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Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows

Is Windows Losing Ground? 90

Posted by Cliff from the erosion-of-dominance dept.
Rimbo asks: "I work for a small company developing wireless mesh networks to (among other things) give broadband access to large areas where a single access point can't cover the whole place. Since we're small, we made the mesh networking application for Windows, intending to support other platforms later. To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.' Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is Windows losing its dominance to the point where small shops must consider multiple OS support to get business, either through Java, 'web services,' or cross-platform toolkits like Qt?" With the number of IE vulnerabilities, macro viruses, exploits and other such annoyances over the years, is this really that surprising?
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Is Windows Losing Ground? More

Is Windows Losing Ground?

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  • Answer is (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:23PM (#9210734)

    No!

    • That's great. First post in the "Can Episode 3 be saved" discussion, modded to +4 Funny when I read it, has the exact same content as the parent. The parent, however, is a troll...

      Who said Slashdot is impartial, anyway :p

      • Re:Answer is (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's great. First post in the "Can Episode 3 be saved" discussion, modded to +4 Funny when I read it, has the exact same content as the parent. The parent, however, is a troll...

        Well, he did have a point. Windows is by no means losing ground. You will see anomolies here or there, but the vast majority of people continue to buy and use Windows. Hell, my next laptop to replace my 18 month old piece of crap G3 iBook will most likely be a P4 laptop running WindowsXP. I've come to the conclusion after tw

    • Hmm. Purely subjective, based solely on personal observation. The absolute number of Windows(tm) systems appears to be growing. The relative number of Windows(tm) systems, ie percentage of all systems, appears to be shrinking. SWAG? Was mid-90's, currently low-80's.

  • Regional... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:26PM (#9210746) Journal
    I think it's the power of "word of mouth" in action. Let's face it, Windows still has 95% of the desktop market. It's just when your next door neighbour gets his shiney new G5 and invites his friends around to show them how cool Mac OS X is, they all go and buy Macintoshes, then their friends go and buy Macintoshes, and so on. You get islands of Linux users and Macintosh users in small communities all over the place. Unfortunately they're not very representitive of the industry as a whole.
    • I think the best example of this I can think of is my experience in various coffee shops around Nashville. Generally, most the laptops folks are using are PC's. But there are a couple (usually close to the universities) where it's not unusual to see 7 iBooks and Powerbooks and only one or two PCs.

      It's similar for departments at the college I went to - most were PC-oriented, but in a few almost all the professors used Macs, and almost all the Linux-using faculty lived in the Math and CS dept. (Fancy that.
    • Let's face it, Windows still has 95% of the desktop market.

      Market share is irrelevant when commercial and non-commercial systems are competing. Linux could be the most widely-used desktop operating system and Windows could still have 95% of the "desktop market".

      It seems rather implausible that Windows really has 95% of the desktop market, or, in fact, has ever had 95% of the desktop market. Many desktop machines inside corporations, research labs, and schools are UNIX workstations and X terminals. And

  • Science at its best (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:26PM (#9210747) Homepage
    Boy, glad to see that unscientific guesswork from extremely limited statistical samples is alive and well! ;)

    • Re:Science at its best (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      yeah. i think this is a bit of a non story*. but will probably get loads of replies (and a big PC/Mac flamewar going) anyway.

      *where are all the stories from people who found Windows support was needed?

    • Yeah, I was aware of that when I posted it. That's why I wanted to see if anything like this had occurred elsewhere. I'm also curious to see if this is a likely trend.

      One thing I will note is that this particular location is in a very trendy part of LA, which would suggest that the high number of Apple users are trend-followers, and probably aren't so interested in (or even aware of) IE exploits and the like.
      • One thing I will note is that this particular location is in a very trendy part of LA, which would suggest that the high number of Apple users are trend-followers, and probably aren't so interested in (or even aware of) IE exploits and the like.

        Bingo. That's exactly what it is. Apple is a niche brand with extremely homogenous user demographics. Start knocking on doors in a blue collar section of Topeka and there won't be much in the way of cross-platform issues.

        (That, by the way, is why I thought putting A

    • How much less scientific than the ingrown assumption that Microsoft and Windows are on top, and will stay there forever?

