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IT managers stick with Windows, new terms and all - IDC | |
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| Time: 12:02 EST/17:02 GMT | News Source: The Register | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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Business customers are in no hurry to upgrade to Windows XP and Windows.Net, but if the results of an IDC survey released this week are to be believed, there's little or no chance of them rising in revolt against Redmond either. They are, according to IDC, "walking - not running - toward implementing [Microsoft's] new technologies and practices," but on the other hand they're "not concerned" about Microsoft's new licensing terms and conditions, "License 6.0." | ||
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| #1 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 1/3/2002 2:17:42 PM |
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#1. MacOSX, Linux, OS/2, 3270 terminals attached to an IBM mainframe. There are lot's of options.
That these options are not as high of quality or ideal for the situation as those from Microsoft is not the fault of a monopoly, but rather the circumstances that led to the creation of the monopoly. That's what is so baffling about these arguments, unintelligent people walk in and misinterpret the cause/effect relationship. |
| #2 By 2332 (165.247.4.34) at 1/3/2002 2:26:12 PM |
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#1 - Ok. Your claim is that because Microsoft holds 90%+ marketshare in the OS market, it is not possible for organizations to switch to a different OS.
Support? Well... hmm... I suppose it could be for compatibility reasons. Since 90%+ of OS's are Windows, most applications will be written for Windows. But there are plenty of applications that mimic almost exactly the most popular apps on Windows. Granted, there might be some applications that are only available on Windows, but you can hardly blame Microsoft for that. Perhaps you can't get ahold on another OS because of Microsoft monopoly? Hardly. Microsoft has a monopoly in OS's, not in distrobution. There are hundreds of alternatives, all available on the Internet. The most viable one (that will run on x86 hardware) is, of course, some flavor of Linux or BSD. Nobody is stopping these companies from using those OS's - they choose not to. Why do they choose not to? Well, it's pretty simple; there are two major reasons: 1.) Windows is dug in. That has little to do with Microsoft's monopoly, and more to do with the fact it's been a good desktop OS far longer than the alternatives. 2.) Linux/BSD are hard to manage, hard to control, hard to administer, and hard to support on the desktop. You can mimic Windows all you want, but when it comes down to it, Windows is far easier to work with and administer than Linux/BSD. Of course, this is partially linked to #1, since organizations already have tons of people who know Windows, and few who know Linux/BSD. The fact is, the alternative OS has to be *that* much better than Windows (which they aren't). |
| #3 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 1/3/2002 4:35:44 PM |
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I have changed OS platforms at least six times in the past 20 years. If there was something better out there, I'd be using it...
Oh, and a bicycle is a valid option compared to a car. Perhaps not for your circumstances, but 8 years ago I used to bike to work every day. Now I live 15 miles from work instead of 2 and the circumstances have changed. I've considered buying one of the townhouses which are located right behind our office. Then I could walk to work. There are always alternatives in life... |
| #4 By 2332 (165.247.1.225) at 1/3/2002 7:39:57 PM |
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#11 - "Java was a great concept for evening the playing field (by creating a way to develop apps that would work on any OS), except Microsoft didn't want to play."
And why was Microsoft required to play? Last time I checked, anybody who wants to can run Java applications on Windows with no problems at all. Even in XP, which has been blasted for not "including support" for Java, the very first time I visited a web page that used Java (took a while) a dialog popped up and it downloaded Java in about 5 minutes. Java's failure in the client arena had nothing to do with Microsoft, and everything to do with the shortcomings of Java. Ironically, it has succeeded in exactly the wrong place for a platform who's main strength is its portability: the server environment. Anyway, J#.net is - for the most part - an attempt by Microsoft to move Java developers to .NET. It's basically an implementation of most of the Java class libraries from a 1.1x version that wraps the basic .NET libs. "Companies could create a better OS than Microsoft; they just don't because they know users are going to stick with Window software since it is so entreched in the industry." Interesting. Up until the mid 90's, there were very few alternatives to Unix in the server environment. Nearly all major applications were either written for mainframes, or some other beastly machine running Unix of some flavor or another. Microsoft invested *lots* of money in that market even though Unix was VERY well entrenched because they thought that they had something better. Over the past 5 or 6 years, NT has really caught on... and while it still has a way to go, Unix certainly is no longer entrenched. Could it be that companies don't make a better OS that Windows because it's very *hard* to make a better OS that Windows on the desktop? Could it be that the millions Microsoft has spent developing the product isn't easily duplicated? At any rate, people like you shouldn't be mad at Microsoft, you should be made at *everybody* else for not trying. |
| #5 By 2332 (165.247.2.205) at 1/4/2002 12:38:52 AM |
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#13 - "If software works equally on every Operating System, I imagine that would bring a lot more competition to the OS arena."
