Microsoft: The Next Investigations 299
Runt-Abu writes: "Some of the UK's top companies (and some of the not-so-top as well but hey...) are questioning Microsoft's policy on pricing. In an open letter to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry several of the top companies voiced concern at the cost of an extra £880m over a typical four-year investment cycle.
No one from Microsoft has commented at this time, given the current state of affairs it's highly likely many companies will not upgrade or seek alternative cheaper solutions." Basically, a large trade group is asking the British Office of Fair Trading (akin to the FTC in the U.S.) to investigate Microsoft's price increases. And Gogl writes: "It appears the attorneys general of 6 more states have voiced concern over Microsoft, particularly regarding the upcoming release of Windows XP. Microsoft and their allies claim that AOL-Time Warner was behind this, which AOL of course denies," pointing also to this piece on Microsoft's changing licensing costs.
The prices really do keep going up. (Score:5, Interesting)
More interestingly, they appear to be actually planning to enforce licensing through an enforced registration (i.e. if you don't register in 14 days, it won't work.) I've often said that few people would put up with Windows if they had to pay for it. The truth of the matter is that many people do not bother with legal licenses for their home software, so don't get too excited when told the product sucks. I wonder if the high costs and no-pirating-allowed will cost Microsoft the market?
TIF web site worth a look (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.tif.co.uk/
It certainly has an impressive list of members, including certain UK government departments such as the Inland Revenue.
The Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
People have been complaining about Microsoft for the past fifteen years or so. Unfortunately, Microsoft products have been of a reasonably good quality, and people like them, so pirating their software has gone on for just about that long as well.
Piracy means that not only the original owner gets to use it, but also a few of his friends. Microsoft may think that's a bad thing, but all it has done is secure their place as *the* operating system, the office suite, the web server, etc., because so many people use it, even if they're not all paying customers. MS would not have its current market share if it were not for piracy.
With these new tactics to extract money from citizens, the only thing they're going to accomplish is that Microsoft will no longer be in the hands of Joe Sixpack, who will then contemplate Linux, BSD, AtheOS, BeOS, or other operating systems that cost less than a few limbs.
In addition, the percentage of the workforce with Microsoft experience will decline; It's easy enough to learn ASP or whatever when you can install it at home, but not so easy when you can't touch it.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, and that's probably a good thing.
Re:TIF web site worth a look (Score:1, Interesting)
Win XP kills ghost? (Score:2, Interesting)
With XP's new registration process - how is that going to work? Will you still be ABLE to ghost XP machines? WIll users have to handle the registration process on their own after the machine is delivered? God forbid they lose that license certifcate in the process. With previous versions of Windows you simply used Ghostwalker to update the settings and such. But this adds yet another step to an already tedious process.
So does anyone who uses ghost to roll out systems have a plan or idea how they'll handle the onslaught of XP? Symantec has an article [symantec.com] that basically says XP is Beta (not anymore!) and they'll have more info after release (none I cqan find) They say they were able to use ghost and ghost walker to clone an XP machine - but again, cloning (ie backing up) a system is one thing, making corporate images you can toss onto new systems is something else entirely... It'll be too bad if Microsofts zeal for $$$ trashes a program that saved countless IT depts thousands of hours in deployment time.
Our experience - $1.2M per year (Score:4, Interesting)
Opting out is not a realistic option. While we could remain on Office 97 & NT4/2000 internally forever, our business (as with most businesses) constantly interacts with hundreds of other businesses: partners, clients, and vendors. Unless we can get all of them to stand still on Office, sooner or later, we're going to hit compatibility problems when exchanging documents (and viruses, but that's a different feature). It's a hassle for the business, and it makes us look bad to partners and clients.
Yes, I know that Office XP and Excel XP use file formats that are compatible with Office 97. I don't know that Office 2003 (or whatever it will be called) maintains this compatibility. The way the new MS pricing works, unless you can postpone upgrades for at least four years, it's cheaper to pay up today.
