Actually, they did lose the Java battle - hello.NET.
There was no OpenOffice battle to lose - it's never gotten off the ground ('hey, let's make the default format one that no-one uses!').
Their 'single error' was the one linux and apple have also made time and again - pretending that Windows doesn't exist, and it's around 15 years too late to do that. Hence they're all still niche desktop products.
Man, how ungratefull can you get. Why dont you go out and develop you own "standard" wireless protocol and see how long it takes you!
Err...no, that's what they were supposed to be doing. Or do you think an eight-year lead time is acceptable? And your answer is stupid anyway - you don't say 'well write your own OS' when someone complains about Windows.
The only hardware I've ever had an auto-negotiate issue with is Cisco switches, on many occasions with completely different clients over many years. Everyone else seems to play nice, but Cisco was well known for implementing their own "standard" early.
Which tells me exactly how much networking hardware you've actually worked with, so let me fill you in - ISCSI not working? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. Backup Exec not working? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. Network generally slow? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. I could list around 20 more off the top of my head...and then there's stuff such as - Vista network auto-tuning buggering up your system? That's because there's *no standard*.
So yes, after wasting my time for *years* with non-compatible Wireless, Bluetooth and Ethernet 'standards', I think I've earnt the right to be ungrateful, thank you very much:-)
Ethernet (which you still have to set to 1000/Full because Auto-negotiate doesn't work properly) Wi-Fi (how many years has it taken for N to become standard? I've been through three pre-N routers....) Bluetooth (which is infamous for not working between devices by different manufacturers, to the point that no-one bothers with it. Oh and you get spammed).
After decades of having to deal with this nonsense, yes - I'd have a few questions for them. Right after setting them on fire.
There are two types of adverts. Those that intrude and those that don't. Noise, or graphics covering what I was actually trying to read count as those that do.
If I have to run an Ad-blocker to stop them, then that's the way it shall be - maybe it's time to talk to the sites that pretend that this sort of advertising is acceptable, so that people like me *don't have to run ad-blockers in the first place*. And the article also seems to ignore how many people don't run ad-blockers - because after one pop-up advert, they *never visit the site again*.
The quote also reads like someone's now upset that they've been getting away with unnacceptable practices and can't now generate the revenue that they *shouldn't have been generating in that manner to begin with*
When I was at the beginning of my career, I thought that too - but it hasn't happened so far, because there will *always* be older systems. And large scale network problems don't change that often (in terms of packet analysis and so on) - add that to.bat scripts and DOS commands I'm *still* using after decades, and experience is always going to win. Ability is a bit of a foregone conclusion at this level too - you might need to learn ESX (for instance), but you're already going to know the OS's, networking, hardware and so on. Alternatively, someone could just learn ESX - but they're going to fall over once they have to configure or support what's running on it.
Plumbers can go through years of training, only to be told by an ignoramus that it only involves 'fixing taps'. If you work on cars, you can't say you're an enginge specialist, or similar - well, you can, but the general reply will be 'oh, so you work on cars'....and the list goes on....
However in IT, there is an exception - job ads. If the company wants someone server-level, but don't want to pay server wages, they'll advertise the job as 'IT Administrator', followed by a must-know list that's long/ deep enough to let anyone who actually does the job know that they're really looking for a server-bod who (for whatever reason) won't mind 1st-line-helpdesk wages. This happens when they don't want to pay a manager - your job interview includes two questions on servers, and twenty-five on management techniques (but the pay offered is waaaay below managerial - Reed have done this to me three times).
So, to summarise, if you lump all the versions of FF together, they're more popular than IE, as long as you don't allow the numbers IE to do the same....?
Exactly. And since the lump sum of FF means "mostly the latest FF", this is quite relevant for future trends, because the lump of IE means "mostly a very old IE". Of course nobody is saying FF is more popular than IE, that would make no sense whatsoever.
I'd say that FF is *too* popular with the wrong people (the devs) - but, ignoring the fact that those IE6/ XP boxes will be replaced in the not-too-distant future with Win7/IE8, this leaves us in another no-win - either the statistics are incomplete (which is probably true for dozens of reasons), or the development-swerve towards FF far outweighs the actual usage...leaving us in a second browser war where we all have to run multiple browsers due to fan-boy coders insisting that 'their browser is best'. The fact that IE6 was hell is irrelevant - this sissue hould have been addressed long ago, not once a standard has been introduced that the whole world uses (and when I say standard, I mean what's installed on every machine - so the standard is IE. It's too late to bleat about it not being web-compliant, something should have been done when it mattered).
