I got them from shop.microsoft.com. Advanced Server priced at $3519.
> Well, just to make sure you dont get away with your blatant lying, etc, etc. I will give some links and some actual facts. Try it sometime.
I already did.
> $3500 a pop, without licenses Wrong. CDW offers Win2k Advanced Server for $3, 196.97 with 25-liceneses.
You got me on that one. What I originally intended to say was "no additional client licenses." It does indeed come with 25 (we run it at home).
But if you go back to my original message, I reduced my cost estimate down to $2000 to accommodate the fact that nobody buys at the retail price. CDW is simply one of the resellers that offers it at a discount off the retail (and not nearly as generous as my discount).
> Anyways though, MS does grant unlimited usuage for web-based services (IE hotmail) under the Open License Program. I looked into it a while back and it was in the $100k range.
According to the page you point to, the program "offers savings of up to 28% on Microsoft software." Still much higher than my $2000 estimate.
> Well I would imagine that MS, owning Hotmail, MSN, etc, etc would just give them products they need, wouldnt you?
No shit? You mean Hotmail doesn't have to scrounge for pennies in the sofa? Of course Hotmail doesn't have to cut MS a check; the exercise here is to figure out how much _other businesses_ would have to shell out to move from FreeBSD to Win2K the way Microsoft is doing. The point is that other companies would have to be willing to shell out megabucks for such a change, and to what aim?
> So regardless of new hardware requirments, you can be sure that they will want more machines - why upgrade to have the same or less capacity?
According to my sources at Hotmail, they aren't using more machines. In fact, after switching from FreeBSD to Win2K, they are seeing much better performance (on the order of 4x).
And for the rest of you out there who actually have the facts of this thing all wrong...
Hotmail is already using Win2K MUCH MUCH MORE than you realize. The 5-10% numbers you are seeing are only for the front door machines. In fact, the backend machines have already mostly been converted to Win2K.
Don't believe me? Try viewing the source of a Hotmail message page and checking the bottom comments. You'll see an IP address stamp, a date stamp, and an OS/version stamp. For many users (much more than 5%, but not all) that version stamp will indicate Win2K.
> Finally, there are plenty of things to bash MS on, why do we need to make things up?
I made nothing up, and my generous estimate still stands. It would cost any other company millions of dollars to perform this upgrade. Better performance than unoptimized FreeBSD, but oh, the price.
I can guarantee you that there are a _lot_ more than 200 machines running Hotmail. Try multiple thousands.
How much would that cost?
Each of the machines runs Win2K Advanced Server at $3500 a pop without client licenses, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and price it at $2000 bulk rate. 'Course, if you're one of the companies that signed up for Microsoft's many "www.howsuckupdidit.com" ad campaigns to tout the wonders of Win2K, I'm sure you got it for much, much less.
Even still, to license the number of Win2K machines Hotmail's using would be in the millions or tens of millions. Not to mention any hardware upgrades.
That doesn't look so good compared to FreeBSD's price.
> Still, to be fair, in the case of the two features (multi-file choosing and mousewheel), these are both bugs in Sun's JDK, not in Borland's code. Hoepfully, Sun is working on these.
Mouse wheel support is planned for the next JDK (version 1.4, aka "Merlin"). You can find a PDF with all the proposed features at here
Not sure about multi-file choosing, but other file chooser enhancements are listed. If you want multi-file choosing, request it, because the draft is open for comments until next week.
> Can they then unplug from the network and continue to work on their notebook, and can they also do it through their cellphone, a handheld, their TV? Didn't think so.
Ummmm... wrong! If you are trying to claim that accessing personal information like email and documents from any device can't be done with existing technology, you're full of it. There are scores of companies out there right now that allow you to access your information from devices and handhelds (I work for one!). And yes, I mean anyone's device, not just any device. Unplugging isn't a problem, either, that's what local caching and synchronization are for. Haven't you ever used a Palm?
