Windows Monoculture Myopia Revisited

round stic writes "eWeek magazine has an interesting look at the effects of the Windows monoculture on IT budgets, even as everyone agrees on the severity of the inherent security risks. The article contains interviews with Dan Geer and others who warned about the risks of the Windows monopoly three years ago. The article coincides with a piece in the Observer that suggests Vista is the end of the Microsoft monolith because of how complex the operating system has become."

Re:Please read the Observer article before comment

[Bobby Orr]

TFA is a rant. A sentence like "The Vista saga has two interesting lessons for the computer business." would lead you to believe the author intends to take an objective look at some sort of a case study. However, pay attention to other verbiage within TFA. This is not an objective, fair, reasoned attempt to learn any lesson. It is a rant:

• ...marketed to people in poor countries in a futile attempt...
  
• Security vulnerabilities come free with all versions
  
• There will be a predictable (and expensive) PR campaign ... But in Redmond ...
  
• How can hackers, scattered across the globe, working for no pay, linked only by the net and shared values, apparently outperform the smartest software company on the planet?
  
• And here's where the delicious ironies begin.

Oh great

[Overzeetop]

So we'll be lured in by the next solid, stable, safe NT3.5(1), and then have the rug pulled out from under us when the followon version comes out and all those safteys are scrapped for marketability.

Fool me one, shame on you...

Re:End of a monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope because MS also manage a vertical monopoly, so they can drag along the OS upgrade path by requiring a new OS for the applications (Games, Office, etc). Also, by keeping closed source, they can refuse to port drivers for new hardware (the only reason I got Windows 98 was because Win95 didn't use AGP or USB except on technically illegal OEM versions).

Re:Top Windows writer abandons Microsoft

[Aqualung812]

If you were really asking the question "WHAT THE FUCK IT IS IN THE FREAKING STICKER UNDER THE NOTEBOOK", I have an answer: It is for the CD that came with the laptop, or the OS image that is on a seperate partition. If she lost the disc that came with it, or you repartitioned it and blew away the other image then you do not have the same software that the sticker was ment for.

By using your custom "XP Home / XP Pro" CD (I have never heard of a MS printed disc that does that), you are using a different disrtobution of XP than the one that came with the laptop. While not as drastic, it would be like trying to fix a Red Hat install with your Ubuntu disc.

Windows does just work if you treat it like a Mac. Only use signed drivers, use the OS disc that came from the factory, etc and it works. Try to take it outside of that protected area and you risk running into problems like this. Some people are very familar with XP and tweak it to do amazing things just as some take a Linux distro and customize it, although the latter has far more room to customize and far more places that you can screw up if you don't know what you are doing.

Re:End of the monopoly...

[mbone]

I think that the large market share for Microsoft arose basically because of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the different is how it got started - that's why the IBM PC got such a large market share. Microsoft just rode on IBM's coat-tails.

Now, although IBM has faded in this market, the MS OS has continued its market lead primarily, I think, both through the fear of being different and the convenience of sticking with a known quantity. But, at the present, I think the situation is meta-stable. (In 1980, IBM mainframes were as dominant in computing as Windows is now, and I can remember being involved in frequent "it is useless to struggle" arguments about IBM then, which gives me a smile when people make the exact same arguments about Windows today.)

Re:sabotaging own install base

[legoburner]

Why, because that would be too simple and would involve compliance with the EU monopoly requirements. Microsoft would much rather argue and pay the fine it seems!

Re:TFA perpetuates myth

[Mifflesticks]

You realize that hyperinflation ended in Brazil around 1997 right?