While I agree with some of your views, for those of us who followed this very closely, it was definitely the cost of the OS that made it impossible for anyone to buy Xenix as a good example at $1000. It just was not something the average user would pay for, nor would the OEM's have this installed when they could put on a crude, but somewhat functional DOS type of OS for maybe $40.
Microsoft then leveraged that increasingly installed base by realizing that applications were the key. This was probably Bill Gates' main decision that lead to success. My first IBM computer used the pathetic Windows 2.11. It was really bad stuff, even for that time. I was one of the earliest adopters using the then totally new VGA graphics which blew away EGA. Then what really made the big difference was Windows 3.0 and font handling for word processing. Finally, Windows 3.1 for much improved fonts. While MS did not give Office away with Windows, Gateway was the one company which made a brilliant move and included MS Office for a very low ball price. I prefer MS Word to anything else out there for word processing, especially because of its formatting of tables of which I used to use in my work. Open Office can not quite equal MS Office in that area. But my wife switched to OO several years ago and when I retired, I removed all MS Office applications from my computer and also switched over to OO as well. I have not had any problems with documents produced in OO except reading some formatting and with some powerpoints. With the new trend to XML, and the new open standards, even MS is being pushed to comply if you have been following the politics on that. I hate Outlook, but thought that Linux was pretty much interoperable with it now. I agree with your Vista assessment. Everyone including MS knows though that almost no one is going to upgrade to Vista, it will only be because it is already on the machine you buy. If the developing countries move toward Linux, and there is definitely a movement underfoot, although sometimes faltering, we can expect more development on *NIX OS's and that includes amateur radio programs too. 73, Rick, KV9U Peter G. Viscarola wrote: >Windows preeminence on the desktop has nothing to do with the operating >system itself, or it's cost 20 years back. Windows command of the >desktop stems directly from Microsoft's overwhelming dominance in >applications such as word, powerpoint, and outlook. > >Microsoft achieved this application dominance by essentially giving away >office with Windows, and thus making office ubiquitous. Word wasn't, >and still isn't, the best word processor on the market. Rather, it >bought market share until it drove several superior competing products >out of the market. Heck, I didn't WANT to give up using Ami Pro (my >word processing software of choice 12 years ago) -- I *had* to because >all the business people with whom I communicated used Word... And Word >was, afterall, available darn close to free (if not completely free) on >Windows. > >Today, yeah... You COULD use Star Office -- it's ALMSOT fully compatible >with Word and it's not half bad. But "almost fully compatible" won't >typically cut it in the business world. And Linux *still* doesn't have >a decent email/productivity application that rivals Outlook. > >Back to ham radio, I think the move from 32-bit computing to 64-bit >computing is more likely trigger a move by hobbyist, small, independent, >and community-based devs to Linux. This is because of Microsoft's >ill-conceived security policies (in place for 64-bit Windows Vista and >later) that requires things like drivers to be digitally signed using a >certificate issued by a recognized certification authority. Acquiring >such a certiciation from Verisign (one of the recognized authorities), >for example, costs $500/year -- nothing for a large corporation, but a >chunk of change for somebody who writes code in their spare time and >gives it away to the ham radio community. > >If the smaller devs move to Linux, that means a lot of innovation will >also move. It's already quite common in the industry to have bleeding >edge software developed first on Linux and later ported to Windows. > >Things are changing. Will Linux be the answer? Only time will tell. > >de Peter K1PGV > > > >
