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?"

Comments

Other hidden costs.

[Z00L00K]

The change of the user interface in Office 2007 is one huge hidden cost. It was done to make things "easier" with the result that old users instead have to re-learn the user interface completely and have a really hard time to do even the things that were simple before.

And some things that was easy in the old Office version is now really cumbersome. The style handling in Word is one example that can make the blood pressure rise.

does require expensive support staff

[fermion]

Way back when, MS got itself into businesses by being cheaper than Unix. Seriously. I worked on a vertical application solution and the MS solution was cheaper than 1/3. For a small business, this was significant. We had no problem paying the money, as we were going to make money, but there seemed little reason to be little reason to spend the money just to get the (declining) industry standard solution. Add to this that, at that time, MS OS was a reletively simple structure and basically any minimal competent person could set it up, the MS solution would end up being an order of magnitude cheaper.

Fast forward. MS only produces complicated behemoths. To this day MS Windows has not completely understood it is a network OS(perhaps 7 will do it). It is no longer the case that a part time person can keep 20 machines running. And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS. I've made mistakes of going to a wrong web site and had this happen on a completely up to date machine. I have allowed untrusted parties to run my MS machines and have had significant damage caused within the hour. MS machines are the dependable work horses they once were. It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images. Doesn't this sound like the pre-MS days of the so-called inefficient mainframe. MS is worried about this and has began a defensive campaign against IBM.

I would argue that MS machines are now, overall, as expensive and inefficient as the Unix machines were when ATT tried to save themselves with the introduction of this machine. This does not mean that MS does not have value, at least to legacy customers, but it may not be the best choice for startups, as Unix was the not the best choice in the late 1980's.

I can point to an exact time, around 2000, when MS became too expensive to use. It was a time whem MS would accuse paying customers of theft. Force customer to undergo intrusive and expensive audits. Require support staff to be redirected from supporting the customers need to make a profit, to the MS need to make a profit.

In light of this, I think we are going to see non-MS solution, just like we say non-ATT and non-IBM solutions. The biggest impediment to this is the easy supply of reliable naked PCs with full support to the SOHO owner. I think some companies, like Gateway, made a mistake in continuing to hook their saddle to the MS bandwagon instead of providing *nix solution for common business problems. In many cases, smart firms buy solutions, not an OS.