On Jul 20, 7:25 pm, Rick <n...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:14:42 -0400, Moshe Goldfarb. wrote:
> > On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:44:35 -0700 (PDT), Rex Ballard wrote:
> >> Put another way, you've won the battle, so let's break out the whisky
> >> and rum, and pretend that the enemy isn't just across the valley ready
> >> to attack us while we sleep off our drunken stupor.
>
> > And who really cares?
>
> Many people.
When your IT department says "If you want Windows, you have to stick
with the computer you have now, and use it until it falls apart". If
you want a new Laptop, with more power, dual-core CPUs, 4 gig of RAM,
and 200 gigabyte 7200 RPM hard drive, you will have to run Linux.
Then you will care.
When your IT department tell you "If you install Vista on your laptop,
or upgrade to Windows 2007, your department will be billed $1500 by
the IT department to cover the license fees for the unauthorized
installation, and your first and second line managers will be given
notice of the billing, you'll care.
When your Manager tells you "You won't be getting a raise or a bonus
for the next 3 years because you installed Vista and Office 2007
against corporate policy", you might begin to care.
When you call the help desk with a problem, and they ask for the
serial number on your machine, and they come back with "I see from our
electronic audit that you are running Vista on that machine. We will
bill your department $350 for the service call and close the ticket
now. You might begin to care.
When you go to a client's location and they see you running Vista, and
they tell you "I hope you have a cellular WAN card, because you are
not under any circumstances permitted to plug that computer into this
nework, you might begin to care.
When your sales people start losing sales because the Vista/Office
2007 look and feel make it quite clear that your company does not make
well thought-out decisions based on their priorities such as Return on
Investment, Total Cost of Ownership, and Security of customers,
vendors, and investor capital, you might begin to care.
Back in 1993, many people had those exact feelings about Mac and OS/2
users. It was Windows 3.1 that was "good enough" and "practical" and
"gave you good value for the dollar". By 1994, Microsoft was spending
nearly $4 billion in advertising for products that people didn't
actually purchase, to make sure that the editorial departments of most
magazines gave exactly that message. 15 years later, the Magazines
are saying all of the good things about OS/X and Linux, and have very
little nice to say about Vista.
>From 1993 to 2008, desktop Linux and Linux Appliances have grown their
market almost entirely by word of mouth, very satisfied users sharing
their positive experiences with other users who became satisfied users
and shared their experience, many new Linux users are 10th generation
of word-of-mouth.
Meanwhile, Vista has been getting it's own Word-of-mouth publicity and
it's mostly not very good. The people who really talk it up are the
"Gamers" who talk about it's great games and how great it is to play
World of Warcraft III and HALO-3 on Vista with DirectX-10 video cards.
The problem is that business users don't give a rat's butt about video
games, and even the employees who do get Vista are often coming back,
begging for XP because Vista slows down their machine and gobbles up
all their RAM. Even with 2 Gigabytes of RAM, Vista is slower than XP
running in a 1 GB virtual machine.
> > Does the average person give a hoot?
> Probably not. So what?
The average professional who uses a computer just wants to make sure
that they get the report done by the deadline. They want to spend as
little time as possiblbe doing mindless copy/paste and focus on
solving real problems.
The average student just wants to get the term paper done in time,
chat with a few friends via IM or e-mail, and maybe watch a video when
their at Grandma's house and the rest of the family is watching Golf.
If Linux or XP with OpenOffice or Symphony can get the job done,
without forcing them to chose between a new bike or motorcycle and
Vista/Office 2007, then they'll "settle" for OpenOffice.
If the teacher suddenly has to deal with 300 Irate parents who have
been told that they have to go buy their kids new laptops and $2000
worth of software (ok $200 if ONLY the student uses it), just because
the teacher refuses to accept ODF documents from OpenOffice or
Symphony, there is a good chance that the School Board will have about
80 percent of the registered voters who are similarly upset, and who
will be turning out the vote for a new school board who is more
interested in educating children than in "Lining Microsoft's Pocket".
The thing to remember is that even when Microsoft "Gives Away"
software to schools as part of court settlements, there are lots of
"Strings" attached, like that the computer can only be used by
students for doing school work. If the parents want to put out a
newsletter for the church, or do a little campaign work, then the
license audit triggers and the parents are supposed to cough up more
money.
> > They don't even know what you are talking about.
> Probably not.
What people understand is "I can get software for free that will make
my computer run faster and do new cool stuff" Or "I can spend several
hundred dollars for an already obsolete computer that ***might*** let
me play a few games that I could also get on my Xbox, PlayStation 2,
or existing PC, and will run more slowly than my current machine, and
will do less (because lots of third party software doesn't run on
Vista).
By the way, that is a BIG GOTCHA. Corporate CIO does pop for the
$10,000 upgrades, and suddenly he's getting reports that business
critical applications don't run on Vista. Worse, he can't "fall back"
to XP without forking over another $10,000 in lost labor and related
costs, and for the killing blow, nearly all of these applications will
run on Linux. And by the way, since he has the XP license, he can
install an XP appliance on that laptop with the few applications that
ONLY run on XP for the cost of the download time over the high speed
network (about $25 or 30 minutes).
> > Microsoft will continue to use whatever format is the chosen one.
No, Microsoft will continue to try to come up with incompatible
formats designed to trick or force us to spend as much as we can
possibly afford, for "enhancements" that are nothing more than
security risks, because they are completely incompatible with any
other formats, including Microsoft's previous formats.
> > Linux will still continue to languish at 0.6 percent of the desktop.
Yes, that's right, you just sit back and enjoy your little fantasy
that Linux and OS/X are each less than 1 percent of the desktop, and
when you wake up, Apple will be the number one OEM, and the number two
and three will be the vendors who are offering Linux as the "Native"
OS with "Virtualized Vista Lite" (aka Win2K or WinXP).
May I suggest a good intoxicating substance to help you sleep more
peacefully?
> You will continue to spew lies.
He assumes that I am a liar, and that I have somehow gotten people to
believe my lies, to perhaps if he continues to tell the lies that
Microsoft tells him to tell, that maybe they can "reverse the trend".
> Rick
Don't worry too much about Moshe Goldfarb. He's just like so many of
the ventriloquist dummies on this show (aka WinTrolls), they are
really cute, totally anonymous, and say outrageous things, but it's
Microsoft making the noise and pulling their strings.
Personally I prefer Jeff Dunham.
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