If you think this.Net initiative is something new, you've drunk the MS marketing Kool-Aid. Which is just what they're counting on.
Having been a PC gamer for many years, I'm not surprised by this tired refrain. Quality game makers all over the place are closing up shop or canceling products. The size and number of the PC-specific game magazines is also decreasing.
I've seen recent studies showing how console games are swamping PC game sales, and I'm really starting to believe it. Well, that and the fact that I'm also giving up PC games for consoles...
How about Oracle's entire apps suite, as well as most of its other products that have complex front ends.
Its popular Developer tool also deploys all of its former platform-specific client-server apps to the web via Java with a recompile, and that's got lots of customers using it.
Fact is, Java is widely used for applications staged in corporate intranets. Just because you aren't using applets as you troll sites like Slashdot doesn't mean you have any grasp on "reality".
His "Halloween parties" weren't really parties... they were the ultimate haunted house. I went to one about 6 years ago, and it was fantastic.
They took place in and around his house, and were an hour-long quest you went on in groups of four. They were usually tied into the plotline of the latest Ultima game, and they utilized hundreds of actors and extreme special effects. The one I went on included rowing a boat down a river while being attacked, big pyrotechnics displays, flying enemies, and getting trapped in a collapsing room that flipped you over. Lord British personally started each 4 man tour at the front gate after you went through a short endurance test.
What's more, it was free. There was one night each year that sold tickets for a charity, but the other few nights were first-come first-serve, free tickets. We camped out for days to get them.
>Actually, console game developers have always paid licensing fees.
Yes, I know, but you missed my point. MS currently does not charge developers, game developers included, a license fee for producing windows software.
If they start doing it for the X-Box, then they'll either have one platform (X-Box) with licensing fees and one (PC) without, or they'll have to change the Windows PC platform to have a license fee, too.
I don't think either of those scenarios is likely to succeed in making developers happy and MS rich(er).
I think your estimate of $750 cost is low for those specs. It's supposed to have a new GeForce card, too.
Regardless, if the price is true (sounds like rumor/FUD) then MS will be selling this box at a significant loss in the hopes that it will get that money back, either from online subscriptions to MSN or software licensing.
I highly doubt game vendors are going to jump for option number two since they don't have to pay MS to release programs for Windows. And they probably wouldn't be thrilled about pouring more of their own money into licenses from an increasingly competitive game developer like MS.
So I guess MS is going to tie this into WebTV/MSN and generate revenue from subscriptions.
But subsidizing ventures like this is exactly why MS is losing a billion dollars a year in WebTV. Ouch.
MS is also spouting out a bunch of IT trade mag ads about how Windows runs 5x% of the fortune 100, or similar crap.
What they completely fail to mention is _what_ and _where_ windows runs. In many of those cases, it runs print servers, static HTML web pages, and non-critical systems.
Mozilla on the Mac is, admittedly, not up to par with the Win32 version in terms of performance and stability. In my experience, the Linux version, while better than the Mac version, doesn't match the Win32 build either.
There are specific bugs they have filed about bringing up performance on the Mac, but it seems to be a matter of resources.
BTW, since you mentioned IE 4.5's Mac startup speed, I should mention a little caveat about that.
"Faster startup" was one of the highly touted features of IE 4.5 over 4.0, but in reality what they did is just bring up the window shell and prevent user input until the rest of the program loads. The time it takes to actually interact with the program isn't much improved. But hey, fooled you, huh? (And everyone else).
Microsoft is suddenly becoming a powerhouse in the PC game industry. Only two years ago just about every title designed or published by MS was laughed out of stores.
Now they've got Age of Empires 2 burning up the sales charts and Asheron's Call making a serious challenge to online games like Ultima Online and Everquest. And MS has other big-name projects emerging in the next few months.
More than a year ago, I did a market research study for a big, established PC game company, and they made it very clear that they were terrified of MS' impending foray into the game world. Now that seems to be justified.