And where do you get these statistics from?
Net Applications. The same source the article referrers to.
Which (by the text on their site) is way below the actual number of users, which again suggests the stats are incomplete.
- but as stated before, I find it highly unlikely that all the users/ sites I visit just happen to be the ones that have upgraded to IE7/8.
Why? Your own personal experience has little to do with the world as a whole. I know only a few people who use any version of IE at all, but I don't doubt IE's popularity.
I don't agree. I'm not making that statement as someone who only looks to their immediate circle for examples - I (and my team) have to deal with thousands of machines from Europe and Africa. I don't get anyone from my support team calling asking about how to fix IE6. I (and they) should be seeing at least a few sites/ users running it at home, and we don't - usually by the time we get to an XP machine with a problem, the user has already upgraded it themselves. In fact, since it was so horrible, how can all those IE6 users still be happily using it after all this time? It would sort of suggest that they've never had any problems with their browser and have therefore never seen fit to reinstall or upgrade - something that, with Windows, is very, very rare).
It's also worth noting that going by the statistics listed, I should be finding far more FF's than I do and far more IE6's than 7's and 8's (which I don't). I cover remote sites/ VPN users in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Africa - and the remote users are using their own machines, not corporate pre-builds - which suggests that it just happens to be *the rest* of the world as a whole that's on IE6...
It's a similar story with OpenOffice and Linux Desktops - should I start believing the statistics that are regularly bandied about in desperate attempts to make them seem more used than they are? No, I think I'll wait until I actually see them running in a corporate environment. I've been doing this for twenty years now, I've worked for banks, hospitals, schools, investment companies, oil companies, lawyers....all with remote access home users running their own stuff and I'm still waiting to see one. In fact the only times I've seen Linux running is on fellow IT bods' personal boxes, never the users themselves. Macs I've seen a few of (again, less that the supposed market share), but don't get me started on those:-)
So, to summarise, if you lump all the versions of FF together, they're more popular than IE, as long as you don't allow the numbers IE to do the same....?
And where do you get these statistics from? This is the most recent article I've been able to find -
- but as stated before, I find it highly unlikely that all the users/ sites I visit just happen to be the ones that have upgraded to IE7/8.
Another FF issue - I wonder how popular IE/ MS would be if it force-installed updates when opened? How good the coders are is irrelevant - why is this suddenly considered acceptable default behaviour?
The most recent article I've seen about this (from two months ago) put IE6 at 21%, and IE7 at 25% - I'd be astonished at those statistics being the same now, especially with IE8 (and now Win7) having been out for a while too. Still, even going on those old figures, IE7 and 8 combined make up 36%, so I'm not sure why you think they haven't caught on.
Not that web developers will take any notice of IE users still outnumbering FF users by over 3 to 1, since they all want to pretend that developing for FF first won't create any problems. In fact, last time I pointed out that this would simply create a second browser war where the users would lose out in order to make the dev geeks happy, I got marked down for trolling. FF may be technically better, but I've yet to see a single machine (now at 150) where the user has password-protected their password list. That alone spells disaster...
I have also yet to work for a company or individual (I contract in Europe) that still runs IE6 on *anything*, hell even my in-laws have upgraded - so it does leave me wondering how they arrive at these figures in the first place.
....so since I keep getting infected, I guess the bleach must be rubbish:-)
I'm also puzzled as to how everyone is suddenly taking an AV company's reports at face value - or does everyone suddenly agree with Symantec that MS were being terribly unfair when they locked down the kernel?
It's also worth noting that MS provide a free AV tool which is, by the accounts I've read, quite good....not that anyone's going to take any notice when there's another opportunity to plug Linux - plugs which will be ignored by nearly everyone not already using it,, as usual - if you'd all made more of a fuss of the alternatives to wIndows when it mattered - e.g. when O/S 2 had a chance, it might have made a difference:-)
How about the MS Active Partner program (it's called something like that, anyway) - £130 a year, and you get all their s/w to run in a non-business environment - until, of course, you stop paying, at which point all your active/ in use licenses expire; at which point I advised M$ that I'd be going back to procuring them from an alternative source:-)
On a side note, it's also interesting how, once again, I get a score of 1 by making legitimate statements, when a reply that agrees gets a score of 2. Makes the whole 'karma' thing a bit pointless, really.