For the same reason, Linux desktops and open source office software are not a realistic option. The business can't afford compatibility problems with third parties. It just isn't worth the risk.
I wonder how expensive MS software has to be, and how onerous their terms have to become, before the MS apologists will acknowledge that MS is, in fact, a monopoly.
The arrogance... (Score:3, Interesting)
... of these guys is astounding:
Does anyone else read this statement and think ``You customers have a choice: it's our way or the highway.''
And moving up (with a bullet) in the ranking of my major pet peeves: Not answering the question and/or responding with seemingly randomly selected sentances as exemplified by:
I would like to know how the difficulty in managing software licenses in a company of any size has to do with Microsoft's sales channel threatening customers. Guess I'm just funny that way.
Re:Individual vs Enterprise License Agreements (Score:3, Interesting)
You are absolutely correct. The drop-dead date for signing up for their Open License program (which is effectively an annual subscription for software) is either October 1 or October 10. And my largest customer, number 2xx on the Fortune 500, is so far content to say, "drop dead." They're not moving.
Re:What XP effectively is doing... (Score:2, Interesting)
I know plenty of MS people who buy new servers that have Win2k on them, but they wipe it and put NT 4 server on it, because they have a site license for that. There's nothing in the XP scheme that says you can't do that, so XP will have high sales numbers, but low use numbers.
[Oh, and Win98 IS more stable, if you have SE and know how to tweak it. Windows always sucks when it's not properly configured.]
I feel fine - you can too. (Score:2, Interesting)
I converted all my stuff from Win2K/Office to Mandrake 8.0. It took about two months for the total conversion (let me tell you email from damnable Outlook was a pain) but now I'm 100% MS free. Only legacy thing which is a pain is Access. I might add that I purchased VMWare [vmware.com] to keep my stuff avail should I need it during the transition.
I'm no longer concerned with licensing, software EULAs, piracy, inability to play particular music formats, or big brother bill. I don't care about service packs breaking my whole machine, web bugs, or spending ridiculous amounts of $$ to keep up with their silly software releases and $$ for software that should be included with the OS.
My current machine will probably last me four years - much longer than if I stayed with the M$/Intel upgrade cycle.
I now purchase software because I feel the development for it is worthwhile (i.e. vmware and mandrake), not because I'm in danger of violating commercial law.
The only way to really stop M$ is to break their pattern of generating revenue. As a collective of consumers, we have this ability. It might take time, but history shows that all monopolies eventually fail. Should our government actually figure out a way to outlaw open source software, then perhaps it is time for me to change my place of residence. Until then, I urge you all to figure out a time and cohesive manner with which you can start refusing to give M$ the $$ they demand.
&J
It all makes me Sick (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been using computers for more than half my life, Which is easy when you start when you are nine years old. I started with a TRS 80 running of all things Microsoft Basic. It was loads of fun and I liked it. Later for me it was DOS 4.11 on a 12mhz 286. It was loads of fun and I liked it. Everyone remember when microsoft was a pretty good company in New Mexico?
But Windows... Oh the plauge across the land that which is Windows. Windows 3 wasn't so bad, Considering what it did it was advanced for its time, but I personnaly believed it was one of those things that was never ready for prime time. So why did business dive upon windows like buzzards on a fresh corpse? I don't want to hear that bullshit about it running (or even being compatible with) DOS programs. You don't even want to know how many windows programs break upon moving to a higher version number of windows. Notice how I didn't refer to it as upgrade. Upgrading implies moving forward or progress, but a new version of windows in neither of those. I digress the point here is that Windows 3 was no more compatiable with DOS, than Windows ME is with Windows 98. There are lots of programs written for windows 98 that absolutely refuse to run on windows ME. So backwards compatabilty is a sick joke, and the joke is on all of us. Just enough compatabilty for us to think it is real. Not quite enough to keep us from buying more windows.
I personally am absolutely disgusted with Windows. I have been giving myself a mental beating over that fact that I have written windows programs. To continue supporting this monster is unthinkable. It makes me think of the analogy of primative peoples sacrificing virgins to a horrible demon.
