Insightful, very insightful. I am not that familiar with Linux but everyone says its a great server. From what I’ve seen though, the workstation part is very solid and a very good opportunity for my customers.

As for OpenOffice – count me in the minority as I simply love it. Check out 2.0, it is much faster.

Allow me to continue where you ended..

How Vista will fail to deliver
Anybody that has looked at Microsoft Vista beta will tell you one thing – bloated, overstimulated, eye-candy skin for XP and little else.

They are adding features as it moves through preview process but one thing that will most certainly be delivered is a bloated, memory and cpu resource intensive hog of an OS.

Linux can run like a rocket on a Celeron. Vista wants a 64bit with 2gb ram to run “comfortably”. I wonder which option people will demand with their computers, nothing like a business user waiting 10 minutes for their laptop to power on for a business presentation.

Look at Knoppix, Ubuntu, Gnoppix. I dare you to find must-have features you would pay $220 or more for a copy of XP Pro.

Whats gotten into you, these long essays and such. Are you being paid per word?

Joke aside, very deep stuff. They will have to contribute a lot more to make it fight with Microsoft but as you said there isn’t really a whole lot we use inside Microsofts office suite so free replacement may not be a bad thing.

Keep it up Vlad, thank you!

Finally…a post I understand! This one actually makes sense to me. Very interesting point. Thanks, Vlad. You rock.

Oh, yeah. You need to enable the ability to leave Trackbacks. I just referenced you on my site.

Dude, you are wicked smart.

I think this is the best competitive overview of Windows, Linux and open-source I’ve seen in a loooooooooooooooooong time. On the other hand, I get my info from SlashDot so nothing really new here but so very very detailed.

I’d duck though… Microsoft may be coming after you now.

As long as Dell and HP and IBM and every other OEM push Windows XP on these systems, which they do because of immense cost of supporting another platform like Linux, there will be little to no inroads for people like Redhat or Novell to compete unless they support it on their own and make it look, feel and behave identical to the way Windows does.

Monopoly for Microsoft is granted but there are more pressing business concerns that keep Windows the defacto platform for so many vendors. Like you said, you want the platform that plays well with Office.

I think one of the biggest roadblocks to mass Linux adoption is the user friendly obstacles. Look at the war of words between Gnome and Linus over the last few days. There is just no simple, easy-to-use and consistent interface to it.

It is not the matter of image/binary compatiblity, look what Apple has managed to do with OS X. It is the matter of users liking their desktop.

Where I think Microsoft will fail is by trying to provide easy-to-use eye candy as you described to the business users. That is not going to work. Of course they will offer a lighter version but I don’t think the death to their desktop is anywhere near.

Irrelevance and indifference, maybe. But hold on to that tombstone.

It is interesting to read this, and as last night I was playing with the latest UBUNTU Live CD…I was thinking to myself, as I easily configured my network, mail account, how intuitive, non-bloated clever Operating system, I thought it was….and guess what, it is free. OpenOffice is a great product and so are many of the linux distributions. I am a Small Business Consultant and I sell MS SBS 2003 and I think it is a great product…of course there is much room for improvement, but there always is… but you look at slackware, email solutions, great security features..etc.. that linux can offer, it is a player that will NOT go away… every dog has its day.

JC

You might be on to something Vlad, there is a rumor in the works claiming Google is about to purchase Opera.

And the plot thickens….

Awesome Vlad, just awesome. I’ve forwarded this to my entire team as an early warning of complacency. Stories like this really keep us on our toes.

Thanks for the great work you do.

Active post, eh?

Dear Microsoft, if you have put a hit out of me I regret to disappoint you that I’m in DC so prepare to pay some overtime to your hitman.

Joke aside, I did get a few personal comments asking why I would write such a horrid assesment of what I see.

Before I answer that, I a) don’t work for Microsoft, b) don’t have a big incentive to lie and c) can’t offend any of 0 advertisers on vladville. If you couldn’t tell by the number of spelling mistakes, this is not a business journal.

So why write such a long and extended overview of whats going on behind the scenes, to an audience primarily working in SMB with Microsoft?

“…primarily working in SMB with Microsoft…” has severe disadvantages of giving you tunnel vision in which there is a single vendor and a single way to do things. As I’ve mentioned in Eric Ligman’s webcast, I have a smaller advertising budget by Microsoft. More people have heard of Microsoft than of my own employer. If they didn’t like me, they’d put me out of business in a fraction of the second.