...we'd all still be downloading versions of Win/ Office/ Server/ Whatever and using keys of off mscracks.com (or the like) - then ranting about how good they were when at work, meaning the company would then have to legitimately buy copies to use so that they wouldn't get in trouble when audited. And we wouldn't be dealing with mal/spy/crapware when running a crack just to reinstall a copy of Windows simply because the motherboard blew up rather than spend another £100 that M$ do not need *or deserve*.
Before anyone starts shouting, this was the way of things for *over a decade* - and I don't remember seeing Bill Gates (or anyone from M$) in the dole queue during that time. Of course, OEM copies of Windows/ Office were still being sold with new PC's, so it was only the geeks/ friends & family of geeks that didn't pay. It was only once they decided that they weren't quite earning enough profit that the whole 'genuine' path was taken - and now here we are...with M$ in exactly the same situation as the music/ movie companies - every time they try to protect their obscenely overpriced products, they get leapfrogged by cracking crews, and it's they alone who pretend that somehow one day these cracking crews are going to go away by bringing out multiple versions of their Genuine Advantage Guff (while simultaneously pretending that their products were always good value for money - how many times did the music industry get investigated for overpricing CD's?), which in turn make folks avoid updating, and oh look....the number of viruses has gone up. Curse those users who won't pay another £100 for software they already bought with a machine!
I've always considered M$ to have no moral ground whatsovever anyway, due to their licensing system - if I pay for two pieces of software for two seperate machines, I consider it morally wrong to then demand money to allow them to talk to each other; something M$ have no trouble in doing with their stupid and labyrithine client licensing system. Symantec are the same with Backup Exec - the functionality is built in, but they see nothing wrong with demanding thousands for a key to allow you to actually use it. Imagine if you bought a car with an MP3 player built in, but you were only allowed to look at it until you paid the car company more money...that's what's accepted in the software industry these days, but it's gone on for so long people have gotten used to it:-(
I must have installed versions of Windows at least a thousand times in the last twenty years, in many cases for testing (where it was deleted afterwards). Is anyone seriously going to suggest that I should have paid for every single copy? And don't give me the Technet excuse either - every time I install, I'm increasing M$'s user base, and encouraging the companies I have contracted for to use M$ software (which they *have* to pay for). I have never, and will never accept that I have to pay M$ in order to sell their products for them:-)
Well, he *is* asking for a real-world solution, not a technically superior (but used by nobody) app that somehow allows the sysop a huge sense of superiority whilst removing them even furthur from the aforementioned real world.
Wow, you really know the WP habits of all the non-commenting slashdot readers? How did you figure that out?
Anyway - I'm not sure why there's a problem here - would you prefer angry calls from users who thought they'd automatically get office, and got Works, as has been the case for decades? Having supported it for a horribly long time, I'd still choose Office-Lite - different versions of the same app (while annoying) will always win over different apps.
And where the different versions of windows that bad? I only recall having to advise business on why Windows Home couldn't connect to a domain. In any case, you want version problems? RIght - which version of Linux should I run?
I Agree with the side note though - If anyone has seen Slashdot lately, via IE8 and without logging in, you'll understand what passes for acceptable for advertising these days.
I don't agree with all the 'perfect opportunities' (OO plugs) that follow the post, though. RIghtly or Wrongly, it hasn't made a big enough stamp yet,,,and it's been out for quite a while....
"......who apparently will be perfectly fine with reduced-functionality and ad-supported software."
Apparently. Right. No-one *at all* has whinged about how many features they don't actually need in Word/ Excel, and yet once that's being addressed, it's now a problem. Like your average buyer will complain about getting basic Word and Excel over Works (a fully featured Works, which I'm sure eveyrone would prefer)..
And can we also cut the crap with Open Office? It's been bandied about as Vastly Superior for *years* now....and I've yet to work at a company that's seriously using it. Big it up once >20% of word processing users agree with you (which means OO still has a loooong way to go).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they did lose the Java battle - hello .NET.
There was no OpenOffice battle to lose - it's never gotten off the ground ('hey, let's make the default format one that no-one uses!').
Their 'single error' was the one linux and apple have also made time and again - pretending that Windows doesn't exist, and it's around 15 years too late to do that. Hence they're all still niche desktop products.
Man, how ungratefull can you get. Why dont you go out and develop you own "standard" wireless protocol and see how long it takes you!
Err...no, that's what they were supposed to be doing. Or do you think an eight-year lead time is acceptable? And your answer is stupid anyway - you don't say 'well write your own OS' when someone complains about Windows.
