Inside TechRepublic Press

No New News here then ....

The late-November, early-December release date for Beta2 was always a possible target, but January/February was the realistic target. Maybe it was just the hype from the media that made the testing community ready for an early release.

Personally I don't mind waiting, if it's for the better ...

Out of interest, has anyone installed Vista upon a clean build machine ?

Yes it can be done, try it and notice that functionality which missing .....

Arthur

What a shame that the industry should waste such effort in evaluating a piece of garbage excuse for a wordprocessor such as "Uncle Bill's" MS Word which after 20 years still does not know how to provide a "Reveal Codes" function as with WordPerfect.  Please see "How to Dump Microsoft".  T. W. / Illinois

50 megabytes. We instituted this limit when we first set up
Exchange six or seven years ago. We're rolling out Exchange 2003
in the next few weeks and will be upping the limit to 100mb per user.

I hadn't heard of the 2 gig limit in connection with a mailbox, but we
don't allow them that large. We regularly run into the 2 gig
limit on archive, personal, or other form of non-mailbox message
storage.

You italicized "Two gigabytes", indicating you think this amount is
significant. Do you feel this is too small for a mailbox or too large?

Palmetto,

I'm amazed Outlook worked at all while trying to make sense of a two gigabyte mail box. CNET sets my limit at 140MB. Most companies set them in the 50MB to 100MB neighborhood, I believe. But I thought it best to solicit a sampling.

I'll guess that she was refering to the .pst 2GB limit.

We have a 500MB > 1000MB limit. Lower limit is for "common" users, and it increases with our organization chart. =)

We have our mailbox limits set at 125MB for all users and without limit on C level employess (and IT staff).   The 2GB issue is specific to PST files and from what I understand does not apply to Outlook 2003 format PST files.   We let the users know that it is best to keep there PSTs at about 650 - 700 MB (yes, the same amount a CD can hold).  We are running Exchange 2003.   As a side note, when we were running Exchange 5.5, we had one user that had over 15GB in his Exchange folder.  That is right 15 gigabyte.  

My mailbox size is 4GB and seems to be working quite well.

I don't recommend it to everyone, though :)

Tom

So are OS/2 systems for all that's worth...

It wouldn't be the first time a company has reacted to a security
threat or warning by burying it's head in the sand. Microsoft does it.
Cisco does it. Just about any company that sells software does it. Does
it make it right? Heck no. Sadly it's par for the course though.

I think Bove's logic is clouded by his zealotry. He says:

""It's not just about bashing Microsoft," Bove said,
" except that since Microsoft has more than 95% of the market in
desktop computing systems, the company deserves at least 95% of all
bashing. (Sometimes it seems that Linux and the Mac get far more
bashing in the press than they deserve.)"

Why would he expect MSFT to get most of the bashing? That assertion assumes that most MSFT users are unhappy, right?

And let's get over this delusion that people just don't know about
Apple. Apple is a luxury brand. That is why most people don't consider
them.

Smorty,

Thanks for confirming my suspicions were right!

EE

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}>Some folks just don't get that joke -- 95% of the market, therefore 95% of the bashing. I wonder if 95% of the unhappiness in the computer industry (if we could measure it) could be traced to Microsoft's business practices.function (match)
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}>Anyway, let's dispense with the idea that the Mac is a "luxury brand", as if we were talking about the difference between a Volkswagen and a Mercedes-Benz. To a person who can afford a powerful laptop, the price difference between a Mac and a Windows laptop -- comparably equipped with wireless, lots of disk space, Bluetooth, etc. -- is about one night in a fancy New York City hotel. In short, a minor business expense for a very powerful tool in your business.function (match)
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}>function (match)
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}>As for zealotry, the book Just Say No to Microsoft (No Starch Press) could be considered anti-Microsoft zealotry by some, but not pro-Mac zealotry: I devote only one chapter to the Mac as an alternative.function (match)
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}>Also, let me take this opportunity to fix a typo. The 2nd to the last sentence should read:function (match)
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}>The market takes a while to educate, but people will eventually understand the vulnerabilities incurred by sticking with one system and one set of office applications.function (match)
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}>

Some folks just don't get that joke -- 95% of the market, therefore 95%
of the bashing. I wonder if 95% of the unhappiness in the computer
industry (if we could measure it) could be traced to Microsoft's
business practices.

