.. decisions that were made in the name of cross-platform compatibility..
How exactly is the lack of predefined shortcut for "Fill down" a decision "in the name of cross-platform compatibility"?
Actually I don't see any connection between your complaints and cross-platform compatibility at all.
In fact, cross-platform compatibility is a great feature because it allows you too choose your platform freely and will get you big discounts from Microsoft because they will know that you can switch if you really want to, even if you stay on Windows.
$613 million? Oooh, not. That's pocket change to Microsoft, who has a war chest of billions of dollars -- but of course this won't stop it from passing the cost along to its customers, and blaming the EU for increasing the price of Microsoft products.
You sure don't understand basic economics. The vendor will charge whatever the market is willing to pay, no matter how much it cost to make the product.
That's why about 90% of the Windows- and Office-prices is pure profit while they are losing money on XBox, WinCE and many other things.
If anything, the punishments will lower prices for Europeans because of increased competition. Just look at Thailand where Microsoft dropped their Win+Office prices from 600$ to 37$: http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32110.html
Always remember: Only the loyal customers get ripped off. Those who for example run their servers on Unix get huge discounts (like Munich)
Hello? Yes, Apache, Sendmail, BIND etc. are used extensively, but how about those Sun boxes and Cisco devices doing all the routing?
The "Internet" is about protocols/formats like TCP/IP, HTTP and HTML all of which were developed in the OSS community.
If Microsoft's proprietary MSN would have been successful, we all would use MS Word to view.doc files via NetBIOS. There would be no free access to the Internet and all websites would have to pay Microsoft a fee for the privilege of being on the web.
I don't know in which world you are living, but OpenSource already has boomed in a lot of markets, be it servers, mainframes, embedded systems or clusters.
Just because it takes longer on the desktop (because of intertia) doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In some niches like 3d-modelling Linux has already boomed on the desktop, too.
Actually there is a community of Microsoftophiles (mostly PHBs, MCSEs, etc.) who will think anything from Microsoft is great. Actually I know people who will only acknowledge that something exists when it's from Microsoft. One of them phoned me a couple of weeks ago to tell me about that "great new" technology of virtual PC, which was already done by VMWare like 5 years ago...
Asia is a big market for Microsoft to lose out in, and it'll be interesting to see what happens when they have to compete with others.
As soon as they really have to compete, the have already lost.
Why?
Because what does Windows offer? It's being established, it's having great support from 3rd party software makers, it's having great driver support, etc.
As soon as Linux overcomes the initial barriers and becomes real competition, it's over because Windows has lost all the advantages, but still retains the disadvantages (being expensive, having EULAs that can be changed anytime, being forced to upgrade, etc.).
And that's exactly the reason why Microsoft desperately tries to stop the beginnings of Linux on the desktop.
While the additional speaker might indeed be neglectible, the whole matter of running overpowered, hot CPUs running idle while waiting for the harddrive is not. This truely is idiotic.
You can get a fanless CPU from VIA which runs at up to 1GHz (plenty for most uses) and uses AFAIK about 20 Watts. And it isn't expensive either (I payed 140 Euros for both motherboard and CPU)
Of course less moving parts also mean more reliability.
Whether they hide the first pass or not, you'll need two if you really want quality. It's the only way for the codec to know for sure where it can spare bits and where it can't.
If you always encode to 650MB or 1300MB/Movie, then yes.
But if you want to use disk space efficiently, you get too big file sizes for easily encoded movies and too bad quality for hard encoded movies.
IMO, nothing beats quality based encoding, ie. you specify a quality setting and the movie will have whatever size is needed for that quality.
As soon as the CD dies as the major storage for movies (being replaced either by hard-disk or DVD), we will hopefully see more focus on quality-based encoding and less on bitrate-based, because it's pointless.
Probably not, but Microsoft isn't afraid of lawsuits (and why should they?), they are afraid that people see through all the SCO-mess as a meaningless FUD-campaign.
Saying that the status quo is bad to argue in favor of keeping the status quo is a little bit - well let's say strange to avoid insulting words. I for one always keep switching until I find a solution that satisfies me, but maybe that's just me.
You still didn't answer why anybody would want it.
An operating system with no software, no games and no drivers.
It's like Linux was in 1993, only that it costs lots of money and you can't get the source.
Get it through your head: Win32-compatibility is the ONLY thing they really do better than Linux. And it's also the only reason why I still keep my Win98 around.
And by the way, no way Microsoft can code up a driver for every PCI-card, for every USB-peripheral, for every graphics card and for millions of other stuff. They can't.
If the CIO was dumb enough in the past to base company assets on Microsoft technology, then "knowing better" won't do him any good because there is no affordable to software assurance anymore.
So yeah, it's their own stupidity. But the mistakes were made a lot earlier and YEARS before software assurance even existed.
It's impossible to tell in advance what these contracts are going to be worth. In short, these people paid for any updates to Windows in 2004 or 2005 on the assumption that there would be one.
What is more important is: Will the update worth it?
I mean who is stopping Microsoft in merely repackaging MS Office with some new icons or even better a new file format?
I personally think that's worse than no upgrade at all.
Well, one of the differences is that SuSE's offer is just that: An offer.
Microsoft however has discontinued all their existing enterprise licensing models with no warning to force them to Licensing 6.0.
But that isn't the real important difference, what really is important is that SuSE can be easily replaced by another company in case they don't live up to their promises. It's a pretty frowned upon concept in Windows-land: competition also known as "confusion" among Microsoft advocates.
Another important difference is that when software assurance expires, you are an evil pirate who can be fined by the BSA for millions while you can continue to use your SuSE-products as long as you wish.