I'm wondering if these recent porting moves are the result of game companies realizing what other software companies grasped years ago... that making your product depend on your largest competitor's API/OS is a BAD IDEA.
You can actually enable the memory cache in the Preferences dialog without touching the prefs file. It's under the "Debug" preferences, the last option in the list.
> A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines?
Well, I hate to harp on this again, but that's pretty wishful thinking. If Compaq, who was one of the ones threatened, made an announcement that they couldn't sell Windows anymore, but they'd be glad to offer their customers these OS/2 boxes (or Linux, or BeOS) they'd be done for.
Companies have to keep growing to survive in the market, especially with competitors around like Dell and HP and all the other vendors. Compaq would instantly lose most of its revenue, partners, and customers. Not to mention the tanking stock, shareholder lawsuits, etc. etc.
Even if they just had the price of Windows raised substantially, the effects would be less drastic, but they'd lose substantial profit on each machine and therefore customers.
No matter the outcome of the trial, one very positive thing to result is that these manufacturers can load machines with Linux, BeOS, etc. without suffering reprisals from MS because MS is so carefully scrutinized.
> They never prevented Netscape from being installed.
Wrong. They did exactly that by threatening to revoke Windows licenses or significantly raise prices for manufacturers who wanted to install it. They paid bounties to ISPs who dropped Netscape Navigator, too.
Oh yeah, but of course that wasn't forclosing distribution because average Joe user was just expected to use his... ummm... bundled, unremovable browser... to go out and download another... browser. Hmm.
> There has always been other choices out there, but the point is that computer manufacturers have always been so enamored with Microsoft's software that they've chosen to ignore the competition.
You are completely ignoring the threat factor. MS was shown to raise the cost of Windows to those computer manufacturers who stepped out of line, be it to load Netscape Navigator on their machines or perform other acts of MS heresy. Windows is an essential facility for computer manufacturers (more proof of monopoly) and losing a Windows license would be a death sentence. "Enamored" ain't go nothing to do with it.
When I think of companies that are in bed with Microsoft, three immediately come to mind: Symantec, Visio, and Rational. All three have been widely quoted as supporters of MS in the trial and before.
Symantec's former CEO Gordon Eubanks was mostly discredited while testifying for them when it was revealed that MS was feeding him the lines to say to secure favorable deals for the company.
Ted Johnson from Visio has always jumped at the bit when the press wanted a quote about how wonderful it was that Microsoft's monopoly was creating standards in the industry. Which makes sense, because now Visio will be the standard Office diagramming tool, so I guess he's not a hypocrite!. Visio is also one of the founding members of the Association for Competitive Technology, an industry group formed to support MS in the trial that has widely been rumored to be a shadow group funded and directed by MS.
It really calls into question the motives of those companies that claim to be independently supporting MS in the media. And I'd hardly be surprised if Symantec or Rational weren't acquired in the future.
On the upside, everytime MS does this they create a whole new industry of enemies.
> Java is a great language for writing distributed apps but distributed apps must include the client, after all thats where the rubber hits the road. I urge sun to recommit to the client end.
The good news is, they are. JDK 1.3 by default uses a new client VM, and my experience shows the client running about twice as fast as the 1.2 version. They're also putting a lot of work into optimizing Swing and improving deployment with locally cached applets and versioning in browsers.
And it now runs in Mozilla as the native applet handler, with some pre-release caveats.
In fact, Oracle claims it already has 50,000 downloads or Oracle on Linux and 800 paying customers for it. And they've got other products on Linux, too.
Slashdot Mirror
> Umm.. Where are you getting these numbers?
I got them from shop.microsoft.com. Advanced Server priced at $3519.
> Well, just to make sure you dont get away with your blatant lying, etc, etc. I will give some links and some actual facts. Try it sometime.
I already did.
> $3500 a pop, without licenses Wrong. CDW offers Win2k Advanced Server for $3, 196.97 with 25-liceneses.
You got me on that one. What I originally intended to say was "no additional client licenses." It does indeed come with 25 (we run it at home).