      Past trends can indicate near and mid term events, but in the long run, things change.
  • Why would anyone go for an alternative?, Windows total cost of ownership is far lower then free software alternatives, independent studies have proven it, Microsoft is your friend, freedom is slavery.

    Seriously though since what you're creating needs to be run on every machine in the place (If I understand right) even if they are only running a couple of Linux/Mac machines it could easily be a deal killer if those few machines can't be connected up so it's probably a good idea to go for cross platform supp

    • To the poster of the original submission:

      Following up what parent saud, I have no idea how you are doing this or how it works, but would it be possible as a temporary option for such folks to provide a 'gateway service' that runs the connection through a proxy or NAT device of some sort for the hosts that can't see the mesh?

      The details are sketchy and fading from my memory, but I recall that I had this client about five or six years ago that (most likely because of bad design than anything else) had

  • See /. for the answer... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:29PM (#9210764)
    If Linux were not a threat to Window's market dominance, would Microsoft be advertising Windows vs. Linux benchmarks on Slashdot?

  • A bit overly dramatic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:33PM (#9210792) Homepage
    I think its pretty safe to say windows is not losing much ground, especially when related to an isolated incident where someone encountered a majority of Apple systems. I could use similar logic when walking into my schools labs, but the hypothesis falls apart when I goto studios running primarily Windows, or large businesses. The editor's comment is pretty much pure conjecture, even if there has been a minor budging towards OSX.

  • After four years of almost exclusively Visual Basic development since a switch from PowerBuilder and un*x, we are now officially in "catch up to our competitors" mode. I warned my boss a year ago that our main clients were going to a Java J2EE model of application deployment. Not just going: completely overhauling and rewriting all their old apps. Where before VB/Windows solutions were happily accepted, today they are rejected outright. Just today, I was working out specs for a small project, and I could see it working either way: VB or Java. The answer was "Well, I suppose we could accept a Visual Basic solution under certain extreme circumstances."

    Needless to say, my boss is freaking, with a stable of VB developers and only three (including myself) with Java experience. The change has come quickly, but we could have been better prepared than this.

    The reason that Windows/VB is rejected: too much of a headache deploying and maintaining when compared to a J2EE solution.

    HBH
    • I wonder if/when Java will be out and .net will be in. How would the same VB/Java arguments play wrt Java/.net?

    • Re:My company is jumping on Java (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I assume you're talking about VB on the server-side, where it never really was very popular (due to the henious deployment issues).

      I still get a call about once a month about VB6 client-side development even though I've never even done that work, so I have to turn them down. MS Webapps seem to be going to .NET, but the reporting/dataentry stuff is still 100% VB AFAICT.

    • Re:My company is jumping on Java (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is about as good a place as any to point out that Mac OS X is an excellent platform for Java development.
  • Analysis.

    Something that is required by most companies, because it's simply common sense. If this poster would have asked the client instead of assuming what platform they should code for, they would have avoided this problem.
  • Well, for our own small company, one of our ideas was to create systems filled with all opensource products, such as OpenOffice.org, Image Magick, etc... (and Tribes :-D), and say it's pre-bundled with loads of great software for business solutions, games, music, composition, etc. One thing that Linux GUI's have that Windows doesn't is that they're free. :-)

  • HP supports multiple OS's (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gary Destruction ( 683101 ) * on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:45PM (#9210856) Journal
    I know they're not a small company, but I know they support multiple OS's to meet customer needs. This Interview with Martin Fink [com.com] talks about it. It's kind of old, but it's a good read.

    From the Interview:

    How would you characterize Linux sales, in terms of hardware?
    The vast majority is on Intel x86 servers. We're also seeing sales on Itanium, especially for large supercomputing applications. There's an airport whose approach control system is HP Linux on Itanium. Right now, Linux is definitely the leader on Itanium. HP is not all about Linux. We're about multiple operating systems. Our analysis shows that 85 percent of enterprises have multiple operating systems. The idea of saying, "The world is about Linux" is not the real world. The real world is, "You've got to have a strong Linux solution, but you've also got to have Windows and Unix." Our Systems Insight Manager (formerly Nimbus) is a platform that looks across the whole thing.