Anyway, let's dispense with the idea that the Mac is a "luxury brand",
as if we were talking about the difference between a Volkswagen and a
Mercedes-Benz. To a person who can afford a powerful laptop, the price
difference between a Mac and a Windows laptop -- comparably equipped
with wireless, lots of disk space, Bluetooth, etc. -- is about one
night in a fancy New York City hotel. In short, a minor business
expense for a very powerful tool in your business function.

As for zealotry, the book Just Say No to Microsoft (No Starch
Press) could be considered anti-Microsoft zealotry by some, but not
pro-Mac zealotry: I devote only one chapter to the Mac as an
alternative.

Also, let me take this opportunity to fix a typo. The 2nd to the last sentence should read:

The market takes a while to educate, but people will eventually
understand the vulnerabilities incurred by sticking with one system and
one set of office applications.

I'm not talking about the price of Apple products (in terms of "luxury
brand"). I am talking about how they position themselves. I know that
flies in the face of your poor little Apple versus big, bad MSFT
position; however, Apple is not going after the same crowd as
MSFT.  They are absolutely trying to position themselves as a
Mercedes-Benz and MSFT as a Ford Taurus -- too many Apple users drive
VWs for your example to work :)

Oh please kids.....

I know all about the niche players. I was a Wang sys admin (those of you who don't know about the mysteries of Wang computers, insert silly jokes here). I was also a fire breathing Mac proponent at a Fortune 100 company where Macs used to outnumber PCs 2:1, and where during my tenure, they were completly eliminated.  Dilbert's series of "computer Holy wars" cartoon's happened when Scot Adams was working for one of our customers and had regular communications from our staff. So a former "Dr. Mac" has seen this kind of thing before.

But Eric, get a grip. You weren't attacked. You proposed option C, when A & B were up for consideration. There were too many variables to even go down the road of whether C was appropriate to Beth's situation.

I am no Microsoft fan. And everyone I know with an Apple laptop loves it. But that doesn't mean it will always be a 100% acceptable alternative. I'd like to see Apple to well, but you attempted to take a simple discussion of what Santa should do and explode it into another holy war session.

And for the record, Rosen's suggestion wasn't another C, it was more like A with a twist.

James

Double-E, I did wonder why you were dope-smacked for suggesting an
Apple.  Yes, it was slightly off-topic, but almost every
discussion at TR includes posts far more out of bounds than
yours.  I wish Beth had responded to it with reasons why she
considered a Mac as unacceptable.

Palmetto:
I was the one who said it was out of bounds. I just like to give EE a
hard time for going from a MSFT fanboy to an Apple fanboy virtually
overnight. So any time he brings up Apple, I have to give him grief
over it.

FYI, I edited the post to fix the typo Tony mentioned.

Also, I didn't begin preferring Macs overnight, despite what Smorty71 may have you believe. I first worked with Macintosh computers in 1985, and then again in 1996 through 1997, when the Mac was my only system. I earned an MCSE in 1999, granted, but my history with the Macintosh certainly predates my use of Windows (as it does for millions of computer users).

It seems to me that most people tend to fall into to completely
different camps - those that root for the winners and those that root
for the underdogs.  Look at the people who cheered for the
Redskins, the Cowboys and the Steelers when they were winners. It
didn't and in some respects still doesn't matter who the team is, but
"America's Team" always winds up being the one that keeps winning the
Super Bowl. To switch sports metaphors, at the other end of the
spectrum, you've got people who are die-hard Chicago Cubs fans who
would never think of backing any other team even though the Cubs
couldn't buy a World Series pennant.