But if you go back to my original message, I reduced my cost estimate down to $2000 to accommodate the fact that nobody buys at the retail price. CDW is simply one of the resellers that offers it at a discount off the retail (and not nearly as generous as my discount).
> Anyways though, MS does grant unlimited usuage for web-based services (IE hotmail) under the Open License Program. I looked into it a while back and it was in the $100k range.
According to the page you point to, the program "offers savings of up to 28% on Microsoft software." Still much higher than my $2000 estimate.
> Well I would imagine that MS, owning Hotmail, MSN, etc, etc would just give them products they need, wouldnt you?
No shit? You mean Hotmail doesn't have to scrounge for pennies in the sofa? Of course Hotmail doesn't have to cut MS a check; the exercise here is to figure out how much _other businesses_ would have to shell out to move from FreeBSD to Win2K the way Microsoft is doing. The point is that other companies would have to be willing to shell out megabucks for such a change, and to what aim?
> So regardless of new hardware requirments, you can be sure that they will want more machines - why upgrade to have the same or less capacity?
According to my sources at Hotmail, they aren't using more machines. In fact, after switching from FreeBSD to Win2K, they are seeing much better performance (on the order of 4x).
And for the rest of you out there who actually have the facts of this thing all wrong...
Hotmail is already using Win2K MUCH MUCH MORE than you realize. The 5-10% numbers you are seeing are only for the front door machines. In fact, the backend machines have already mostly been converted to Win2K.
Don't believe me? Try viewing the source of a Hotmail message page and checking the bottom comments. You'll see an IP address stamp, a date stamp, and an OS/version stamp. For many users (much more than 5%, but not all) that version stamp will indicate Win2K.
> Finally, there are plenty of things to bash MS on, why do we need to make things up?
I made nothing up, and my generous estimate still stands. It would cost any other company millions of dollars to perform this upgrade. Better performance than unoptimized FreeBSD, but oh, the price.
I can guarantee you that there are a _lot_ more than 200 machines running Hotmail. Try multiple thousands.
How much would that cost?
Each of the machines runs Win2K Advanced Server at $3500 a pop without client licenses, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and price it at $2000 bulk rate. 'Course, if you're one of the companies that signed up for Microsoft's many "www.howsuckupdidit.com" ad campaigns to tout the wonders of Win2K, I'm sure you got it for much, much less.
Even still, to license the number of Win2K machines Hotmail's using would be in the millions or tens of millions. Not to mention any hardware upgrades.
That doesn't look so good compared to FreeBSD's price.
> Still, to be fair, in the case of the two features (multi-file choosing and mousewheel), these are both bugs in Sun's JDK, not in Borland's code. Hoepfully, Sun is working on these.
Mouse wheel support is planned for the next JDK (version 1.4, aka "Merlin"). You can find a PDF with all the proposed features at here
Not sure about multi-file choosing, but other file chooser enhancements are listed. If you want multi-file choosing, request it, because the draft is open for comments until next week.
> Can they then unplug from the network and continue to work on their notebook, and can they also do it through their cellphone, a handheld, their TV? Didn't think so.
.Net initiative is something new, you've drunk the MS marketing Kool-Aid. Which is just what they're counting on.
Ummmm... wrong! If you are trying to claim that accessing personal information like email and documents from any device can't be done with existing technology, you're full of it. There are scores of companies out there right now that allow you to access your information from devices and handhelds (I work for one!). And yes, I mean anyone's device, not just any device. Unplugging isn't a problem, either, that's what local caching and synchronization are for. Haven't you ever used a Palm?
If you think this
Having been a PC gamer for many years, I'm not surprised by this tired refrain. Quality game makers all over the place are closing up shop or canceling products. The size and number of the PC-specific game magazines is also decreasing.
I've seen recent studies showing how console games are swamping PC game sales, and I'm really starting to believe it. Well, that and the fact that I'm also giving up PC games for consoles...
Found a story on that email here.