The only hardware I've ever had an auto-negotiate issue with is Cisco switches, on many occasions with completely different clients over many years. Everyone else seems to play nice, but Cisco was well known for implementing their own "standard" early.
Which tells me exactly how much networking hardware you've actually worked with, so let me fill you in - ISCSI not working? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. Backup Exec not working? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. Network generally slow? Set all adaptors to 1000/Full. I could list around 20 more off the top of my head...and then there's stuff such as - Vista network auto-tuning buggering up your system? That's because there's *no standard*.
So yes, after wasting my time for *years* with non-compatible Wireless, Bluetooth and Ethernet 'standards', I think I've earnt the right to be ungrateful, thank you very much :-)
They 'standardised' the following -
Ethernet (which you still have to set to 1000/Full because Auto-negotiate doesn't work properly)
Wi-Fi (how many years has it taken for N to become standard? I've been through three pre-N routers....)
Bluetooth (which is infamous for not working between devices by different manufacturers, to the point that no-one bothers with it. Oh and you get spammed).
After decades of having to deal with this nonsense, yes - I'd have a few questions for them. Right after setting them on fire.
...which means that any dirt dished will seem like sour grapes, and be ignored - so I guess at least he'll be consistent
There are two types of adverts. Those that intrude and those that don't. Noise, or graphics covering what I was actually trying to read count as those that do.
If I have to run an Ad-blocker to stop them, then that's the way it shall be - maybe it's time to talk to the sites that pretend that this sort of advertising is acceptable, so that people like me *don't have to run ad-blockers in the first place*. And the article also seems to ignore how many people don't run ad-blockers - because after one pop-up advert, they *never visit the site again*.
The quote also reads like someone's now upset that they've been getting away with unnacceptable practices and can't now generate the revenue that they *shouldn't have been generating in that manner to begin with*
I'm sure the disk thrashing is a problem too, and not really the indexing service doing its' thing.
This sort of thing is what happens if you don't actually use the software you're criticising...
When I was at the beginning of my career, I thought that too - but it hasn't happened so far, because there will *always* be older systems. And large scale network problems don't change that often (in terms of packet analysis and so on) - add that to .bat scripts and DOS commands I'm *still* using after decades, and experience is always going to win.
Ability is a bit of a foregone conclusion at this level too - you might need to learn ESX (for instance), but you're already going to know the OS's, networking, hardware and so on. Alternatively, someone could just learn ESX - but they're going to fall over once they have to configure or support what's running on it.
They're not being paid for the amount of work they do -.they're being paid for their *experience*.
...what does India do? Become even more Hypocritical - yup, that's it, banning porn will solve the problem.
...and as long as Linux/ OpenOffice/ Apple continue to pretend that the 'other' OS doesn't exist, get used to it.
Happy Christmas!
"Hmmm, what can we type to make it appeal to the fanboys?".
That's nearly two minutes of my life I won't get back.
It isn't just IT bods that suffer.
Plumbers can go through years of training, only to be told by an ignoramus that it only involves 'fixing taps'. If you work on cars, you can't say you're an enginge specialist, or similar - well, you can, but the general reply will be 'oh, so you work on cars'....and the list goes on....
However in IT, there is an exception - job ads. If the company wants someone server-level, but don't want to pay server wages, they'll advertise the job as 'IT Administrator', followed by a must-know list that's long/ deep enough to let anyone who actually does the job know that they're really looking for a server-bod who (for whatever reason) won't mind 1st-line-helpdesk wages. This happens when they don't want to pay a manager - your job interview includes two questions on servers, and twenty-five on management techniques (but the pay offered is waaaay below managerial - Reed have done this to me three times).
(or maybe that's just my age showing)
...will the Chinese WoW turn into Evony?
....but isn't it illegal to sell stuff from the UK that has been proved not to do what you claim?
The cosmetics industry has had to be very careful for years to avoid guaranteeing youthful looks....
So, to summarise, if you lump all the versions of FF together, they're more popular than IE, as long as you don't allow the numbers IE to do the same....?
Exactly. And since the lump sum of FF means "mostly the latest FF", this is quite relevant for future trends, because the lump of IE means "mostly a very old IE". Of course nobody is saying FF is more popular than IE, that would make no sense whatsoever.