    HP has a close relationship with Microsoft. How does pushing Linux affect that relationship?
    Our strategy is a multi-operating system strategy. IBM is pushing Linux at the expense of other things. We're pushing Linux as part of a complete enterprise solution. Does Microsoft want HP to be selling Linux stuff? No. But at the same time, they understand that Linux is in the market, and we have to compete. It's not about competing with Microsoft. HP is not poking a finger in their eye. It's about competing with Dell and IBM.
  • Maybe that community was actually a country club started by "Mac Lovers". You need to own atleast 1 Mac in order to gain membership.

    -Grump

  • Sorry for the lame headline, my brain is spent for today.

    I don't think you can say they are losing ground yet, (at least on the desktop, where we all know this is going to get interesting) but I think a lot of people are 'leaning over' the box to look inside and see what's going on with Apple, Linux, etc.

    Yes, I think viruses and security problems are a big part of that.

    No, it's not the only part. I honestly think people are getting tired of Microsoft insisting that they need to upgrade just because they have a new version out and the strongarm tactics are really putting them off. MS needs to learn how to fork a project so they can maintain support and improve features for those who want to stay with the older desktops (like Win98SE), while people who don't like thinking for themselves and controlling their own property can plow right on ahead into Longhorn.

    This is way off topic, but I don't care becuase I had an idea yesterday. I've been trying to get someone to tell me one good reason for MS wanting to get rid of the web browser as a stand-alone application, and I think I came up with one for myself.

    I'm just hypothesiX0ring here, but hear me out. This is fascinating.

    The whole idea behind .NET and the XAML is that MS wants to serve apps like web pages. Instead of going to a web site, downloading a binary installer, running setup, running it, configuring, yada yada yada, you'll use some kind of browser service to download a 'served' app whose logic and controls are XAML and the OS will "render" the app like a web page is rendered. You won't have to install anything, it'll update and patch automatically, and it won't take any storage space when you aren't running it.

    Sounds great, right? Well, remember, this is M-I-C-R-O-S-O-F-T we're talking about. So think a minute.... what's the MOST ANNOYING thing about the internet? SPAM? Spyware/Trojans? HAH! Pop-up ads! ...and to really screw things up, you need teams of professionals working round-the-clock!

    So, imagine a world where all your pop-ups are PROGRAMS.

    The worst case scenario I've come up with so far is that you try to run OpenOffice and some piece of crap adbot spyware like Claria/Gator (which TCPA won't let you disable because you agreed to a license authorizing it) opens up MS Word or WordPerfect for you instead. Worse, without a browser, how are you going to find all these wonderful apps? Well, your START menu is going to evolve into little more than a flashing neon billboard loaded with GREAT DEALS! It's only job will be to steer you toward the software and services whose vendors are most willing to pay to be on your START menu.

    Think about it -- why was Passport so important - to make multi-site logins possible? Hell no! How about web services? Apps as a service? XAML? .NET? TCPA/Palladium? It's all starting to come into focus.

    Maybe the days of contolling the PC you bought and paid for are truly over in MS land, eh?

    Please tell me I'm wrong, because I really hope I am. It *is* late, and I've had a very long day, so I'm probably more paranoid than average. But if I'm not, I think MS is signing their own death certificate because nobody's gonna go along with that kind of a hairbrained scheme.

    • Yes its something like that. The idea is to get back to a time when people felt free to try out lots of different applications without worrying about what it might do to their machines. The Windows95 release produced a huge rise in the number and diversity of software and many business made a lot of money by building on Microsofts platform, Longhorn is an attempt to recapture that effect and put the Windows PC back at the center.

      They will not be removing the browser completely, it will still be there for n
    • Well, the .Net platform is something like that. But here's the key.

      The idea is to make development of enterprise web applications easier, so they've built in controls like the datagrid, repeater, even a table with extra properties. The .Net platform on the server renders these controls to whatever browser. If the user happens to be using IE6+, then the controls are built in. If not, it renders HTML so any browser can use the same functionality. It also renders javascript for both.