It's exactly the same way with computers it seems. The Microsoft shills
go on and on about how great Microsoft is, and most of the time the
argument revolves around the 9x% market share that Microsoft has and if
it wasn't so good all those people wouldn't buy it - and anyone who
buys anything else is an idiot. The Linux/Mac (insert favorite OS here)
Zealots go on and on (usually quite rightly) about the superior
techonology of their platform and how anyone who buys anything else is
a mind-numbed lemming.

A pox on both your houses. 

Now I'm going back to my OS/2 workstation and my NetWare server...

It seems to me that most people tend to fall into to completely
different camps - those that root for the winners and those that root
for the underdogs.  Look at the people who cheered for the
Redskins, the Cowboys and the Steelers when they were winners. It
didn't and in some respects still doesn't matter who the team is, but
"America's Team" always winds up being the one that keeps winning the
Super Bowl. To switch sports metaphors, at the other end of the
spectrum, you've got people who are die-hard Chicago Cubs fans who
would never think of backing any other team even though the Cubs
couldn't buy a World Series pennant.

It's exactly the same way with computers it seems. The Microsoft shills
go on and on about how great Microsoft is, and most of the time the
argument revolves around the 9x% market share that Microsoft has and if
it wasn't so good all those people wouldn't buy it - and anyone who
buys anything else is an idiot. The Linux/Mac (insert favorite OS here)
Zealots go on and on (usually quite rightly) about the superior
techonology of their platform and how anyone who buys anything else is
a mind-numbed lemming.

A pox on both your houses. 

Now I'm going back to my OS/2 workstation and my NetWare server...

I think the problem was that you added option C to the mix, where it was clear Beth only wanted A or B.  The insertion of other brands (IMHO) is like customizing the laptop....where as you were providing a totally different option that Beth may or may not want (some people....gasp....HATE Macs) 

As for Apple being the Luxury Brand(tm), it's true.  Look at their ads (Think Different), their market positioning (more expensive hardware and software with individual nuggets of software that you can install), and their total outlook (Buy us, we aren't MS, have a pretty UI and we are easy to use).  They tend to market towards the coffee sipping yuppy crowd (yes, I'm part of the coffee sipping yuppy crowd, but I'm still too poor to afford a Lexus). 

Oh and I refuse to buy an iPod every 6 months just because they come out with one with a nominal feature set increase.  (I also refuse to buy an iPod...but that is another story)

Jmgarvin,

I disagree that the problem was due to my introducing a third option. Other readers suggest third options, including Sager and HP products, and those individuals weren't criticized or attacked in any capacity.

The issue is I suggested an Apple.

I'm happy using the Macintosh, which is a better technology (more efficient, more secure, more user friendly, etc.) for me. I'm learning some Windows users, likely beholden to the operating system due to sunken costs (time spent learning the platform, funds invested for proprietary software, etc.) and a possible fear of change, turn reproachful when a potent alternative is suggested.

jmgarvin, I can't count the number of times I've read a discussion
asking for Windows help and some smart-donkey sticks in a crack about
switching to Linux. Now that's WAY off topic, but they are rarely
slammed for it as strongly as Eric was.

Now some unsuspecting soul named William.Finlan has suggested another
vendor.  I'm not sure if I want everyone to leave him alone
(indicating they might have gained some open-mindedness) or if I want
to see him slammed (indicating everybody gets treated equally (like
$h!t)).

Being an owner of one of the first Mac 128's on my block back in 1984
(after starting with a Vic 20...  then Apple ][... then Apple ///
... while Osborne (CP/M)...  etc...)    I feel I've seen
the green grass on both sides of the fence.

Mac is a Jaquar compared to the rest.  But when you can't afford
to 'live' in your car (own a Mac) anymore, you get a Vic 20, Sinclair
or PC.  I outgrew the Vic 20 and couldn't keep up with all the Mac
upgrades financially even though I worked for an Apple dealer at the
time.

