Andrew McNabb wrote: > The only aspect in which I still "hate" them is the Microsoft Tax. This > has started to go away for the lowest end netbooks, but it's still not > gone yet. And I guess I'm still bothered by the Tom Tom lawsuit.
Well, there are still reasons to strongly dislike them and their business practices. They haven't change much at all from what I can see. To really get a nice solution you have to buy into the complete Active Directory infrastructure, which, while great for supporting windows clients cannot coexist with Linux and Unix servers without replacing key infrastructure with Microsoft technology. You can serve Linux clients pretty well from AD, but you can't have AD coexist alongside an existing LDAP and Kerberos infrastructure. And this is by design. It's the old, "import Wordperfect file formats flawlessly, but don't export" philosophy. Things are a one-way street with Microsoft. Everything from AD to the so-called "OpenDocument" format. It's actually extremely discouraging to see what companies are forced to deal with and take from Microsoft. MS software really is to corporations a drug. Something they don't really like but can't live without because MS has succeed in pushing aside almost every existing, traditional solution in place of something that is merely different and not always better. Or it's about presenting a great solution that is totally locked in. So out in the corporate world (even at BYU we're in the corporate enterprise world) things are still very bad with Microsoft indeed. The only real bright spots have been the market pressures brought to bear by Apple and Linux competition in some (but not all) areas. Or the emergence of Google, Sir not-quite-as-evil-as-sir-Microsoft. > It's unfortunate that Microsoft didn't decide to split itself into two > companies a decade ago. If they had split into a MS Windows company and > an MS Office company, I think they both would have been pretty likeable > a few years ago. Somehow I doubt they would have survived that. Microsoft thrives tying Office to Windows. In fact, without Office I doubt very much that Windows would have any reason to exist at all. The OS is irrelevant now. It's all about software and data---that's why Linux just might eventually succeed. -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
