I work in a large (many say prestigious) hospital where they use Windows 2K terminals to access patient records, labs, X-rays, page doctors, order tests, etc. These are not only mission critical functions, but potentially life critical. Every time a decent worm/virus rolls around, the computer system become unusable and we are left in the dark so to speak (take this in to account the next time you write a worm you damn script kiddies). It is truly scary when this happens because the backup systems are paper, sneaker and phone based.
It amazes me that the hospital IT department continues to use Windows, especially since most of the functions are web based. Unfortunately, the programs only work on IE. I keep hoping that they decide to switch away from Windows before something truly bad happens.
Once the universities go through a few worm/virus cycles where they can't access the system (either because of server or client side problems) for a few days, they might reconsider their choice.
Lets not forget the Texas jury effect. They are well known for "sticking it" to the big guys. Texas jurys have a history of siding with the little guys whether is accidental injury, malpractice, product liability, etc. Whenever it is a little guy vs big business/guy, they have a tendency to side with the little guy. It is after a jury of ones "peers" and when the peers are 12 little guys instead of CEOs, executives, or even "company" entities, they are much more likely to side for the people who are like them.
This is just human nature when the jury can see the face of the wronged/injured party and can empathize/sympathize with them. It is harder to feel sorry for a big company when they are just seen a deep pockets.
This may seem unfair and quite often it is when small businesses or doctors are bankrupted because of this inherent bias. In cases where the deep pockets really are deep pockets, companies like MS and Autodesk you can argue that it has a progressive wealth distributive effect. But ultimately, I think that MS and Autodesk will pass the costs down to, you guessed it, us.
Au contraire, there is a barrier and it has to do with laptop support. More and more people are using laptops as their primary machine as in your case and linux support for laptops is lacking at best. In my case, I tried installing a couple of distros on my HP laptop nc8230- Ubuntu 5.10, debian 3. Most peripherals were either detected correctly or drivers installed without too much trouble. The video driver had to be downloaded from ATI and took hours of trial and error to get working although never at the native resolution. I noticed that the laptop was getting hotter and hotter and eventually found that the fans were not coming on appropriately despite the processor COOKING ITSELF TO DEATH. Well fortunately, not quite to death.
Googling revealed that this is a known problem and there are no work arounds. ACPI support in linux is truly lacking. It seems like dynamic processesor speed control is also acheived with an patch to the kernel.
I dual boot linux on a desktop but that episode scared me a bit about trying linux on my laptop again until I know that those serious deficiencies have been corrected. With Windows XP, I use notebook hardware control to undervolt my processor and reboot once every couple of weeks and am quite happy with it.
Before anyone responds with a link to http://www.linux-laptop.net/ didn't work. If your particular laptop is fully supported, fine. But in my case, the problems are either acknowledged problems or not addressed. Don't say that people should find out about linux compatibility prior to purchase because first of all, my company decided on the model and very few people make purchases that way.
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I work in a large (many say prestigious) hospital where they use Windows 2K terminals to access patient records, labs, X-rays, page doctors, order tests, etc. These are not only mission critical functions, but potentially life critical. Every time a decent worm/virus rolls around, the computer system become unusable and we are left in the dark so to speak (take this in to account the next time you write a worm you damn script kiddies). It is truly scary when this happens because the backup systems are paper, sneaker and phone based.
It amazes me that the hospital IT department continues to use Windows, especially since most of the functions are web based. Unfortunately, the programs only work on IE. I keep hoping that they decide to switch away from Windows before something truly bad happens.
Once the universities go through a few worm/virus cycles where they can't access the system (either because of server or client side problems) for a few days, they might reconsider their choice.
Lets not forget the Texas jury effect. They are well known for "sticking it" to the big guys. Texas jurys have a history of siding with the little guys whether is accidental injury, malpractice, product liability, etc. Whenever it is a little guy vs big business/guy, they have a tendency to side with the little guy. It is after a jury of ones "peers" and when the peers are 12 little guys instead of CEOs, executives, or even "company" entities, they are much more likely to side for the people who are like them.
This is just human nature when the jury can see the face of the wronged/injured party and can empathize/sympathize with them. It is harder to feel sorry for a big company when they are just seen a deep pockets.
This may seem unfair and quite often it is when small businesses or doctors are bankrupted because of this inherent bias. In cases where the deep pockets really are deep pockets, companies like MS and Autodesk you can argue that it has a progressive wealth distributive effect. But ultimately, I think that MS and Autodesk will pass the costs down to, you guessed it, us.
Au contraire, there is a barrier and it has to do with laptop support. More and more people are using laptops as their primary machine as in your case and linux support for laptops is lacking at best. In my case, I tried installing a couple of distros on my HP laptop nc8230- Ubuntu 5.10, debian 3. Most peripherals were either detected correctly or drivers installed without too much trouble. The video driver had to be downloaded from ATI and took hours of trial and error to get working although never at the native resolution. I noticed that the laptop was getting hotter and hotter and eventually found that the fans were not coming on appropriately despite the processor COOKING ITSELF TO DEATH. Well fortunately, not quite to death. Googling revealed that this is a known problem and there are no work arounds. ACPI support in linux is truly lacking. It seems like dynamic processesor speed control is also acheived with an patch to the kernel. I dual boot linux on a desktop but that episode scared me a bit about trying linux on my laptop again until I know that those serious deficiencies have been corrected. With Windows XP, I use notebook hardware control to undervolt my processor and reboot once every couple of weeks and am quite happy with it. Before anyone responds with a link to http://www.linux-laptop.net/ didn't work. If your particular laptop is fully supported, fine. But in my case, the problems are either acknowledged problems or not addressed. Don't say that people should find out about linux compatibility prior to purchase because first of all, my company decided on the model and very few people make purchases that way.