[Cialug] mythbusters says to use linux, not vista

[Nathan C. Smith]

Is he the goofy one that nobody listens to or the serious one?
 
<opinion>
 
The lesson nobody seems to learn when taking on MS is not to go head-to-head
with them.  Borland, IBM, Apple, Netscape have all learned this at one time
or another.  Once MS sees competition it goes into seek and destroy,
feeding-frenzy mode.  You have to come at MS sideways - a bit like Google is
doing, by doing stuff that doesn't compete with MS head-to-head and that
changes the computing paradigm in subtle ways.  In the case of Google - if
all your applications are mostly OS-agnostic, you don't care what OS you are
using anymore, there is no reason to pay for Windows.
 
It is fortunate to that MS is becoming their own worst enemy.  By charging
outrageous licensing fees for very small incremental value (Windows XP ->
Vista, for example) people (individuals) don't have as much incentive to
keep paying into the MS coffers.  I would like to put windows on a few more
machines at home, but I'm too cheap to pay the MS tax to do it, especially
when you have a company like Apple that sells a (reasonably-priced family
license for their OS and linux that can do nearly everything I want without
cost, Windows becomes wasteful.  (admittedly, I would be less likely to do
this if I wasn't as familiar with these alternatives as I am).
 
I think the tipping point in business is going to be harder to define.  I
Vista had been forced a little harder and cost a little more it might have
done it.  If they do something nasty to trap people's data in SharePoint
that might do it or an outrageous licensing scheme for Exchange, though I'm
not sure how it could get much worse.
 
These things are cyclical and MS is the new IBM.

</opinion>
 
-Nate


________________________________

	From: Matthew Nuzum [mailto:newz at bearfruit.org] 
	Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:41 AM
	To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
	Subject: [Cialug] mythbusters says to use linux, not vista
	
	
	Jamie from Mythbusters has an article on popular mechanics telling
people to ditch vista and use Linux/Ubuntu. :-)
	
	
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4243994.html?page=3
	
	This type of stuff is starting to happen more and more. Are we
finally seeing the uptake of Linux on the desktop similar to the way a few
years ago we saw the uptake of Mozilla/Firefox as the browser?
	
	I'm excited to see what would happen to the computer industry if
Microsoft started to feel like their monopoly is threatened. Remember when
AMD beat Intel to 1GHz?
	-- 
	Matthew Nuzum
	newz2000 on freenode