      You have to rememb

  • Specific to mesh networking hardware (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jim Morash ( 20750 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:03PM (#9210950)
    I recently evaluated hardware from one of your competitors. The only reason I chose not to purchase their mesh networking product was the lack of a Linux driver. They actually have one, but consider it proprietary and will only give customers the Windows driver.
  • According to Google Zeitgeist [google.com], Windows has accounted for the same 95% of Google's search traffic since 2001. MacOS and Linux accounted for 4% and 1%. This isn't the same as market share, but it's better than a lot of those sponsored studies that only count license purchases.

    Part of the reason Windows is still highly ranked could be attributed to education of Windows users, who switch from their default search engine to google, while the rest of us are already well informed, but that would just mean that th

    • Re:Not on the home desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rimbo ( 139781 ) <rimbosity@sbcgDE ... net minus distro> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:22PM (#9211042) Homepage Journal
      You know something interesting? I was tracking web stats on my web page. And no more than 60% of the traffic was IE. Then, I made it so that the root directory of the server (never published) is a redirect instead of a missing page. Guess what? Suddenly the hits go to 95% MSIE.

      It seems that all of these viruses, web-crawlers, etc that attack random IP addresses actually report themselves as IE. Now I won't say IE's a worm itself, but clearly a significant amount of that "IE" traffic isn't coming from human users.
        1. You know something interesting? I was tracking web stats on my web page. And no more than 60% of the traffic was IE. Then, I made it so that the root directory of the server (never published) is a redirect instead of a missing page. Guess what? Suddenly the hits go to 95% MSIE.

        Over the same period of time, what is the ratio of hits that you get on the unpublished root vs. the published one? That might give an idea of what the real IE brower share is for your site (tossing out bot and virus probing).

        • "Over the same period of time, what is the ratio of hits that you get on the unpublished root vs. the published one?"

          Something like 4:1. I don't get a lot of legit hits.

          I mean seriously... who really wants to see brain farts, much less the lighting of them? ;)

    • MCSE == Unemployment (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've been travelling around to a few meetings and conferences and I notice that OS X and Linux users are unusually large. At one conference, it looked to be about 60% OS X. At another, the ratio was nearly100% the first day tapering off to about 60% as the conference tech crew was able to go one on one with users get their Windows machines working with the wireless network.

      Of the people that I talk to that are unemployed, these are the ones with heavy emphasis on Windows. Yes, I run into Windows ca

  • Do your research (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:10PM (#9210989) Homepage
    To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.'

    You can't take a comment like that at face value. A lot of Mac users assume that everyone else also uses a Mac, primarily because they, personally, have never used anything else.

    It's possible that you have managed to find a place where Macs are predominant. Your really need to survey the population that you hope to serve before you can assume that is the case.

    If your product only works with Windows right now, then plan your beta test accordingly. Talk to the site ahead of time, ask for a tally of what systems and OS versions they use, and then decide whether to roll out the product.

    That ensures that you look successful and professional.

    • A lot of Mac users assume that everyone else also uses a Mac, primarily because they, personally, have never used anything else.

      Is this from personal experience? Because everything I've seen points to the opposite. (I'm not calling you a liar, I'm genuinely curious if you know people like that)

      What I've seen is that many people who use Windows assume--well, it can't even be called assuming everyone else uses Windows, because they don't even know there's anything else. In fact, some don't even know th

    • "You can't take a comment like that at face value. A lot of Mac users assume that everyone else also uses a Mac, primarily because they, personally, have never used anything else"

      This isn't marked as trolling? I have never met a mac user who thinks most people use macs... They all know macs are the smaller market, some make excuses, but they all KNOW they are vastly outnumbered, but they(I) don't care, they enjoy their macs. And for not using anything else? I don't have hard numbers, but there is a clear t
    • Hmmm... I don't know what world you're living in where "Mac users have only used Macs and nothing else" and where small startups have their share of choices of sites, but OK.

      In my world, the only Mac users I know have extensive experience with multiple versions of Windows, Linux, big *nixes like Solaris and small embedded OSes.

      And the beta site finds you, not the other way around.

  • Let's Not Forget... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Landaras ( 159892 ) <neil@@@wehneman...com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:13PM (#9211003) Homepage
    That the plural of anecdote is not data.

    Yes, I believe Linux is gaining ground. But I don't believe our individual stories are going to necessarily be representative of the entire industry.

    After all, many (most?) or us are here because of Slashdot's pro-Linux bias.