And the very same holds true for your business, regardless of what it is. The single most important key to success in IT business (and any other business) is to take advantage of all your opportunities. You can be a great engineer, but if you can’t sell yourself you’ll starve to death (or at least to a job at McDonalds). If you are a great salesman but poor consultant, you will either starve to death or become very well versed in hiding money before your customers stop payment.

Now my advertising budget is smaller than Microsofts as I mentioned, but also smaller than that of Google, Yahoo, Real, RIM, Oracle and any other company out there. So what have these guys figured out about partnerships that I have not. What do these guys know that I don’t? Why is Sony, Apple, Google and Linux such a big thorn in Microsoft’s behind and I can’t even buy an Xbox?

I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and look at the trends in technology and business and guide your business to the zone where it has the highest probability of success.

But I could be wrong, I’m sure the spyware business will be around forever… yeah… really…

-Vlad

Open Office has been one of the best hidden secrets in the computer world so if y ou have not seen 2.0 do yourself a favor and hit it today. It is not as broken, slow or useless as the 1.1 used to be. It’s also only 80mb so nothing big there.

I have to commend you Vlad as I have never heard of you before and this link came in the email from a friend. You certainly have an interesting take on this, I commend you on having the balls to publish this type of honest feedback and commentary, especially as someone doing business with Microsoft. We need more people with ethics that are willing to stand up and call it like they see it.

I for one never looked at it from the business perspective of the company contributing code to OSS. I guess I never considered the support costs but boy does it make sense now.

You’ve made a friend today.

Do you have a fobia of spell check or do you just choose to write such thought-through essays in the notepad?

I really loved this post. Not a regular zealot, are you. A true guru would have slammed down the tombstone and declared Vista dead on arrival while touting a download of alternative-xyz but you put it on Microsoft’s back to prove you wrong… nice move!!!

Oh how I wish I saw this earlier, you totally made my day. And you’re right on the money – there is a lot more to be accomplished by working together than by encouraging blind greed and selfish competition.

Very nice story, thank you!

What is even more interesting but not brought up in this article is not that these are emerging and growing threats against Microsoft cash cows but that they are unlike anything Microsoft has ever faced before because these are not corporations about to run out of staff or money.

These are projects run by volunteers, so whatever threat there is to Microsoft it will just grow over time as more is donated and more problems are fixed.

If I were you I would be doing all I can to get informed about these new solutions because I beleive that they, not Microsoft, are the future. After all, Microsoft is trying to make things easier and bigger. Other projects are focusing on speed and stability.

Which would you rather have?

Wow, an honest fan of Microsoft that understands software, development and business. They don’t make many of you, do they?

Very good piece, they ought to print this post down and hand to every PM in big business America, though I’m sure they probably have some pockets that get it.

As the comment above me said, this is not about to go away since it is all volunteer managed, supported and developed.

Right on. Here is something I saw today which further explains Microsoft’s hardship even on the marketing side. Seems like the side effect of them stepping on everyones toes is that everyone is fighting back much harder and with much sharper teeth than in the past:

Microsoft’s challenges in the order they were published are to:

- Explain to corporate customers why they should buy Windows Vista without waiting to purchase new hardware first.
- Publish a definitive set of guidelines on developing Windows applications to reduce buggy software and security flaws–and then enforce it.
- Communicate its intent for entering into the managed-solutions market, as well as which parts of this business it will leave to its partners.

I’ll help you with this one: People will switch when Dell sells them a PC that is cheap and has Linux on it. I mean, imagine that, a PC that has all the bells and whistles and apps without a huge markup.

Right now their Dell without an OS / Linux costs more than the system with XP Home.

In the short term they don’t have to end it, they just have to make people hold out and not sign the SA agreement.

Microsoft is desperate for growth, that growth comes with investments in losing propositions that may one day be cash cows. BCG matrix.

Doesn’t have to be Linux or Google, could be Apple, or any combination thereof. If all the apps are on the web, then the only thing that matters is local video, print and storage drivers.

I think an Xbox 1 could suffice.

Nice post!

I personally think that Google has plans to put OpenOffice on the web as an online office suite. (http://hyperculture.typepad.com/sarah/2005/11/google_is_worki.html)

The fact that Google is working on Open Office isn’t rumor, it’s fact: http://news.com.com/Google+throws+bodies+at+OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html?tag=nefd.lede

Office 12 had better be amazing because once Open Office gets rebranded as Google Office, people will find it, use it, and not pay for the MS product. And by people, I mean non-techies: Moms and Dads; college kids on a budget; SOHOs; Etc.

Should be interesting!

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