After a hiatus from computers (pre WWW)  I was given a PC running
win 95.  All I can say is God bless win 98se.  Viva la
XP...  which I (luv/hate)

Then came linux (Fedora Core to be exact).

 I'm living a dream.  Kind of like my first Vic20.

....

Now I live happily ever after...

bobby g

Thee  End...

P. S. mac is now unix based.   who would've guessed?

All this crap about how a Mac laptop is an unacceptable alternative, but a different brand than Dell or Alienware is perfectly acceptable, based on the text of the initial post by Beth, is just that: crap. If you really think that argument stands up, go back and reread her post, thinking about whether there is anything in what she said that references an operating system restriction.

The closest it comes to a restriction on OS is the reference to wanting to play the Sims, which was listed as only a possibility, and not a definite requirement for the system. I think the Sims can be played using WINE on Linux, anyway, so there's still no Windows restriction even including that, as far as I'm aware.

That being the case, it's entirely possible (though, I admit, unlikely) that she would be perfectly happy to entertain suggestions of Dells or Alienwares running Linux, or perhaps even OpenSolaris or a BSD variant.

That being the case, there's no reason not to recommend MacOS X, according to her initial post, other than the reference to Dell and Alienware and the fact that MacOS X doesn't run on Intel hardware (yet). Thus, the major technical complaint would be that Apple hardware isn't a Dell or Alienware system. Thus, the same complaint should apply to HP and Sager.

Thus, any people claiming their complaints about a Mac are based solely on the constraints Beth explicitly indicated, but not complaining about HP and Sager recommendations, are full of it, hypocritical, and/or a mind-numbed lemming (to borrow a phrase).

If you're going to give someone crap for recommending a Mac based on the "Alienware vs. Dell" title of Beth's post, you'd better damned well do the same for someone recommending an HP or Sager laptop (or a Thinkpad, which I mentioned in the same discussion), unless you just want to be viewed as a brainwashed Microsoftie.

It's really that simple.

apotheon or anybody
else.  I hope your comment(s) wasn't (weren't)  based on what
I said alone.  The spirit of my post was to inspire one to do what
feels best to them.  I've played (and worked) with them all. 
You have to 'Love the One Your With'.  There really isn't a good
or bad OS (desktop,(virus checker,(etc...))) per say.  You just
have to choose and work with the one that feels most 'at home' with you.

As Vanilla Fudge once sang.   "Some Velvet Morning"

Oh..   I forgot that I owned and did some serious work with a
Mac Portable (Lugable) for 3 years before Gore 'invented' the WWW and
Apple released their 'Blackbirds'.

:) :) :)

one final thought before i disappear,

""Bove is correct that Microsoft's practices over the years".....
      blah blah
GM...          blah blah
Ford... etc..."

will encourage someone like Toyota or KIA to come up with a killer computer to blow them all away.

just like apple did in the 70's

late...

I just love this industry.  If it wasn't for Mac, Linux, Microsoft, Sun, all saying their product is the best we wouldn't have opinions like we have here we would just have IBM and all just like it because we were told to like it.

I for one look at things straight forward, you buy the best product for your needs.  You don't buy a gas gazzling SUV when you have a fifty mile drive to work.  My son works in the graphics field should I recommend a Sun or Linux box, no I'm going to recommend the best for the work he is doing and that is MAC. 

Laptops are very different and I will agree Apple does not have the cheapest laptop in the world but neither does Dell or HP.  So what are you using the machine for, what is my budget, and what is the best for what I need to do for the money I have to spend.

Lets face it folks they are all good and they all have their faults, but none of them are perfect and that is what you all are looking for the perfect operating system and the perfect computer all for 99 dollars.

You said it right mill3502
.   If we were still stuck with IBM we all would be shelling
out 10's of thousands of dollars to own one or be waiting in line for
our turn at the mainframe at our local Kinkos.

