Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:57:23 -0400 To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>, <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Non Windows users may ignore this... Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> At 8/14/2006 09:36 AM, Michael Walsh wrote: > > omni at omniphile.com 8/13/2006 11:36:50 PM >>> > > >them. Sort of like that New Yorker view of the US. They forget the >server > >market, the embedded computer market, and the market for mainframe > >computing and large data repositories that MicroSoft isn't a big part >of. > >I don't think they forgot, as you said "They know nothing but the small >patch of the computer industry they inhabit". I guess I should have said, "omit", or "don't consider". > >If by "computer user" you limit yourself to home users and >non-technical office workers, you are probably right. > >Well.... yes. It's my guess that's where most of the Windows users >are. But not most of the decision-makers when it comes to what gets spent, or chosen, in the computer market. They are just users for the most part. The home users do spend and choose, but their total expenditures are not the majority of the computer market. >Perhaps. But, consider... someone wants to buy a computer, they >probably want something compatible with what they have at work. If that were the case, DOS, and then Windows, never would have caught on at home since most work machines were Unix, VMS, or some flavor of IBM OS back then (VM, MVS, etc.). Mine was TOPS-10 shortly before DOS came out, and VMS when it finally appeared and when Windows came out. I started out with Atari OS, then CP/M, and didn't get around to DOS until 1984 when I got a CP/M machine with a daughter board with an 8086 on it. That was MS-DOS 1.0. I was using COS (Cray OS) at work at the time...I didn't get a DOS machine at work until shortly after that. I'd have loved to have VMS at home...but it was too expensive at the time. I do have my own VAXcluster now though... ;-) DOS wasn't really an OS though...and Windows wasn't until NT came out. DOS was just a program loader and disk access system...it didn't do any of the other things an OS does (basically, stand between the hardware and the user programs to allow controlled sharing). > >>OTOH, there seems to be some growth in the non-Microsoft world, >witness the growth of Firefox. > > > >Yes, there has been, but Firefox isn't the best example...though >probably > >the most visible to a home user. Check out the server market >sometime. Or > >check to see what the web servers you access are running on...it isn't > >likely to be IIS. It's much more likely to be Apache running on >Linux, or some flavor of Unix. > >There you go... talking about stuff most home users have no idea about. But which they use on a daily basis if they use the web... > Again, I suspect what they want is, if nothing else, the *appearance* >of something that you take out the box and plug in. Note theword >*appearance*. Linux is as easy to install as Windows, and you can get it pre-installed on your machine from some manufacturers (Dell for instance). You can even get a user interface that looks just like Windows (even has a "START" button), though there are others that are more popular due to better features (KDE and Gnome are the two most popular). It isn't Windows of course, so if you don't want to learn anything new, you won't be able to make full use of its extra capabilities. There's always Mac OSX for the "why can't it be a toaster?" crowd...all the power of Unix, but hidden behind a pretty shell for the non-computer user users. They pretty much are "take it out, plug it in, and go" machines from what I hear. Apple says the next version of the OS will run Windows "out of the box", so you can even keep your Windows around until you learn to use the larger capabilities. You should have more time for that, once you aren't installing daily security patches and rebooting because you changed a setting somewhere... > >Check out Open Office...if you need all those tools, don't want to pay any > >money, but still want some compatibility with MS Office files. It will > >even run on Windows... > >But the bottom is the ... the bottom line: Microsoft has built a very >profitable business on people not using (for whatever reason) >non-Miscrosoft products. It's profitable unless the US government follows through on the threat of fines for flawed consumer products...what was it again? 2 trillion dollars? That should put a dent in even Bill Gates' wallet! There's also the problems they are having for the same reason with various European governments. I doubt either situation will result in the well-deserved fines the laws say they should get, because both (especially the US government) uses too much MS software to want to put them out of business. It does seem to have gotten some attention though...the new OS from MS supposedly had security as a prime criteria, with "new features" put in the background to a greater extent than usual for them. This puts them about where DEC was with VMS in 1978... -- Mike B. -- Scrute the inscrutable, eff the ineffable.