Here's the best line in the whole article...
on
Dell CEO Tells All
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"could not be done on Intel processors with Microsoft. So they bought unique Unix platforms whether it is Sun, HP, IBM, a host of folks. SGI. That's all changed over the last five to 10 years. You've moved to standards-based technology"
If that doesn't make you laugh nothing will. Yet another reason to avoid Dell, F'ing MS mouth-pieces.
eBay beat 'em to it, thanks to eBay I rarley let a PC get so old I won't use it any longer, my upgrade cycle is a little more frequent but a whole lot cheaper.
Holy cow, Mr. Steve Ballmer post on Slashdot. Steve, you can get an account for free, no need to post as an AC. Maybe you should get our resume ready, seems the tide is changing for MS?
This isn't Dvorak we are talking about, get some historical perspective. Sadly the point people are missing is that most software "companies" have stopped looking for what "could be" and now focus purely on what's profitable. But the chase for "could be" brought us pretty far, pretty fast. I call for some balance to this situation, anyone else care to join me?
I wonder how many great things we miss while MS stragnles the marketplace?
to consider any that isn't an MS product. He is a staunch Redmond supporter, won't even concede the imporatance of Unix/Linux/Mac ever, as if they never existed. I have been hitting him with links from these stories for almost a year straight, he just called, wants to me to start having our desktop guys install FireFox on his desktops next week. Chalk up one more for the good guys...
So true, it was the Ballmer contention that they were "betting the company" on Windows 2000 and then releasing it with security and stability issues that pretty much squandered what faith I had left in MS. I firmly believe that if the codebase of Windows ME had been even slightly more stable than it was that it would still be in favor. It was better looking than 9x, supported newer hardware features better and was still less bloated than XP by a long shot, too bad it suffered from so many stability issues for so many people.
Of course, you could take those lumbering ME boxes and put Mandrake on them and fix all the problems, but so many foolishly opt for XP. 'Tis a shame...
I agree, I think this statement is more wishful marketing spin. No doubt there will still be many millions of Windows desktops, but I think numbers for alternatives will cut into that 96%. I think this kind of thing is aimed at home users on the fence and corporate PHBs who have heard of this "Linux thing" and might consider looking in to it. This is just more subtle FUD they hope people will start repeating...
"they say there will be one billion Windows users in a few years, so why fight it"
Of course most people won't ask who "they" is or what those predictions are based on, but like I said, a sort of "kinder, gentler FUD".
stuck on Mandrake, mostly out of pure laziness. But since I don't care for the way Mandrake hides/alters some default file locations this puts Fedora back on the table for me. Hmmm, choice is good....
This is rubbish, a distro like Mandrake with urpmi takes care of all those questions and apps like FireFox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and the Gimp are equal to or better than thier peers. I watched Blazing Saddles on DVD today, played some UT2K4 and cleaned up some images for work which I then embedded in a PDF. This isn't 1999 and Linux has come a long way, stop living in the past.
And don't use legacy app support to defend Windows, way too many apps were broken on the way to XP and I don't even want to see what SP2 is going to do.
Post like yours are based on fear of the change that is coming.
What rubbish, unless your parents are handicapped they can handle Mandrake, sorry for your confusion.
And let's not start up with the myth that Apple has a super secret stash of the "good parts" while the rest of the industry is left with garbage. I've owned several Macs, most recently a G4 iBook and they are so over rated it's scarey.
better, keep your middle aged but capable PC and load it with Linux, Mandrake and Linspire are virtual no brainers.
Macs are overpriced and while there is more software via shareware available for them, by time you are done putting together everything you need you could have...
a) suffered through Windows and paid for a suite of similair programs and still come out ahead financially
b) learned to use urpmi, or even./ from the CLI and installed some equivalent packages for free
There is no reason to pay Apple prices and the few reasons to stay with Windows disappear by the day.
source for this Internet Explorer, I think we should support this underdog company and try to break the iron grip that FireFOx..... errrr. wait, never mind.