'nuf said

to: cooney0000

Actually, what I had to say wasn't much (if at all) inspired by anything you said. Worry not about that. As far as I could tell, you didn't have anything to say to which my own post responded.

... If we were still stuck with IBM we all would be shelling
out 10's of thousands of dollars to own one or be waiting in line for
our turn at the mainframe at our local Kinkos...

This is really funny - everyone forgets that the PC was 'garage band' hardware until IBM introduced the PC and legitimized the market in the minds of public and business alike. And, they didn't even include mainframe pricing... ;-)

What's wrong with IBM?  IBM is our friend.  IBM is our father.  All...hail...Big...Blue.......

*mindless drone -- typed on IBM PC w/ TN3270 connection to IBM 390 mainframe*

Seriously though, the thing that gets me about Mac users are the ones that will go out of their way to tell me "you're supporting the man, I'll make you switch to Mac or die trying" (which we have some of in the place I work).  These Mac users almost treat it like a religion -- much like what those same Mac users accuse PC users of doing.

Personally, I don't like Macs.  They're good for graphics, which is all I would use them for.  Otherwise give me a PC any day -- but I say that for one reason and one reason only, personal preference.  I know PC systems.  I know PC hardware.  I know PC OS and apps.  I've been doing it for years and I'm comfortable with it.  I don't know a thing about Macs other than how to patch PC software into them...and I don't care to because everything I do I can do on a PC.  It's what I know, it's what I'm comfortable with.  I'd never trade it in on a Mac and have to relearn everything I know about a PC, it's not practical for me.  Parts are cheaper, software is cheaper (as I can tell), and the machine itself is cheaper with PC.  But again, personal preference.  People like Macs, and if that's what they like, use it.  No matter what it is, it will get on the internet, send email, print documents...the role of the computer doesn't change, just the manufacturer.  I'd never criticize someone for using a Mac just as I'd never want someone to criticize me for using a PC.

The problem with Mac v. PC users is that Mac has the numbers against them.  Microsoft dominates the market, so statistically every Mac user will have 100 PC users to "contend with", if you will.  Chances are, a couple will make some unwanted remark.  And why is the market like that?  Microsoft muscled their way in and took it over.  They sold their product to more people, so more people use it and more people are familiar with it.  But someone shouldn't have to learn Linux or OS X just because Bill Gates owns the world, just as Linux and OS X users shouldn't have to learn MS because they're not compatible.  Just deal with it -- people will use what they want until they have to move to something else.  Just don't be offended by it when someone criticizes you for what you use.  How many Yankees fans hate Red Sox fans, and moreover, how many Red Sox fans care?

BTW, IBM is one of the biggest Linux supporters these days.  Big Blue....Big Blue... :)

Tony Bove would have been in 7th heaven in Berkeley, 1970. He would have been to a house on Parker St. where an underground press printed anything you wrote if anarchy was the intent and the front of the house had a flashing-lighted sign "Smash the State".

An astounding number of computer owners/users outside of these forums look at me like a geek for just asking what operating system they have. Since fire did the job without a patent, tools that sufficed with generic names and what type of sex one has works for what you do it for the vast majority is blissfully ignorant of these debates.

B Schmidt: I'm happy for you that you've come to "know" PC architecture. I was a PC user for about fifteen years, first in the office by fiat and then at home because I didn't know any better. And I'm an IT professional, I wrote a mainframe operating system back in the dark ages. It's not like I'm computer-illiterate.

Yeat after all that experience, I still do not "know" how to use a PC properly. Hardly a day goes by at the office that something weird doesn't happen, requiring one of the "experts" to bail me out. The "experts" took away my leased box, replaced it with a new one, and while they were at it "upgraded" it to XP. I'm still discovering missing files, and my old box was wiped months ago. Just a couple of days ago I couldn't get into the system and it took one of the "experts" almost an hour to get me back in. He couldn't explain what went wrong, he just gave up and "forced" my password (whatevery incredibly scary thing that might mean).