As somebody who was called crazy about 5 years ago when I said it would be stupid to build everything around one single supplier, I just can say that you just pay for your past stupidity. (Sorry for the insult)
If you, as a customer, give away your freedom (by using stuff from a vendor that can't be easily replaced by another vendor), why shouldn't the vendor take advantage of it?
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How exactly is the lack of predefined shortcut for "Fill down" a decision "in the name of cross-platform compatibility"?
Actually I don't see any connection between your complaints and cross-platform compatibility at all.
In fact, cross-platform compatibility is a great feature because it allows you too choose your platform freely and will get you big discounts from Microsoft because they will know that you can switch if you really want to, even if you stay on Windows.
You sure don't understand basic economics. The vendor will charge whatever the market is willing to pay, no matter how much it cost to make the product.
That's why about 90% of the Windows- and Office-prices is pure profit while they are losing money on XBox, WinCE and many other things.
If anything, the punishments will lower prices for Europeans because of increased competition. Just look at Thailand where Microsoft dropped their Win+Office prices from 600$ to 37$: http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32110.html
Always remember: Only the loyal customers get ripped off. Those who for example run their servers on Unix get huge discounts (like Munich)
If Microsoft doesn't change their behaviour, they will face more and higher fines, so this is merely a warning.
I repeat:
Yeah and Windows 2003 Server doesn't cost 5000$, unless YOUR TIME IS WORTH NOTHING, what was your point again?
Please tell me where in this sentence it is claimed that Windows is free in any way or form.
Oh, and yes, a lot of people DO claim that Windows costs [insert license price without any TCO add-ons here].
The "Internet" is about protocols/formats like TCP/IP, HTTP and HTML all of which were developed in the OSS community.
If Microsoft's proprietary MSN would have been successful, we all would use MS Word to view .doc files via NetBIOS. There would be no free access to the Internet and all websites would have to pay Microsoft a fee for the privilege of being on the web.
Just because it takes longer on the desktop (because of intertia) doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In some niches like 3d-modelling Linux has already boomed on the desktop, too.
Actually there is a community of Microsoftophiles (mostly PHBs, MCSEs, etc.) who will think anything from Microsoft is great. Actually I know people who will only acknowledge that something exists when it's from Microsoft. One of them phoned me a couple of weeks ago to tell me about that "great new" technology of virtual PC, which was already done by VMWare like 5 years ago...
Also how long is battery life? IME all "multimedia" devices stop working after a few hours (or less) of full usage.
As soon as they really have to compete, the have already lost.
Why?
Because what does Windows offer? It's being established, it's having great support from 3rd party software makers, it's having great driver support, etc.
As soon as Linux overcomes the initial barriers and becomes real competition, it's over because Windows has lost all the advantages, but still retains the disadvantages (being expensive, having EULAs that can be changed anytime, being forced to upgrade, etc.).
And that's exactly the reason why Microsoft desperately tries to stop the beginnings of Linux on the desktop.
You can get a fanless CPU from VIA which runs at up to 1GHz (plenty for most uses) and uses AFAIK about 20 Watts. And it isn't expensive either (I payed 140 Euros for both motherboard and CPU)
Of course less moving parts also mean more reliability.
But I bet that XVid (which is already the standard codec, or at least a major codec) will always find enthusiasts who will improve it more and more.
If you always encode to 650MB or 1300MB/Movie, then yes.
But if you want to use disk space efficiently, you get too big file sizes for easily encoded movies and too bad quality for hard encoded movies.
IMO, nothing beats quality based encoding, ie. you specify a quality setting and the movie will have whatever size is needed for that quality.
As soon as the CD dies as the major storage for movies (being replaced either by hard-disk or DVD), we will hopefully see more focus on quality-based encoding and less on bitrate-based, because it's pointless.
Probably not, but Microsoft isn't afraid of lawsuits (and why should they?), they are afraid that people see through all the SCO-mess as a meaningless FUD-campaign.
Huh?
So when Microsoft clearly does not issue any refunds why is your post titled "In all fairness..."?
I can't believe that is modded as "insightful".
They are "singled out" because nobody wanted software assurance in the first place but Microsoft eliminated all other corporate agreements.
An operating system with no software, no games and no drivers.
It's like Linux was in 1993, only that it costs lots of money and you can't get the source.
Get it through your head: Win32-compatibility is the ONLY thing they really do better than Linux. And it's also the only reason why I still keep my Win98 around.
And by the way, no way Microsoft can code up a driver for every PCI-card, for every USB-peripheral, for every graphics card and for millions of other stuff. They can't.
Why do you assume it would be *nix like.
Because you talked about a "MS-Unix".
If the CIO was dumb enough in the past to base company assets on Microsoft technology, then "knowing better" won't do him any good because there is no affordable to software assurance anymore.
So yeah, it's their own stupidity. But the mistakes were made a lot earlier and YEARS before software assurance even existed.
What is more important is: Will the update worth it?
I mean who is stopping Microsoft in merely repackaging MS Office with some new icons or even better a new file format?
I personally think that's worse than no upgrade at all.
Microsoft however has discontinued all their existing enterprise licensing models with no warning to force them to Licensing 6.0.
But that isn't the real important difference, what really is important is that SuSE can be easily replaced by another company in case they don't live up to their promises. It's a pretty frowned upon concept in Windows-land: competition also known as "confusion" among Microsoft advocates.
Another important difference is that when software assurance expires, you are an evil pirate who can be fined by the BSA for millions while you can continue to use your SuSE-products as long as you wish.
If you, as a customer, give away your freedom (by using stuff from a vendor that can't be easily replaced by another vendor), why shouldn't the vendor take advantage of it?
Microsoft wants a fixed revenue-stream for the minimum of possible work.
The customers want the exact opposite.
Of course, unlike every other business, in the Windows business, Microsoft is always right.
Maybe somebody should go and tell those poor MS-customers that.