Microsoft may drown in cash, but more than 90% of its revenue is bound to Windows, which is doomed in the long run.
Why? Just look at Commodore, the vendor of the C64 and Amiga and why the PC killed it:
C64/Amiga was proprietary, the PC is open.
C64/Amiga was a single-vendor platform, the PC is multi-vendor.
C64/Amiga was very easy to use, the PC had a lot of IRQ/DMA issues.
C64/Amiga had a lot of software especially games, the PC had only niche apps in the beginning.
The C64 is still the most sold computer model ever, no PC-model ever came close.
I think now the very same is happening in the Windows vs. Linux fight. I also think that Windows 95 will stay the all-time most sold OS, nevertheless Windows will be gone in 10 years. It will take a long time (10 years is a VERY long time in this industry) but it will happen, Microsoft may delay it but it can't prevent it from happening.
Why do I prefer Outlook Express? It's ONE app for mail and news. It's straightforward, has pretty damn good filtering (No I don't need regexps, thanks for asking), multiple POP, IMAP and NNTP accounts, works with LDAP, doesn't barf on attachments or HTML mail (ewww...), I've never had it crash out on me and it is pretty damn fast unless there's a 10M attachment. NO OTHER EMAIL APP WORKS AS WELL FOR ME. Get it? Got it? Good.
Except for the "just one app for mail and news", the next version of KMail will do this. (Or just try KDE2.2alpha2, it is quite stable despite being "Alpha" (at least on my machine;-))
And I've heard that KMail and KNode will be merged in the future, too.
Don't get me wrong, please. I'm for open-source software fully, but you sound like an irrational radical when you say "well, my program is the best because it's open-source."
Konqueror/KDE NEVER received as much open-source hype as GNOME or Mozilla. FSF still hates Konqueror although it always was open-source and loves the half-commercial AOL-browser/plaything Mozilla that evolved out of the commercial fuck-all-standards Netscape.
Maybe you should actually go out and *gasp* try a recent version of Konqueror.
I totally aggree. It is really stupid that the linux distributions doesn't distribute opera and make it the default browser for all the window managers at least until something decent emerges from other projects (maybe not on kde). Well at least if they want to sell their systems to newbie computer users.
*shudder*
Opera can't do much Javascript, Konqueror can.
Opera has a MDI (ouch), Konqui does not.
Opera is not free (speech), Konqueror is.
Konqueror can handle Flash, Opera can't (AFAIK)
However, I can't agree with that point of view simply because I don't use windows.
Have you tried Konqueror?
I think all people that would like to see IE should try Konqueror. It can do things like flash out of the box and the GUI is better. (Especially bookmark-management)
And in the upcoming KDE2.2 release nice things like translation, W3-checking, DOM-tree-viewer and others are available. And it becomes MUCH faster too, because of a lot of optimizations. (And it will be even faster when gcc3 is out)
While it's it may seem like a win for Linux, this is definitely a loss for free software. This will encourage people to use proprietary browser plugins for windows, rather than developing native ones for Linux. This sort of thing will end up restricting Linux to a secondary, niche market, which is just where MS wants it.
Please stop talking this nonsense. This is a PREREQUESITE for Linux domination, just look at the market leaders today:
MS Office is the leader because it provided input AND export filters to various other Office suites in the early times.
IE is the leader because it implemented Netscape's HTML-extensions.
In fact you suggest to behave like a monopolist. But without a monopoly this is a stupid thing to do, barriers only hurt the smaller competitors and help the leader, and Linux is not yet the leader on the desktop.
In 2 years Linux will be the only OS that will be able to run DOS, Win16 and Win9x, WinNT and WinXP applications - and this will be a Windows-killer.
The Wine project is the second most important open-source project out there (after KDE).
Subscription scares a lot of people. But it is also not really appealing to MS at this moment because stocks are in the cellar and subscription will harm short-time revenue (= stock price)
Could it be possible that Microsoft sells WindowsXP as the "last non-subscription" product?
Many people would by Windows XP to avoid subscription. Maybe this is just a marketing trick?
And of course Windows 2002 and Windows 2004 would also be the last non-subscription product, just like Windows 98 was the last Win9x based OS;-)
Believe it or not, I think many small/medium and even large size companies like the idea of subscriptions. The cost of software can be easily predicted,...
Uh, I had to laugh at that.
What if Microsoft decides to rise prices in the future? Even if Microsoft guarantees a fixed price for a long time, what if they unbundle some important parts of their programs ("Excel has become such an big program that it will no longer be part of Office 2005 and will be sold as a standalone product")...
"[..] I think this will make MS software more attractive [..]"
Why? The subscription-model exists already: It's called "buy every upgrade no matter how much MS charges for it".
Now MS-using companies have 3 choices: subscription/buy-every-upgrade or upgrade seldom or stop using MS.
Effectively, Microsoft is just eliminating one of those 3 choices.
I have a Pismo and I am running Linux and MacOS9 on it since about half a year.
I had no experience in MacOS at all and I've got say that I was very dissapointed. Linux beats MacOS in every respect (especially stability) ALSO in usability (KDE is far better than MacOS Finder) and Plug&Play (Linux recognizes my 3 Button Mice, MacOS does not. Linux can use both integrated speaker and external sound simultaneously, MacOS cannot)
The ONLY things I am missing in Linux is a DVD-player and Quicktime.