    Just something to keep in mind.

    - Neil Wehneman
    • The story is about how a rollout encountered during the testing phase testers who used MAC's. Made by Apple. Running OS-9 or OS-X.

      Where the hell did you get linux from?

      Now don't worry I know what your trying to say but geez you are just giving the Microsoft Apologists fodder. Oh look Mac story and all the little /. hippies use it to say linux is winning.

      As for the question the original poster asked? According to google measurements Windows is 95% of the market. A figure most people repeat. So no need to

      • "As for the question the original poster asked? According to google measurements Windows is 95% of the market. A figure most people repeat. So no need to develop for anything else right?"

        Also, note my little blurb above where I noted that most worms and viruses report themselves as IE when attempting Apache/IIS exploits. That seems to up the number of IE users quite a bit there.
  • ... Keyon.com [keyon.com], a wireless ISP?
  • One of the big problems with trying to compete in the Windows market is that someone most likely has already done what you're trying to do.

    And most companies will go with the Ciscos of the world, if they can.

    But if they are a Mac shop, then there is a much smaller area for them to play in, and they will be willing to consider smaller companies, if they will cater to them.

    That's just my guess about it.

  • Non-issue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jcbphi ( 235355 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:38PM (#9211105) Homepage
    My experience is that with users that would use a wireless mesh, Macs really do tend to dominate. These are often people who are working all the time outside of an office: grad students, graphic designers, musicians, etc. These tend to be Mac users anyway, but add in the long-ish history of Apple making laptops w/ built-in 802.11 cards, and its plausible that there are an awful lot of Powerbooks being used on these networks.

    There is nothing surprising about certain platforms being popular in different, small subgroups of the population. Whether it be Solaris, Linux, OS X, or the mighty Amiga, there is likely going to be some niche, large or small, that finds the particular platform the best tool for the job.

    This doesn't mean anything in terms in total market share though. For general purpose office computing, the niche leader is MS Windows. I don't see this changing in any dramatic way, despite the many cross-platform development options out there.

  • You are only hurting yourself by assuming that Windows is everything. Apple has had several % for years now. IBM sells AS/400, RS/6000, mainframes. Sun sells their Sparc line. HP has their own line of computers. Not to mention all the embedded systems out there, nor the old unsupported systems.

    Now windows does have a large % of the market, but it isn't everything. Worse yet for someone who says windows is enough is you are almost right. Almost everyone has windows, so you never notice those sales l

    • The problem in your analasys :

      Yes apple has a % today. The problem is they had a HUGE % a decade or two ago. Remember when everyone have an Apple IIg? And every school, library, printing shop, newspaper, video editing place etc ran Apple or Mac?

      Now the % is small, their core is fractured, etc.

      The iBook and iMac single handedly saved apple from the trashbin. And its not the technology. Their technology is linux. Its that they are sexy.

      Other people can copy sexy, and then you are down to sexy linux/win
  • I own several laptops, of various speeds and operating systems, including an iBook.

    If I were going to a coffee shop and were planing on doing a little web surfing, checking some news sites, etc, I very likely would take my iBook, even though it is neither my fastest, nor my smallest laptop.

    The primary thing going for it is it's "Instant On" capability.

    My IBM X21 comes out of suspend mode in about 15 seconds. Give or take a few seconds. Out of it's base, with a wifi card, I would expect it to take about a
  • I'm not sure that this article is asking the right question. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms because Windows is losing its market dominance? No. Should small companies target customers across a range of platforms for other reasons? Absolutely.

    When I evaluate applications for procurement at work, I heavily favor multiplatform apps because we WANT to escape from Windows. At the very least, I don't want my software applications to become "legacy," and force my platform
  • As a Mac user, I hope so. :)

  • Market Share != Seat Share (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dutky ( 20510 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:37AM (#9212254) Homepage Journal
    Market share numbers don't really tell you what the actual installed base is, especailly when the replacement cycle is different for the different products, as is the case between PCs and Macs.

    In general, the replacement cycle for Macs is two to three times longer than that for PCs. Part of this difference reflects the difference in price (folks hold onto expensive stuff longer than cheap stuff), and part reflects product quality (Macs don't crap out on you as fast as PCs do). Also, there tends to be an active market in upgrade products for Macs that extends their useful life (and sales of upgrade products don't contribute to a product's market share).

