I recently got asked by a friend to help him find a new PC.
I looked at a couple of ways of doing it, including doing a custom build. Basically I could build a quite decent box for about 200UKP but when I then added in an OEM for Windows and Office, it nearly doubled the price.
My friend was really shocked. His line was something like "so the software nearly costs as much as the hardware!".
Ballmer has this all completely wrong. People know how much a blank CD costs.
More and more, I'm sceptical myself about software. Someone tells me - go and download this software from such and such a site. My thinking? OK, what spyware is going to come with it, and what registry entries is it going to screw up?
Put an ad in the NYT, and they'll think it's something serious and proper.
Don't forget that whilst they have that money coming in now, there are people who in various large government bodies and companies now starting to play the Linux card on Microsoft.
They are pushing for huge discounts, and the that 36.8 billion of income could fall pretty fast.
The trouble is, these are public companies which are owned by shareholders, so people aren't just in the "debt free, making money and billions in the bank". What they want is growth and either rise in share price, or dividends.
They can choose Apple or Microsoft or any number of companies, and what they are interested in is those who will give them the best return on their investments, often for a short period of time.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's the way it is.
My point is that if you are a pension company and you end up with a huge amount of Microsoft, and the return is poor, either you will sell (lowering the stock value) or put pressure to empty the coffers.
So, they made 8.6bn profit on a share value of over 300Bn? Thats less than a 3% return on investment. People who invest look at 2 things - dividends and share growth.
If Microsoft don't deliver on these things, shareholders will want their pound of flesh or will go where they think they can get a better return.
It doesn't take much for that pile of cash to get eaten up with shareholders taking it.
I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow, but things could be very different in say 10 years.
I work in the "business world". And for 6 months, I have written everything in OpenOffice.org. And I'd rather send everything in PDF because fonts will be preserved, and there's less chance of someone altering it.
What could be an issue for Microsoft is that if people get used to OpenOffice.org, then they won't use Word, even if Microsoft later develop a Linux version.
I'm not even sure that the growth of OpenOffice.org isn't mostly on Windows now.
The last excellent addition to Word was tables, and I don't even mean the table drawing thingy that I could do without.
I wrote my college papers on a non-WYSIWYG word processor with a single font circa 1986. Tables and embedded images are both great, though, but the problem is, they've run out of useful new features to add.
I have written a number of documents in OOo, printed them, exported them to Word and PDF and no-one's ever complained.
OSX isn't that much of a threat because it loses on price.
I'm not arguing about the TCO of a Mac, but when I've proposed the idea of "have you checked out a Mac", they always say that the price is too high. Although, many people I've met who own them consider that the extra cost outweighs all the Windows hassles.
IBM's bag is more about services than hardware AFAICT. Also, a lot of other companies are positioning themselves in terms of support etc (eg MySql).
Microsoft's best move would be to go into the consulting business in a much bigger way than they are now.
In the same way that people fought progress in other industries and got wiped out, unless Microsoft makes it's move sooner than later, they could end up going to the wall. People can laugh all they like, but the open source genie isn't going back in the bottle. Red Hat, Suse, MySQL are all growing, and establishing themselves. If Microsoft wait too long, they won't get in there.
some people think the same thing about some document formats.
Let's say you've got a message that is n years old, where n is quite a number of versions ago, long enough that most people aren't using it, and you've lost your old copy of the reader, and the company in question don't care about you or got taken over and hard drives lost, then how are you going to read it?
At least with things like the OASIS format documents, it's all there in zipped XML with all the formats publicly defined.
IBM can still themselves modify the code. They don't have to rely on strangers - they can contact some expert in the field and contract them to do the work for them instead. OK, it will get OSSd for them, but the main thing is that their client requirements get satisfied.
As for the business model, the business model is that IBM is the intermediary between the users and the "strangers". It's why people also buy things like Suse linux in a box with a contract - it's so that if it doesn't work, they can call up Suse and get it resolved. Sure, it might cost them money, but they'll pay it.
Unlike Google, who get it completely. That it's all about information.
As broadband use continues to rise, people will just see the internet as an extension of their desktop. I have a legit license for Autoroute, but I use online route finders. Why? Well, it means that I don't have to install something. I also get it updated for me by the company providing it. I get a whole bunch of other features, like traffic reports, all provided for me.
You are talking about usage stats, hits. There are millions of people with a PC who go online for 5-10 minutes per day average.
There may be 90% of users running IE, but because the Moz users are higher users, it runs higher.
As an aside, one thing that site designers should consider in stats is the quality of customers. You may design for IE because that's where the majority of users are, but it could be that the n% of Opera, Mozilla and Safari users are more switched on, which may mean better educated and higher earning.
The biggest problem isn't the lying, it's the distortion of the facts.
Tony Blair didn't lie over Iraq, but whether he was completely open and frank is another matter. There were cavaets about the evidence for WMDs in Iraq that we were not told. Now, is that lying? Probably not, but it's dishonest.