I'd say that FF is *too* popular with the wrong people (the devs) - but, ignoring the fact that those IE6/ XP boxes will be replaced in the not-too-distant future with Win7/IE8, this leaves us in another no-win - either the statistics are incomplete (which is probably true for dozens of reasons), or the development-swerve towards FF far outweighs the actual usage...leaving us in a second browser war where we all have to run multiple browsers due to fan-boy coders insisting that 'their browser is best'. The fact that IE6 was hell is irrelevant - this sissue hould have been addressed long ago, not once a standard has been introduced that the whole world uses (and when I say standard, I mean what's installed on every machine - so the standard is IE. It's too late to bleat about it not being web-compliant, something should have been done when it mattered).
And where do you get these statistics from?
Net Applications. The same source the article referrers to.
Which (by the text on their site) is way below the actual number of users, which again suggests the stats are incomplete.
- but as stated before, I find it highly unlikely that all the users/ sites I visit just happen to be the ones that have upgraded to IE7/8.
Why? Your own personal experience has little to do with the world as a whole. I know only a few people who use any version of IE at all, but I don't doubt IE's popularity.
I don't agree. I'm not making that statement as someone who only looks to their immediate circle for examples - I (and my team) have to deal with thousands of machines from Europe and Africa. I don't get anyone from my support team calling asking about how to fix IE6. I (and they) should be seeing at least a few sites/ users running it at home, and we don't - usually by the time we get to an XP machine with a problem, the user has already upgraded it themselves. In fact, since it was so horrible, how can all those IE6 users still be happily using it after all this time? It would sort of suggest that they've never had any problems with their browser and have therefore never seen fit to reinstall or upgrade - something that, with Windows, is very, very rare).
It's also worth noting that going by the statistics listed, I should be finding far more FF's than I do and far more IE6's than 7's and 8's (which I don't). I cover remote sites/ VPN users in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Africa - and the remote users are using their own machines, not corporate pre-builds - which suggests that it just happens to be *the rest* of the world as a whole that's on IE6...
It's a similar story with OpenOffice and Linux Desktops - should I start believing the statistics that are regularly bandied about in desperate attempts to make them seem more used than they are? No, I think I'll wait until I actually see them running in a corporate environment. I've been doing this for twenty years now, I've worked for banks, hospitals, schools, investment companies, oil companies, lawyers....all with remote access home users running their own stuff and I'm still waiting to see one. In fact the only times I've seen Linux running is on fellow IT bods' personal boxes, never the users themselves. Macs I've seen a few of (again, less that the supposed market share), but don't get me started on those :-)
So, to summarise, if you lump all the versions of FF together, they're more popular than IE, as long as you don't allow the numbers IE to do the same....?
And where do you get these statistics from? This is the most recent article I've been able to find -
http://www.techspot.com/news/36374-internet-explorer-loses-71-market-share-during-august-ie6-still-most-used.html
- but as stated before, I find it highly unlikely that all the users/ sites I visit just happen to be the ones that have upgraded to IE7/8.
Another FF issue - I wonder how popular IE/ MS would be if it force-installed updates when opened? How good the coders are is irrelevant - why is this suddenly considered acceptable default behaviour?
The most recent article I've seen about this (from two months ago) put IE6 at 21%, and IE7 at 25% - I'd be astonished at those statistics being the same now, especially with IE8 (and now Win7) having been out for a while too. Still, even going on those old figures, IE7 and 8 combined make up 36%, so I'm not sure why you think they haven't caught on.
Not that web developers will take any notice of IE users still outnumbering FF users by over 3 to 1, since they all want to pretend that developing for FF first won't create any problems. In fact, last time I pointed out that this would simply create a second browser war where the users would lose out in order to make the dev geeks happy, I got marked down for trolling. FF may be technically better, but I've yet to see a single machine (now at 150) where the user has password-protected their password list. That alone spells disaster...
I have also yet to work for a company or individual (I contract in Europe) that still runs IE6 on *anything*, hell even my in-laws have upgraded - so it does leave me wondering how they arrive at these figures in the first place.
Next we'll be seeing the revelation that Linux has overtaken Windows 98. Or something.
....so since I keep getting infected, I guess the bleach must be rubbish :-)
I'm also puzzled as to how everyone is suddenly taking an AV company's reports at face value - or does everyone suddenly agree with Symantec that MS were being terribly unfair when they locked down the kernel?
It's also worth noting that MS provide a free AV tool which is, by the accounts I've read, quite good....not that anyone's going to take any notice when there's another opportunity to plug Linux - plugs which will be ignored by nearly everyone not already using it,, as usual - if you'd all made more of a fuss of the alternatives to wIndows when it mattered - e.g. when O/S 2 had a chance, it might have made a difference :-)
Hehehe y you're right!