The fact remains that I am a computer guy yet I still have not mastered Windows. It was written by computer nerds for computer nerds (who else would think to hit a button labeled "start" to turn an appliance off and then let it become the industry insider joke) and apparently after almost 40 years in this business I'm no longer enough of a nerd to get it.

How the heck is the average consumer supposed to make peace with this drenn? This software is a delicate laboratory prototype that requires constant fiddling by the scientists who put it together with the virtual equivalent of breadboards and alligator clips. As prices come down while populations in other countries become more prosperous, are they really going to spend several months' wages on something this infuriating? Or are they going to wait another year or two until they can get a Macintosh--a true consumer appliance--for the same percentage of their annual income?

There are six billion people on this planet who will never have the patience, training, aptitude, and geeky friends to be able to successfully use these nightmare PCs with this user-hostile, patches-upon-patches-upon-patches Windows OS. As soon as they can AFFORD computers, the market will change drastically.

It's that simple.

Ok Eric lets get some things straight. You proposed an alternative, that wasn't asked for, BEFORE anyone else did. That's why you got the grief. Not your paranoid fantasy of persecution. Secondly, the Mac IS a conundrum. Championed by anti capitalist curmudgeons, and yet the (arguably) most expensive type of computer to own. It is a cash cow. It is also nearly exclusively used by the liberal arts majors of the world. These people complain if they have to count change. The only thing most Mac users really care about is that they can show their friends that THEY TOO own a Mac. (and aren't I so trendy)  While they sit and eat their Ben and Jerry's, and drink their Starbucks coffee, while wearing their all black clothes and berets, while smoking their clove cigarettes. Welcome to the world of macs. No wonder you are so paranoid.

OK, so now I'm being criticized for having been an English major... I'll have to mull that over while I enjoy my Starbuck's this morning (decaf Christmas Blend)...

Man, I just love how incredibly sensitive, emotional and personal life gets as soon as anyone dares to mention Macs & Windows in the same article.

Why do people get so heated and passionate about this hoary old perenial?  So Macs & Windows are different and some folks like one and other folks like the other.  Same applies to people's automobile preferences.  Same thing happens between GM & Ford lovers - as soon as the name calling starts all hope of a rational conversation ceases.

Different strokes for different folks.

My preference is for the one that does what I bought it to do, straight out of the box, without me having to tinker with it too often or having to know a whole heap about how to make it work rather than knowing about what I wanted to do in the first place.  Now you go guess which one I mean.

And try to play nice in the sandpit, children.

Happy Christmas

I think that Bove?s argument and your observations are both correct.

1. Understanding Microsoft?s relationship to the rest of the industry is important.

2. There is an anti-alternative bias amongst information technology professionals.

Understanding Microsoft:

Although understanding how Microsoft relates to the industry is important, understanding the Business Sales Model of a vendor allows you to better predict and manage the vendor?s behavior and predict when a vendor will try to leverage your company.

The traditional BSM of Microsoft is to regularly force a significant number of customers in the installed base to upgrade to the latest versions of its software. Upgrade is also acquired over time through hardware addition and attrition ? as new PCs, servers, etc. are purchased for new employees. When old PCs and servers are replaced with new servers ? a door is opened for upgrade the installed base.

As important to watch with product announcements are Microsoft END OF LIFE (EOL) and END OF SUPPORT (EOS) announcements which go hand in hand with product announcements.

Their approach to EOL and EOS are living examples of how the product lifecycles of a high tech company like Microsoft are used to leverage sales by forcing moves to the newest products, regardless of the disruption or cost of licensing & upgrades this imposes on the customer.

Support is a key way which all high tech companies do this.

The concept of "FUD" ? Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is heavily leveraged.

"We will not support this anymore".

