[NTLUG:Discuss] Fwd: [Fwd: Windows 2000 Magazine UPDATE,August 29, 2000]

[Michael Owens]

You know how good MS is at covering their butt. I was just wondering if this was
just one possible refuge in the event that Windows has to actually start
competing with others for the desktop.

Despite their biggest FUD compaign ever, everyone has just about figured out
that NT4, 5, DNA, 2000, NGWS, .NET---whatever the latest trendy moniker it's
donning---will never measure up in the server market (no matter how much you
pay Mindcraft so report otherwise ). I assume everyone knows about the ex-MS
employee's assertion that MS uses all UNIX itself for their Internet services.
I knew about HotMail running exclusively on FreeBSD, but never knew that it
told its staff to not even <think> about using Windows 2000, or the failed
attempts over 2-3 months to replace Oracle with SQL Server in another area.

It just seemed to me that this measure confirms a real fear inside Microsoft,
or better yet---an admission that Linux, GNOME, KDE, Star Office, and others
may in fact make for a combination that has a shot at John Q.'s desktop.

"So", reasons Bill, "if I can't make $x off every PC by forcing Comaq, Dell,
and other OEMs to use only Windows (I just hate that Department of Justice),
how can I continue to ensure that I get on average $x per shipped PC?"

"Then I'll stick SOMETHING, ANYTHING, on the PC that they'll have to pay for,
Windows or not. That way, break up or not, Windows or not, every PC consumer
will still have to pay me, Bill, $x per PC."

In comes Mainsoft.

"But that's not a safe enough bet. I can't count on that generating the
same sales volume I've grown accustomed to. I am going to have to diversify."

And frantically so. The FUD is starting to creep out into all sorts of new
corners. Hence things like the XBox---the greatest gaming system there ever
was, although it has yet to be completed.

And Home Advisor. . .

I am an admin at a real estate office. Lately, we have been getting FUD mail
from MS Home Advisor almost every other day to join. They are distincly
Microsoft in flavor---"Everybody else it doing it---NAMELY YOUR
COMPETITORS---so you'd better too. We'd hate to see anything bad happen to
you." Last week we got a videotape from "Microsoft Studios" explaining to us
how our biggest competitors just love it, and of course how it is transforming
the way they do business. I'm thinking next week, if we don't cave, we are
going to be paid a visit from some big Italian guy named Vinny (Microsoft
Certified) "lookin to shows us what a dangerous world dis place can be, and how
dat guy Gates and Home Advisa is just tryin' to make it a betta place for da
little guys." Yes, for just a little MS protection money, we just might be able
to stay in business and not be eaten alive by our MS annointed competitors.
Fortunately, my boss would rather gargle battery acid than give MS the right to
advertise his listings. I won't go into the details of MS's sordid little real
estate scheme, other than to tell you that its sorded, and a scheme, and that
the MS FUD in real estate is flowing thick and fast.

But even in our humble office, MS is indeed losing its grip: We had an NT server
which kept to a strict regimen of crashing on regular, unpredictable, and
almost imaginatively inconvenient intervals. As soon as I got my Linux
confidence up, I suggested to my boss last March The Alternative. With his
blessing, our NT server has since been reborn as a Linux box running Samba. Our
accounting system, Great Plains, just purs along because its Pervasive SQL2000
server runs on Linux. Outlook and Exchange are long gone. Qmail and Eudora do
the trick. IIS---well, we never trusted it to begin with. Apache, mod_perl, and
MySQL more than power our site. Accounting is delighted. They don't know
Linux from Cleanex, but they know it works. As a result of Linux's success, we
are putting together an intranet site with agent workstations which will all be
equipped with SuSE and Star Office. From a single place, agents can log in,
check their mail, surf the Internet, do what ever officing they need in their
own private space, which is backed up for them, all without any client
licenses---OS, mail, database, or otherwise.

It started with the server, is moving to the desktop.

So if MS seems to be looking for other avenues fast and furious, and if our
office is any good indication, then it's not without good reason.

That's why news like this delights me --- it just seems to confirm that what is
going on outside is somewhat consistent with what is going on in here, at least
enough to have MS squirming. And there are few things I enjoy more than
watching Microsoft squirm.


On Fri, 01 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> Kyle_Davenport at compusa.com wrote:
>  
> > I checked out the claims (yes, they are working on an api layer to run any
> > windows applications).  On Mindsoft's website, they seem primarily interested in
> > offering this service to private companies ("port your windows applications to
> > unix").  They do mention a major linux project, and also that they are porting
> > Windows Media Player to solaris.  As a rule I despise window's applications, but
> > so many places on the web now use it, I am looking forward to a WMP for linux.
> 
> I agree - I don't particularly want to use Word under Linux - but I'd still like it
> to exist because for many people it's the last remaining reason to boot Windoze - and
> I'm much more passionate about getting people to kick the Windoze habit than I am
> about getting them to dump bloatware like Word.
> 
> -- 
> Steve Baker   HomeEmail: <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>
>               WorkEmail: <sjbaker at link.com>
>               HomePage : http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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>                          http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net
> 
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