There's also the thing of playing on people's assumptions - you make a declaration, which people interpret in a certain way based on normal rules, history etc. When it isn't delivered, you can then fall back on exact wording.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked at a couple of ways of doing it, including doing a custom build. Basically I could build a quite decent box for about 200UKP but when I then added in an OEM for Windows and Office, it nearly doubled the price.
My friend was really shocked. His line was something like "so the software nearly costs as much as the hardware!".
Ballmer has this all completely wrong. People know how much a blank CD costs.
I did write to one company, actually after telling them that I was getting problems navigating things on the site.
Is that all going to fit?
Anyway... $30 and I get my name in the NYT? Sounds good to me. But, someone out there is going to have to get me a print copy as I'm UK based.
It's also about being an issue of trust.
More and more, I'm sceptical myself about software. Someone tells me - go and download this software from such and such a site. My thinking? OK, what spyware is going to come with it, and what registry entries is it going to screw up?
Put an ad in the NYT, and they'll think it's something serious and proper.
I visited a site of a major car dealership, and I didn't even get a "this site designed for Internet Explorer". It just flat refused to let me in.
My attitude? Oh well, I'll use someone else. I'm not that desperate to use that car dealership.
Do I really have to reply to another "Mozilla is crap because pages using non-standard HTML don't work with it?
Well, all I can say to you is dgsdfgsdewrgerg.
You understand?
They are pushing for huge discounts, and the that 36.8 billion of income could fall pretty fast.
They can choose Apple or Microsoft or any number of companies, and what they are interested in is those who will give them the best return on their investments, often for a short period of time.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's the way it is.
My point is that if you are a pension company and you end up with a huge amount of Microsoft, and the return is poor, either you will sell (lowering the stock value) or put pressure to empty the coffers.
So, they made 8.6bn profit on a share value of over 300Bn? Thats less than a 3% return on investment. People who invest look at 2 things - dividends and share growth.
If Microsoft don't deliver on these things, shareholders will want their pound of flesh or will go where they think they can get a better return.
It doesn't take much for that pile of cash to get eaten up with shareholders taking it.
I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow, but things could be very different in say 10 years.
I get tired of doing it - my Win2K box just gets slower, even after unistalls etc.
I guess that the fact that Linux doesn't have a registry (the stupidest thing in Windows) helps.
I work in the "business world". And for 6 months, I have written everything in OpenOffice.org. And I'd rather send everything in PDF because fonts will be preserved, and there's less chance of someone altering it.
This is historic times.
I think war is a dangerous place.
I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man.
I'm not even sure that the growth of OpenOffice.org isn't mostly on Windows now.
I wrote my college papers on a non-WYSIWYG word processor with a single font circa 1986. Tables and embedded images are both great, though, but the problem is, they've run out of useful new features to add.
I have written a number of documents in OOo, printed them, exported them to Word and PDF and no-one's ever complained.
I'm not arguing about the TCO of a Mac, but when I've proposed the idea of "have you checked out a Mac", they always say that the price is too high. Although, many people I've met who own them consider that the extra cost outweighs all the Windows hassles.
Microsoft's best move would be to go into the consulting business in a much bigger way than they are now.
In the same way that people fought progress in other industries and got wiped out, unless Microsoft makes it's move sooner than later, they could end up going to the wall. People can laugh all they like, but the open source genie isn't going back in the bottle. Red Hat, Suse, MySQL are all growing, and establishing themselves. If Microsoft wait too long, they won't get in there.
The trouble with a "pile of cash" is that unless you are paying dividends and/or getting good stock growth, investors will start looking at it.
Let's say you've got a message that is n years old, where n is quite a number of versions ago, long enough that most people aren't using it, and you've lost your old copy of the reader, and the company in question don't care about you or got taken over and hard drives lost, then how are you going to read it?
At least with things like the OASIS format documents, it's all there in zipped XML with all the formats publicly defined.
As for the business model, the business model is that IBM is the intermediary between the users and the "strangers". It's why people also buy things like Suse linux in a box with a contract - it's so that if it doesn't work, they can call up Suse and get it resolved. Sure, it might cost them money, but they'll pay it.
There's a recent parallel happened in the UK.
As broadband use continues to rise, people will just see the internet as an extension of their desktop. I have a legit license for Autoroute, but I use online route finders. Why? Well, it means that I don't have to install something. I also get it updated for me by the company providing it. I get a whole bunch of other features, like traffic reports, all provided for me.
I don't use software like Encarta, but Wikipedia.
You are talking about usage stats, hits. There are millions of people with a PC who go online for 5-10 minutes per day average.
There may be 90% of users running IE, but because the Moz users are higher users, it runs higher.
As an aside, one thing that site designers should consider in stats is the quality of customers. You may design for IE because that's where the majority of users are, but it could be that the n% of Opera, Mozilla and Safari users are more switched on, which may mean better educated and higher earning.
Tony Blair didn't lie over Iraq, but whether he was completely open and frank is another matter. There were cavaets about the evidence for WMDs in Iraq that we were not told. Now, is that lying? Probably not, but it's dishonest.
There's also the thing of playing on people's assumptions - you make a declaration, which people interpret in a certain way based on normal rules, history etc. When it isn't delivered, you can then fall back on exact wording.
Get it finished!!!