    Finally, market share numbers are skewed because people may own or use more than one machine: one at home, one at work, maybe a machine at home just for work stuff, and maybe a laptop. If you do the math you will see that the market share to seat share ratio is roughly proportional to the replacement cycle ratio. While you may be able to safely ignore 3% of the market, could you afford to ignore 10%? What if that 10% were the top 10% that controlled the purchasing decisions for another 40% of the market?

    If someone has several machines at home and one of them doesn't work with some home oriented product, even if the other machines work, the person is likely to raise a fuss about the one non-working machine. As a business, you can't really afford to alienate the guy with three PCs and one Mac. Even though he is perfectly able to run your Windows-only product, he may well like the Mac better, or he may just be offended because you are foreclosing a choice that is rightfully his. Under any circumstance, the folks that have several machines are, in general, a more affluent market and you should cater to them (they have more money, which probably means they have better jobs, which probably they have some buying power at work as well as at home)

    Even Microsoft is concerned about making products for the Mac. Some of that might be cover for anti-trust lawsuits, but most of it is probably that they know a lucrative market when they see one, and they know that the folks that can afford Macs have lots of money, which probably means that they are important people. If you get them using MS-Office at home, on their Mac, they will be more likely to recommend MS-Office as the standard platform at work, where all the peons in the cheap seats are forced to use it on a Dell or Gateway running Windows.


  • Even if you use all Windows - if you choose hardware that has multiple platform support, chances are it's of much higher quality.

    Examples:

    Win-modems vs Hardware Modems
    Prism chipset WLAN hardware vs all the other crap.
    USB Drives that are true USB Storage Devices and don't need drivers vs proprietary crap that needs special drivers.
    PCL 4/5/6 Laser Printers vs the cheep crap where the drivers do all the work.

    If is says Linux/Mac on the box - smile and pop it into your Windows box with good results.

  • Yes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kzadot ( 249737 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @02:39AM (#9212550)
    Yes there are a lot of non-windows machines out there. You have made 2 big mistakes:
    1. Only now after the product has been made are you asking questions that should have been asked at the earliest stages.
    2. By using open standards, it wouldnt matter what OS your customers use, they could just plug it in and go. That way your solution would work for any OS that also adheres to open standards.
  • ... the /. community is highly anti-windows, however some advise anyway. ANY repeat ANY new product should NEVER be introduced as a single platform solution. At a bare minimum you need to support Windows, MAC and Linux from the start, and if it uses web technologies it needs to support IE, and Mozilla/Netscape.
    Your sales break down will look like 65% Windows, 20% Mac, and 15% Linux at the start, hwoever that balence will shift in time because you support hose other platforms. if your product is good, tho

  • There is change in the air... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:24AM (#9214184)
    I work for a wireless company in a development group. All the programmers are hard core C++/Java/UNIX people. Of the 11 developers in my group, 7 now have Macintosh machines running OSX, and two others have Linux machines.

    Is this indicative of a shift in general society? Nope. We all know that geeks jump first. But once all the geeks are on Macs and Linux, the non-geeks will get a different answer when they ask what kind of computer they should buy. "Windows" won't be the answer anymore, and that's good for the theory of a heterogeneous network being stronger.
  • The company I work for uses Linux in our tech pit providing technical support strangely enough to windows users, and a few Mac callers. Our product is a customized version of Linux running on servers all across Canada and the U.S.A. We could have used Windows and an 'off the shelf' product, but this solution saves us $$$ in licensing fees, and gives us more control and flexibility, so yeah, Microsoft lost out.
  • No it's not.

    Simple question often brings simple answer.

  • Wtf? (Score:2)

    by mivok ( 621790 )
    Why is is so hard for companies to NOT provide support for multiple operating systems? Some desktop applications I can (almost) forgive, but broadband network access? All the company has to do is use standards and not some proprietary microsoft protocols. Even with mesh networking, provide customers with a wireless access point such as a Linksys WRT54G with firmware to support mesh networking and you don't have to worry about the platform, any computer with ethernet can connect, regardless of platform/OS.

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