How about the MS Active Partner program (it's called something like that, anyway) - £130 a year, and you get all their s/w to run in a non-business environment - until, of course, you stop paying, at which point all your active/ in use licenses expire; at which point I advised M$ that I'd be going back to procuring them from an alternative source :-)
On a side note, it's also interesting how, once again, I get a score of 1 by making legitimate statements, when a reply that agrees gets a score of 2. Makes the whole 'karma' thing a bit pointless, really.
...we'd all still be downloading versions of Win/ Office/ Server/ Whatever and using keys of off mscracks.com (or the like) - then ranting about how good they were when at work, meaning the company would then have to legitimately buy copies to use so that they wouldn't get in trouble when audited. And we wouldn't be dealing with mal/spy/crapware when running a crack just to reinstall a copy of Windows simply because the motherboard blew up rather than spend another £100 that M$ do not need *or deserve*.
Before anyone starts shouting, this was the way of things for *over a decade* - and I don't remember seeing Bill Gates (or anyone from M$) in the dole queue during that time. Of course, OEM copies of Windows/ Office were still being sold with new PC's, so it was only the geeks/ friends & family of geeks that didn't pay. It was only once they decided that they weren't quite earning enough profit that the whole 'genuine' path was taken - and now here we are...with M$ in exactly the same situation as the music/ movie companies - every time they try to protect their obscenely overpriced products, they get leapfrogged by cracking crews, and it's they alone who pretend that somehow one day these cracking crews are going to go away by bringing out multiple versions of their Genuine Advantage Guff (while simultaneously pretending that their products were always good value for money - how many times did the music industry get investigated for overpricing CD's?), which in turn make folks avoid updating, and oh look....the number of viruses has gone up. Curse those users who won't pay another £100 for software they already bought with a machine!
I've always considered M$ to have no moral ground whatsovever anyway, due to their licensing system - if I pay for two pieces of software for two seperate machines, I consider it morally wrong to then demand money to allow them to talk to each other; something M$ have no trouble in doing with their stupid and labyrithine client licensing system. Symantec are the same with Backup Exec - the functionality is built in, but they see nothing wrong with demanding thousands for a key to allow you to actually use it. Imagine if you bought a car with an MP3 player built in, but you were only allowed to look at it until you paid the car company more money...that's what's accepted in the software industry these days, but it's gone on for so long people have gotten used to it :-(
I must have installed versions of Windows at least a thousand times in the last twenty years, in many cases for testing (where it was deleted afterwards). Is anyone seriously going to suggest that I should have paid for every single copy? And don't give me the Technet excuse either - every time I install, I'm increasing M$'s user base, and encouraging the companies I have contracted for to use M$ software (which they *have* to pay for). I have never, and will never accept that I have to pay M$ in order to sell their products for them :-)
Well, he *is* asking for a real-world solution, not a technically superior (but used by nobody) app that somehow allows the sysop a huge sense of superiority whilst removing them even furthur from the aforementioned real world.
Am I alone in seeing a pattern here? :-)
Wow, you really know the WP habits of all the non-commenting slashdot readers? How did you figure that out?
Anyway - I'm not sure why there's a problem here - would you prefer angry calls from users who thought they'd automatically get office, and got Works, as has been the case for decades? Having supported it for a horribly long time, I'd still choose Office-Lite - different versions of the same app (while annoying) will always win over different apps.
And where the different versions of windows that bad? I only recall having to advise business on why Windows Home couldn't connect to a domain. In any case, you want version problems? RIght - which version of Linux should I run?
I Agree with the side note though - If anyone has seen Slashdot lately, via IE8 and without logging in, you'll understand what passes for acceptable for advertising these days.
I don't agree with all the 'perfect opportunities' (OO plugs) that follow the post, though. RIghtly or Wrongly, it hasn't made a big enough stamp yet,,,and it's been out for quite a while....
"......who apparently will be perfectly fine with reduced-functionality and ad-supported software."
Apparently. Right. No-one *at all* has whinged about how many features they don't actually need in Word/ Excel, and yet once that's being addressed, it's now a problem. Like your average buyer will complain about getting basic Word and Excel over Works (a fully featured Works, which I'm sure eveyrone would prefer)..
And can we also cut the crap with Open Office? It's been bandied about as Vastly Superior for *years* now....and I've yet to work at a company that's seriously using it. Big it up once >20% of word processing users agree with you (which means OO still has a loooong way to go).