have to pay: the cost of cleaning up malware infections. For example, the UK city of Manchester has just paid out nearly $2.5 million to clean up the Conficker worm, most of which was 'a £1.2m [$2million] bill in the IT department, including £600,000 [$1 million] getting "consultancy support" to fix the problems, which including drafting in experts from Microsoft.' To make the comparisons fair, isn't it about time these often massive costs were included in TCO calculations?"
For example: The State of Vermont's Agency of Human Services just went through a similar exercise and I'm sure it cost them a fortune. The state is suffering financially as it is and yet, we haven't heard a WORD (there really isn't any investigative news in VT) about the outcome or how much it is costing
You might have a point.... except that Apache is far more popular than IIS and yet IIS is the one routinely attacked.
You might have a point.... except that Apache is far more popular than IIS and yet IIS is the one routinely attacked.
Citation needed? ;)
Seriously, some data would be nice.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/requested.html
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Microsoft's tech "support" costs are truly one of the largest hidden costs of ownership. Assuming you can get a human on the phone at Microsoft, you're frequently directed to the wrong person, the wrong automated telephone system with inappropriate choices, the wrong department, the wrong planet... Spent 3 hours this weekend trying to get my temporary Vista Enterprise software (temporary 30 day solution) downgraded to Home Premium, which I legitimately own without having to reinstall everything. I was trying to be honest. After 3 hours, I just gave up, got online and hacked the registry to turn off notifications. 3 hours, 4 tech "support" personnel in India, 5 different, useless phone systems and .....nothing. Microsoft's eventual demise will be their own fault, plain and simple. Windows used to make my life easier. Those days are long gone.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Permissions, primarily. As I sit here in front of my Debian/Ubuntu machine, my user name is "guy". I can do nothing outside of my home folder. I can't infect another user's files, can't touch any system file, can't touch root's folder. There is no C:\Program Files - meaning that I don't have write permissions to ANYTHING outside my home folder. If I wish to install a program on this machine without becoming root, I can install it to my home folder. In such a case, the program has no write permissions outside my home folder. Using any programs that root has installed doesn't give me write permissions even to that program's folder - any data that the program needs to save to my profile, history, or whatever is written inside my own home folder. In fact, I don't have access to all the programs that root has installed. I have to become root to use things like Wireshark properly, or to use the package manager.
With Windows, a limited user has to ActiveX among other things. A limited user can save files to various places outside his home folders, unlike *nix. While the Windows Administrator can lock down a lot of Windows system files, he can't prevent even a limited user from making changes and/or writing files that might be booby traps lying around waiting to be executed by a more privileged user.
While NT variants of Windows are vastly superior to Win9.x in that they actually HAVE a security model, that model doesn't compare with that of any *nix system.
Until I type in my password for sudo or root, I have fewer privileges on Debian than I would have on a limited account on Windows. I can't even open an internet connection - root does that at bootup with a script.
And, to be perfectly honest, I don't NEED privileges very often. I could probably run this account for the next year without becoming root, and manage to do everything I wanted to do, except for testing new programs and updating.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br