Eugene,

I hear you. Populist sentiment is a good thing because it reminds the big and powerful that they too are mortal, but let's not get carried away. Microsoft is the vendor that provides the most popular and widespread system development environment in the world.

Unless Microsoft goes into a self-destruct cycle like mad King Lear, Microsoft technology - .Net/SQL Server/Visual Studio/VSTO/SharePoint/Excel&Word&Outlook&IE - comprises the development platform that most companies are going to continue to develop in for the foreseeable future.

And business people don't really care that much what technology we use. They just want what they want and they want it fast because the world won't wait. They will choose people who deliver robust 80% solutions in a responsive manner and who keep adding more features as business needs unfold. And I think this comes more from our mastery of the skills you list than from the particular technology we are using.

Michael

Eugene:

I recently posted a blog on this issue entitled "Evaluating the Alternative Desktop – The Time Is Now!!!" and agree with your perspective that this topic requires calm and thoughtful analysis. The reason it's a little upsetting to many folks is that we've gotten comfortable in relying on Microsoft solutions for a long time. They're a safe choice, just like IBM was the safe choice back in the '60's and '70's. But the problem is that viable alternatives have developed that need to be evaluated.

At 60,000 feet, my guess and that's all it is, is that the savings will be about a $1,000 per desktop but you're right we need a much more through analysis. Some of the topics you raised need to be included such as training (IT staff and employees), licensing, maintenance costs, longevity of hardware, the cost of rework to make applications compatible, etc... need to be elements in the analysis on both sides of the equation. The analysis should also include a 10 year time frame to allow for the impact of future upgrades and recurring maintenance expenses.

The time is now, especially given the current economic turmoil, to get this analysis under way.

Bill

William A. Crowell, Principal
Magellan Associates, LLC
www.magellan-associates.com

You can contact me by clicking on my name and then click the "contact" tab.

This is long overdue. There are advantages to open source for sure but the general climate from the editorial side is deeply anti-Microsoft.

Open Source is not free - Red Hat updates cost about $125-$150 a year and you don't get updates unless you subscribe. Otherwise you can spend a lot of time figuring out what needs to be updated and doing it yourself manually. Windows comes with FREE updates and that's usually for at least 5 years or longer (Windows XP still gets updates for free).

On the Office Front, Open Office has improved quite a bit from 1.x to 2.4 (not yet on to 3) but it still is no where near as polished as Microsoft Office. Of course there's no decent competitor to Outlook that does exchange well at least not that I've seen or that is free. Evolution at least works with exchange (not IMAP but MAPI, evolution actually uses web access but I digress) so it's a start. Thunderbird only does IMAP and does not handle tasks, calendar and contacts in an integrated manner.

Often times I'll start with a document in OO on my desktop and then at some point will switch to my laptop (despite smaller keyboard and screen) cause Office is just a lot easier and smoother to work with,

Ajay

(Ex MSFT employee, now all my development is on RH 4.x for the last 2 years)