Ouch! Is there a link to this document?
> ..and MSN makes money.
Ummm... maybe you should rephrase that as "MSN has revenue."
How about Oracle's entire apps suite, as well as most of its other products that have complex front ends.
Its popular Developer tool also deploys all of its former platform-specific client-server apps to the web via Java with a recompile, and that's got lots of customers using it.
Fact is, Java is widely used for applications staged in corporate intranets. Just because you aren't using applets as you troll sites like Slashdot doesn't mean you have any grasp on "reality".
His "Halloween parties" weren't really parties... they were the ultimate haunted house. I went to one about 6 years ago, and it was fantastic.
They took place in and around his house, and were an hour-long quest you went on in groups of four. They were usually tied into the plotline of the latest Ultima game, and they utilized hundreds of actors and extreme special effects. The one I went on included rowing a boat down a river while being attacked, big pyrotechnics displays, flying enemies, and getting trapped in a collapsing room that flipped you over. Lord British personally started each 4 man tour at the front gate after you went through a short endurance test.
What's more, it was free. There was one night each year that sold tickets for a charity, but the other few nights were first-come first-serve, free tickets. We camped out for days to get them.
Cheers to Lord British, wherever fate takes you.
I guess it didn't hurt Isaac Hayes, because he ended up winning the Best Song Oscar for the theme from "Shaft".
>Actually, console game developers have always paid licensing fees.
Yes, I know, but you missed my point. MS currently does not charge developers, game developers included, a license fee for producing windows software.
If they start doing it for the X-Box, then they'll either have one platform (X-Box) with licensing fees and one (PC) without, or they'll have to change the Windows PC platform to have a license fee, too.
I don't think either of those scenarios is likely to succeed in making developers happy and MS rich(er).
Ummm... licensing what?
Game developers are not going to take too kindly to paying license fees on an MS console if they're not paying them to develop on an MS PC.
MS is going to raise a hellstorm if they start to charge a bounty on every Windows product sold.
I think your estimate of $750 cost is low for those specs. It's supposed to have a new GeForce card, too.
Regardless, if the price is true (sounds like rumor/FUD) then MS will be selling this box at a significant loss in the hopes that it will get that money back, either from online subscriptions to MSN or software licensing.
I highly doubt game vendors are going to jump for option number two since they don't have to pay MS to release programs for Windows. And they probably wouldn't be thrilled about pouring more of their own money into licenses from an increasingly competitive game developer like MS.
So I guess MS is going to tie this into WebTV/MSN and generate revenue from subscriptions.
But subsidizing ventures like this is exactly why MS is losing a billion dollars a year in WebTV. Ouch.
MS is also spouting out a bunch of IT trade mag ads about how Windows runs 5x% of the fortune 100, or similar crap.
What they completely fail to mention is _what_ and _where_ windows runs. In many of those cases, it runs print servers, static HTML web pages, and non-critical systems.
But it makes a good soundbite.
Mozilla on the Mac is, admittedly, not up to par with the Win32 version in terms of performance and stability. In my experience, the Linux version, while better than the Mac version, doesn't match the Win32 build either.
There are specific bugs they have filed about bringing up performance on the Mac, but it seems to be a matter of resources.
BTW, since you mentioned IE 4.5's Mac startup speed, I should mention a little caveat about that.
"Faster startup" was one of the highly touted features of IE 4.5 over 4.0, but in reality what they did is just bring up the window shell and prevent user input until the rest of the program loads. The time it takes to actually interact with the program isn't much improved. But hey, fooled you, huh? (And everyone else).
Microsoft is suddenly becoming a powerhouse in the PC game industry. Only two years ago just about every title designed or published by MS was laughed out of stores.
Now they've got Age of Empires 2 burning up the sales charts and Asheron's Call making a serious challenge to online games like Ultima Online and Everquest. And MS has other big-name projects emerging in the next few months.
More than a year ago, I did a market research study for a big, established PC game company, and they made it very clear that they were terrified of MS' impending foray into the game world. Now that seems to be justified.