I was looking forward to MacOSX because I hoped that I could run a decent Unix and don't have to reboot for DVD. (And now I'm dissapointed, again)
What advantages does MacOS X offer?
Both Linux and MacOS are Unix-based
both can run MacOS9 apps
and both can't play DVD-movies.
So why choose a 1.0 release instead of Linux which is tested for years on PPC now?
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Just look at Commodore, the vendor of the C64 and Amiga and why the PC killed it:
C64/Amiga was proprietary, the PC is open. C64/Amiga was a single-vendor platform, the PC is multi-vendor. C64/Amiga was very easy to use, the PC had a lot of IRQ/DMA issues. C64/Amiga had a lot of software especially games, the PC had only niche apps in the beginning. The C64 is still the most sold computer model ever, no PC-model ever came close.
I think now the very same is happening in the Windows vs. Linux fight. I also think that Windows 95 will stay the all-time most sold OS, nevertheless Windows will be gone in 10 years. It will take a long time (10 years is a VERY long time in this industry) but it will happen, Microsoft may delay it but it can't prevent it from happening.
Roland
Except for the "just one app for mail and news", the next version of KMail will do this. (Or just try KDE2.2alpha2, it is quite stable despite being "Alpha" (at least on my machine ;-))
And I've heard that KMail and KNode will be merged in the future, too.
Roland
Only 20% of Webservers are running Windows, the rest runs Unix with Linux being number one.
So if you run the number one OS you are running a non-mainstream OS?
Well, see subject.
Roland
Konqueror/KDE NEVER received as much open-source hype as GNOME or Mozilla. FSF still hates Konqueror although it always was open-source and loves the half-commercial AOL-browser/plaything Mozilla that evolved out of the commercial fuck-all-standards Netscape.
Maybe you should actually go out and *gasp* try a recent version of Konqueror.
Roland
*shudder*
Opera can't do much Javascript, Konqueror can.
Opera has a MDI (ouch), Konqui does not.
Opera is not free (speech), Konqueror is.
Konqueror can handle Flash, Opera can't (AFAIK)
Roland
Konqueror is the only browser I know that lets you define a MINIMUM font-size.
Have you tried Konqueror?
I think all people that would like to see IE should try Konqueror. It can do things like flash out of the box and the GUI is better. (Especially bookmark-management)
And in the upcoming KDE2.2 release nice things like translation, W3-checking, DOM-tree-viewer and others are available. And it becomes MUCH faster too, because of a lot of optimizations. (And it will be even faster when gcc3 is out)
Roland
People always complained that there is no standard desktop on Linux. We had two competing desktops, KDE and GNOME.
Now after the hype is over and GNOME is dead or dying we have what everybody wanted: A standard desktop: KDE.
I think this is a step forward to desktop dominance, now commercial developers know what to develop for.
Roland
Please stop talking this nonsense. This is a PREREQUESITE for Linux domination, just look at the market leaders today:
MS Office is the leader because it provided input AND export filters to various other Office suites in the early times.
IE is the leader because it implemented Netscape's HTML-extensions.
In fact you suggest to behave like a monopolist. But without a monopoly this is a stupid thing to do, barriers only hurt the smaller competitors and help the leader, and Linux is not yet the leader on the desktop.
In 2 years Linux will be the only OS that will be able to run DOS, Win16 and Win9x, WinNT and WinXP applications - and this will be a Windows-killer.
The Wine project is the second most important open-source project out there (after KDE).
Roland
Could it be possible that Microsoft sells WindowsXP as the "last non-subscription" product? Many people would by Windows XP to avoid subscription. Maybe this is just a marketing trick?
And of course Windows 2002 and Windows 2004 would also be the last non-subscription product, just like Windows 98 was the last Win9x based OS ;-)
Believe it or not, I think many small/medium and even large size companies like the idea of subscriptions. The cost of software can be easily predicted, ...
Uh, I had to laugh at that.
What if Microsoft decides to rise prices in the future? Even if Microsoft guarantees a fixed price for a long time, what if they unbundle some important parts of their programs ("Excel has become such an big program that it will no longer be part of Office 2005 and will be sold as a standalone product")...
"[..] I think this will make MS software more attractive [..]"
Why? The subscription-model exists already: It's called "buy every upgrade no matter how much MS charges for it".
Now MS-using companies have 3 choices: subscription/buy-every-upgrade or upgrade seldom or stop using MS.
Effectively, Microsoft is just eliminating one of those 3 choices.
AFAIK there is a very decent C- interpreter out there. So you could use the interpreter to run GCC to build a 100% clean GCC-binary.
I have a Pismo and I am running Linux and MacOS9 on it since about half a year.
I had no experience in MacOS at all and I've got say that I was very dissapointed. Linux beats MacOS in every respect (especially stability) ALSO in usability (KDE is far better than MacOS Finder) and Plug&Play (Linux recognizes my 3 Button Mice, MacOS does not. Linux can use both integrated speaker and external sound simultaneously, MacOS cannot)
The ONLY things I am missing in Linux is a DVD-player and Quicktime.
I was looking forward to MacOSX because I hoped that I could run a decent Unix and don't have to reboot for DVD. (And now I'm dissapointed, again)
What advantages does MacOS X offer?
Both Linux and MacOS are Unix-based
both can run MacOS9 apps
and both can't play DVD-movies.
So why choose a 1.0 release instead of Linux which is tested for years on PPC now?
Roland();