Do you get the feeling MS is really starting to sweat that they are simply out of ideas and finding fewer places to steal from since they strangled thier own market place?
change coming, that's why Gates stepped down and Mikey Dell retired. Both MS and Dell are metaphors for the wrong way to handle the tech industry, mass production without innovation. When Gates came out a few months back and said he envisioned a future where hardware was free (as in beer) and that users paid premiums for software, I think he sent a ripple through the likes of HP, IBM and the other OEMs. Times are changing...
"Really? Abandoning the midrange never hurt BMW, Rolex or Tiffany's."
NEWSFLASH!!! It's a F'ing computer, a commodity good that Apple users regularly over pay for. It's just a motherboard, video card, RAM, drives, etc... Apple engineers don't have access to the "really good" parts while all other PCs are made or bailing twine and plywood. Apple motherboards and memory come from the same fabs as Dell and HP, same with every other part. You want to pay too much for a shiney case, crippled mouse and yearly OS upgrades be my guest, none for me thanks.
That's assuming you consider what you labelled as "mid-range" to be of the same high quality as the high end. My iBook G4 (that I recently sold on eBay for almost exactly what I paid for it) suffered from a few some small fit and finish issues (which you can find many people complaining about on the Apple message boards), lump in the middle of the keyboard, battery droops on one corner, LCD frame not flush, etc... If this is the kind of fit and finsih you would tolerate with your new Corvette then I would have to say you are a poorly informed consumer or, like I was for a time, blinded by the Apple mystique!!! I should have returned my iBook when it was delivered in this condition but I do enjoy OS X so it stayed for a few months, but I'm not paying for that kind of "quality" again.
If Apple's mid-range wasn't on par with everyone else's low end your argument would hold water, but the iBook, iMac and eMac are all under-powered and overpriced, and my supposedly "low-end" Shuttle SK41G w/Athlon XP 2000+/2x256 Corsair/GeForce4 MX440 running Mandrake 10 runs circles around my iBook G4, yet cost me only $530 to build.
The whole Apple myth of superior quality and analogies to BMW should just stop. Then again, since BMW is frequently regarded as overpriced and underpowered, maybe not?
another round of stuff I either can't afford or am not willing to pay for, but at least we can all take about how innovative Apple is in design some more. I love ya' Apple, but this whole move where you basically abandonded the mid-range can't really be good for business.
you can be sued for ANY NUMBER of resaons in their shared source programs it strikes me as nothing more than marketing bullet points. This might make the cutting edge PHBs feel better but it means nothing to anyone doing the work.
I looked at your user name, then read your post, and now I know what you are doing here. You are one of the many forum/newsgroup plants MS sends out to spread additional FUD.
I call bullshit, the Windows Firewall only stops inbound traffic and is UPnP aware so if you can browse to the printer it can get back to you. If you don't like Windows that is fine, but don't make shit up.
segment because a decent competitor hasn't come along, YET. Apple doesn't have the muscle of MS and when something cheaper, well inetgraed with WMP9 and meets more closely the DRM wishes of the major labels it will be all over. I don't necessarily think working with Real is the answer, but people love to watch Steve Jobs eat his words and statements like this deserve to be served up on large platters.
Slashdot Mirror
If that doesn't make you laugh nothing will. Yet another reason to avoid Dell, F'ing MS mouth-pieces.
as I read the title all the "In Soviet Germany..." possiblities started to run through my brain?
eBay beat 'em to it, thanks to eBay I rarley let a PC get so old I won't use it any longer, my upgrade cycle is a little more frequent but a whole lot cheaper.
Holy cow, Mr. Steve Ballmer post on Slashdot. Steve, you can get an account for free, no need to post as an AC. Maybe you should get our resume ready, seems the tide is changing for MS?
Except you don't have to pay $199 for it...
I wonder how many great things we miss while MS stragnles the marketplace?
to consider any that isn't an MS product. He is a staunch Redmond supporter, won't even concede the imporatance of Unix/Linux/Mac ever, as if they never existed. I have been hitting him with links from these stories for almost a year straight, he just called, wants to me to start having our desktop guys install FireFox on his desktops next week. Chalk up one more for the good guys...