I'm wondering if these recent porting moves are the result of game companies realizing what other software companies grasped years ago... that making your product depend on your largest competitor's API/OS is a BAD IDEA.
You can actually enable the memory cache in the Preferences dialog without touching the prefs file. It's under the "Debug" preferences, the last option in the list.
And it is off by default.
> A lot of people stipulate that if the Windows licenses were revoked from these manufacturers, they would be done for. Kaput. Well, that might be so. Alternatively, those same manufacturers just might have a harder time. What if they put OS/2 on those machines?
Well, I hate to harp on this again, but that's pretty wishful thinking. If Compaq, who was one of the ones threatened, made an announcement that they couldn't sell Windows anymore, but they'd be glad to offer their customers these OS/2 boxes (or Linux, or BeOS) they'd be done for.
Companies have to keep growing to survive in the market, especially with competitors around like Dell and HP and all the other vendors. Compaq would instantly lose most of its revenue, partners, and customers. Not to mention the tanking stock, shareholder lawsuits, etc. etc.
Even if they just had the price of Windows raised substantially, the effects would be less drastic, but they'd lose substantial profit on each machine and therefore customers.
No matter the outcome of the trial, one very positive thing to result is that these manufacturers can load machines with Linux, BeOS, etc. without suffering reprisals from MS because MS is so carefully scrutinized.
> They never prevented Netscape from being installed.
... ummm ... bundled, unremovable browser ... to go out and download another ... browser. Hmm.
Wrong. They did exactly that by threatening to revoke Windows licenses or significantly raise prices for manufacturers who wanted to install it.
They paid bounties to ISPs who dropped Netscape Navigator, too.
Oh yeah, but of course that wasn't forclosing distribution because average Joe user was just expected to use his
> There has always been other choices out there, but the point is that computer manufacturers have always been so enamored with Microsoft's software that they've chosen to ignore the competition.
You are completely ignoring the threat factor. MS was shown to raise the cost of Windows to those computer manufacturers who stepped out of line, be it to load Netscape Navigator on their machines or perform other acts of MS heresy. Windows is an essential facility for computer manufacturers (more proof of monopoly) and losing a Windows license would be a death sentence. "Enamored" ain't go nothing to do with it.
Yes, and we have a free speech right to criticize them when they get caught.
What was your point, exactly?
That's putting it mildly.
When I think of companies that are in bed with Microsoft, three immediately come to mind: Symantec, Visio, and Rational. All three have been widely quoted as supporters of MS in the trial and before.
Symantec's former CEO Gordon Eubanks was mostly discredited while testifying for them when it was revealed that MS was feeding him the lines to say to secure favorable deals for the company.
Ted Johnson from Visio has always jumped at the bit when the press wanted a quote about how wonderful it was that Microsoft's monopoly was creating standards in the industry. Which makes sense, because now Visio will be the standard Office diagramming tool, so I guess he's not a hypocrite!. Visio is also one of the founding members of the Association for Competitive Technology, an industry group formed to support MS in the trial that has widely been rumored to be a shadow group funded and directed by MS.
It really calls into question the motives of those companies that claim to be independently supporting MS in the media. And I'd hardly be surprised if Symantec or Rational weren't acquired in the future.
On the upside, everytime MS does this they create a whole new industry of enemies.
> Java is a great language for writing distributed apps but distributed apps must include the client, after all thats where the rubber hits the road. I urge sun to recommit to the client end.
The good news is, they are. JDK 1.3 by default uses a new client VM, and my experience shows the client running about twice as fast as the 1.2 version. They're also putting a lot of work into optimizing Swing and improving deployment with locally cached applets and versioning in browsers.
And it now runs in Mozilla as the native applet handler, with some pre-release caveats.
In fact, Oracle claims it already has 50,000 downloads or Oracle on Linux and 800 paying customers for it. And they've got other products on Linux, too.
They've got a press release about it.