Once a week the villagers would leave a virgin sacrifice tied up outside the demon's cave to keep the demon happy. But what the villagers don't know is that if they stop sacrificing villagers the demon is to fat to go out and do anything about it.
Now I am not saying that microsoft is to fat, but I am saying we don't have to keep feeding out dollars to the behemoth. Honestly what are they going to do if everyone decides that they aren't going to pay for this crap anymore? I personally have made this resolution. I will not give microsoft A single Red Penny of mine.
I am in the process of a Microsoft Purge. While unpleasant at the moment it is an enima that the rest of the computing world could use. Everyone needs to stick a big bottle of penguin juice up their ass and flush all the microcrap away. I am converting all my ASF files to DivX with a hacked version of virtual dub, I am retireing all of my Open Source Visual Basic Projects (I have 4 of them, 3 of which are of a usable quality.) Since learning Pascal I have changed my Language of choice to Kylix (which is cool because the GPL is my license of choice) Oh, and if I hear any of that crap about "Free as in speach Compilers", Fuck off, Be happy I give my code away at all. Kylix is cool, I can develope Linux programs in a manner similar to that of Visual Basic, while contiuning to help the unfortunate souls who have yet to recive their bottles of penguin juice.
Somehow I doubt I will ever give up Microsoft Completely. Thats Ok, though, I can dual boot. I have been doing so for a while. I can continue to use what versions of windows I have bought. I'll probably continue to load windows to play some games, but I will certainly buy no game that requires a version of windows I don't have. Hopefully by that time though Linux versions of games will be more that the dream it seems to be now. My point here is it is far more important to stop handing over your hard earned dollars/pounds/yen/rupees/ruples/franc/marks/euro
Oh my God using that analogy Windows is like Crack. Makes sense though, While using it you are too doped up to know you are paying something designed to keep you paying for it. Ooh look at the pretty logos!
Maybe one day we will all wake up from this bad trip and find ourselves sitting at our terminals in 1973 and decide that thats a vision of the future we don't want. I can almost understand the retaliation against the Hippie movement when I compare it to windows. I could just see it, its the early 90's and all the wise old hackers are terrified because all those young hippie windows users are going unravel the fabic of society. Both the anti-hippies and the anti-windies were both right and wrong, Windows like, the free-love-sex-drugs-peace mentalaty of the 60's have had both positive effects (like promoting peace and computer literacy) and negative effects (like disco, and computer illiteracy.)
I am getting tired of the Linux evangelists in the world who say "Don't like microsoft?, Use Linux!", Its not enough to just say use Linux. You are so preaching to the chior. Its easy to tell people who use Linux to use Linux. Its hard to go out into the world and teach the ignorant masses that there is a better way. If any one of you out there really wants people to stop using windows, then get out there and do something about it. Write Code, Don't try to tear down the applications barrier around windows. Instead, build a bigger applications barrier around linux. Build Good Freindly applications. Build a wall so high and strong that Bill's 120 Billion dollars could never be enough to bring it down. Host LUGNUT [Linux User Group New User Training for the unitiated] meetings. Advertise the LUGNUTs to the general public. Most newspapers list non-profit community events for free. Coordinate them with local civic centers, libraries, colleges and universities, Highschools, and Career advancement institutions. In your spare time at work implement open source versions of your companies systems if only to prove to the suits it can be done economically. Go out into the world and be a Open Source Missionary. Find the heathens and point them towards the light. If you can do none of these things, offer finiacial support to those who do. Send a few dollars in the way of those who run linux learning centers, or donate hardware to those who need it to teach open source. Send a few dollars to the guy who puts in 40 hours a week into Mozilla, or apache, or bind, or send flowers to Linus, and Alan Cox.
I heave bled my heart out for you. Its all I can do. If you want this open source thing to work, you have to work for it. Nothing this good comes easily. You have to work for it.
Moderators, be kind, I speak only the truth, and I seek only the truth.