Of course, you could take those lumbering ME boxes and put Mandrake on them and fix all the problems, but so many foolishly opt for XP. 'Tis a shame...
"they say there will be one billion Windows users in a few years, so why fight it"
Of course most people won't ask who "they" is or what those predictions are based on, but like I said, a sort of "kinder, gentler FUD".
stuck on Mandrake, mostly out of pure laziness. But since I don't care for the way Mandrake hides/alters some default file locations this puts Fedora back on the table for me. Hmmm, choice is good....
And don't use legacy app support to defend Windows, way too many apps were broken on the way to XP and I don't even want to see what SP2 is going to do.
Post like yours are based on fear of the change that is coming.
And let's not start up with the myth that Apple has a super secret stash of the "good parts" while the rest of the industry is left with garbage. I've owned several Macs, most recently a G4 iBook and they are so over rated it's scarey.
The only ingnorance here is your Apple rhetoric.
Macs are overpriced and while there is more software via shareware available for them, by time you are done putting together everything you need you could have...
a) suffered through Windows and paid for a suite of similair programs and still come out ahead financially
b) learned to use urpmi, or even ./ from the CLI and installed some equivalent packages for free
There is no reason to pay Apple prices and the few reasons to stay with Windows disappear by the day.
Do you get the feeling MS is really starting to sweat that they are simply out of ideas and finding fewer places to steal from since they strangled thier own market place?
change coming, that's why Gates stepped down and Mikey Dell retired. Both MS and Dell are metaphors for the wrong way to handle the tech industry, mass production without innovation. When Gates came out a few months back and said he envisioned a future where hardware was free (as in beer) and that users paid premiums for software, I think he sent a ripple through the likes of HP, IBM and the other OEMs. Times are changing...
that it will be easier to support Linux than listen to all the complaints about XP SP2 breaking compatability.
I don't normally waste keystrokes on ACs, but the new Rios are the same if not better than iPods, christ give up on the Apple mystique and face facts.
NEWSFLASH!!! It's a F'ing computer, a commodity good that Apple users regularly over pay for. It's just a motherboard, video card, RAM, drives, etc... Apple engineers don't have access to the "really good" parts while all other PCs are made or bailing twine and plywood. Apple motherboards and memory come from the same fabs as Dell and HP, same with every other part. You want to pay too much for a shiney case, crippled mouse and yearly OS upgrades be my guest, none for me thanks.
If Apple's mid-range wasn't on par with everyone else's low end your argument would hold water, but the iBook, iMac and eMac are all under-powered and overpriced, and my supposedly "low-end" Shuttle SK41G w/Athlon XP 2000+/2x256 Corsair/GeForce4 MX440 running Mandrake 10 runs circles around my iBook G4, yet cost me only $530 to build. The whole Apple myth of superior quality and analogies to BMW should just stop. Then again, since BMW is frequently regarded as overpriced and underpowered, maybe not?
another round of stuff I either can't afford or am not willing to pay for, but at least we can all take about how innovative Apple is in design some more. I love ya' Apple, but this whole move where you basically abandonded the mid-range can't really be good for business.
you can be sued for ANY NUMBER of resaons in their shared source programs it strikes me as nothing more than marketing bullet points. This might make the cutting edge PHBs feel better but it means nothing to anyone doing the work.
I looked at your user name, then read your post, and now I know what you are doing here. You are one of the many forum/newsgroup plants MS sends out to spread additional FUD.
I call bullshit, the Windows Firewall only stops inbound traffic and is UPnP aware so if you can browse to the printer it can get back to you. If you don't like Windows that is fine, but don't make shit up.
"Microsoft makes crap software that does not work."
Typical OSS/Apple zealot who won't concede that many of MS products are actually pretty good.
segment because a decent competitor hasn't come along, YET. Apple doesn't have the muscle of MS and when something cheaper, well inetgraed with WMP9 and meets more closely the DRM wishes of the major labels it will be all over. I don't necessarily think working with Real is the answer, but people love to watch Steve Jobs eat his words and statements like this deserve to be served up on large platters.