Agreed. While not all of the alternative OS's have quality applications available, apps like StarOffice seem to do basically everything that most people do in Office. It's not up to Microsoft to ensure the quality of their competitors; therefore it's not Microsoft's monopoly in question here. "I don't blame Microsoft for not supporting "Pure" Java ... Java sucked on the client." The Java problem is interesting. See, Microsoft definitely screwed up. They violated a license agreement with Sun, and that was wrong. Microsoft's Java, however, ran traditional Java applications perfectly. In fact, it was 100% compatible with "pure" Java... but they extended Java so you could write Windows-specific applications with far more robustness and speed. (Java applications written with the extensions were up to 5 times faster.) Sun's objection was not based on "pure" Java applications not running correctly on Windows, it was based on the fact that not all Java applications written with J++ to use the Microsoft JVM would run on all JVMs. At any rate, Java applications have always run fine on Windows. Microsoft simply no longer includes the JVM on the CD. "If Microsoft writes Office in .NET and .NET is ported to Linux, I bet a lot of companies would choose Linux (if only for the financial reasons)." Well, I'm not sure Office would be a good .NET application anyway, but even if it were, I doubt many would switch to Linux running a .NET framework implementation. The total cost of ownership of Linux is substantially higher than Windows in most cases - especially in the enterprise. The cost of the OS itself has little (basically negligible) impact on the TCO of the entire deployment. "People don't develop client applications for Linux because there is no market for it, not when compared to the Windows market anyways." Yes, that's one reason. But if Linux really was that much better, wouldn't it *make* a market for itself? "I just think competition keeps companies working harder for the consumer, and wish the OS industry had more of it." I completely agree. I would be very happy to see an OS appear that really rivals Windows, but contrary to what many say, that isn't happening - mostly because writing a really good OS is hard. In today's market, I think the best way to gain market share would be to make your OS 100% compatible with the consumer applications available for Windows. There are several attempts at that already (Wine, Lindows, etc.) but they are, on average, piss-poor. "The basic Window's interface hasn't changed since Win 3.1." Well, that's not really true. The Windows interface has improved, albeit incrementally, a great deal over the past 10 years or so. In-fact, just recently, the interface king - Apple - has been (imho) dethroned by Microsoft for usability. That's a huge step for Microsoft, who has been usually one step behind Apple in most cases. While I think there is some really good UI stuff going on at Microsoft (and many other companies), I don't see the UI revolution coming with the graphical displays... I see UI being revolutionized by HCI (human-computer interaction) via things like facial and voice recognition. Obviously, graphical interfaces will change along with those HCI changes, but you get my point. |
| #6 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 1/4/2002 1:31:16 AM |
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"I meant if there was a way the "same code" would run equally on every OS, like .NET."
This will never happen, i.e. the idea of Write Once, Run Everywhere that Java tried to embody. It definately is not part of the design of .Net. The only platform compatibility that .Net entails is cross-platform communication, and with the base classes there is an hint towards compatibility running them. But not the extensions specific to Windows. This cross-platform communication is, honestly, the problem that most businesses have today. That's a different version of cross-platform than what Java tries to solve. Here's the reason, and why the Java proponents honestly are not interested in OS innovation. In order for Java to run on any platform, it must only implement the lowest common denominator of OS functions. Thus the Java world completely screws up when it comes to maintaining OS specific GUI specifications and best practices. If MacOSX has a super-widget set built in that does wonderful drop down listboxes, it won't be accessible to Java programmers.... only the most basic of drop down listboxes will be available because that's what is available on all platforms. Similarly with other functions, advanced music features, advanced video. Microsoft Windows also follows a very different model for interprocess communication, threads instead of processes, shared memory and other features from Unix. Again, none of these differences can be leveraged. J++ was accused of being evil because it allowed developers access to COM objects, as well as APIs like DirectX. *THAT* was Microsoft's crime, making Java work better with Windows. Whether it's Java, or some other solution, the problems still remain. By adopting such a strategy for developing software you completely annihilate the OS innovation that people claim to want. Imagine video games programmed in Java, or something like it. What graphics and sound features are available across all platforms? Well I guess we could do 320x200 in a window with low bitrate stereo. It's not what consumers want, and they aren't going to buy into it. I think it's time we let the market reign. Allow consumers to buy what they want to buy and stop trying to force government intervention because of some small companies inability to understand the consumer. As RMD explained, software is expensive to produce. It's not unreasonable that all software in the US is produced by maybe a dozen companies instead of thousands. That is the way most other markets are today because of the economies of scale, with some few exceptions. |
| #7 By 2960 (24.168.205.214) at 1/4/2002 8:55:16 AM |
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Digiwiz,
Talk to all the IT departments that are wrestleing with Microsofts imposed "You will upgrade or else" requirements. Though delayed (afer SERIOUS complaints from Corporate America), it will go into effect this year. There's no reason to think they won't do the same thing with Windows, eventually. TL |
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