IT people and customers don?t like to hear this, yet it is being increasingly seen with, not just Microsoft, but with others in the industry. Example: HP and its printer drivers (tends to drop driver support for AIO OfficeJet printers (like the G85) often leaving the owner up the creek because their printer is no longer supported after Microsoft issues a security patch or major update to Windows XP.

This is not always malicious on the part of the vendor.  Vendors, too, have a need to minimize costs by reducing the numbers of older products that they have to support.   The point here is that a vendor will always default to a model that fits into its BSM and minimizes both its own costs and what it has to do.  These won't always coincide with what is best for the customer.

Another key to understanding Microsoft is to understand its PRODUCT STRATEGY.

Microsoft products typically emphasize integration with other Microsoft products, APIs and technologies.

They scale to the enterprise, but primarily do so because the hardware platforms that they work on are becoming more and more powerful and the distinction in blurring between PC workstations and servers and bigger iron UNIX servers and workstations. The answer is that they tend to scale in a different way as solutions. If the end objective is to have superb integration with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, you will often see that Microsoft solutions are very strong. If the goal is cross-platform and cross-OS integration, Microsoft solutions and technologies do much more poorly.

Ex: Microsoft Foundation Classes are lame when compared to CodeWarrior, XCode, etc.

They don?t want to build solutions for UNIX. Microsoft doesn?t want to build lots of extensive crossplatform solutions. They want to build products and solutions for Windows and Office that enhance sales of Microsoft products.

Some "checklist" features for integration may be there based upon creating additional marketability, but they are not the primary driver for Microsoft to have the feature in its solutions and products.

The bottom line is that you can count upon all vendors to always default to what is best for their own interests, not what is best for a customer ? and just because you seem to presently have a good relationship with a vendor, it does not always follow that you will always have a good relationship with that vendor.

Where a major problem occurs, is when a technology professional?s own preferences as to what they think is best technology, directly impacts the standards lists of the corporate IT department.

IT departments tend to like to standardize upon market leading products and vendors a little too much, in an attempt to make what appears to be a "safe choice" on technologies.

The problem in the long run is that the high tech market is a very dynamic and capricious one, when it comes to market share. What were safe choices once, are often very stupid ones now. I can think of few companies that still use VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Novell, Banyan, Wellfleet/Bay, Gupta, Hercules, COBOL, RPG II, Wordstar, MVS, VMS, etc. But at one time or another, these technologies and products were market leaders.

It is how much progress the products are making at expanding what they offer to users, as much as how much market share they have or how big the installed base is. The point is to always make sure that your own company?s best interests and needs are seriously looked at when corporate IT standards are created. Having alternatives for those standards are also important.

The Anti-Alternative Bias:

Standards are created in a corporate IT environment for control. Both the political control ? a right of approval ? that the IT leadership wants to exercise over the company, as well as control over growth and direction.

One huge problem with the creation of standards is that they are often based upon the personal biases of IT leadership, and justified primarily upon which vendors are perceived as having the lion?s share of the market.

"Boy I did that great!  I could not do it that well without (insert name of vendor and product).."

That is the start of product identity projection.

Sadly enough, it is the nature of too many information technology professionals to love the products made by the companies that they are most familiar with, or they are based upon the vendors that they perceive as having the best relationship with.  Professionals tend to have a lot of pride and, unfortunately, personal pride is often projected and extended into the products and tools that they have to use and support. Many professionals take this to such an extreme that they take it as a personal insult if anyone criticizes the product made by the vendor that they love.

We can all probably point to countless examples of professionals with this type of problem.  I know of one director I worked with years back who loved SAP so much that he positively could not get along with users and managers who happened to like PeopleSoft, Siebel, or anything else that he might have to be forced to integrate with his beloved SAP system.  His "identity crisis" made him dysfunctional with other departments, and he got into countless heated arguments with them - hurting feelings and creating damage to his own career over what?  Over SAP???

Many professionals go to an even greater extreme.  They become high tech Luddites who only want to go "so far" with technology and do not want to look at or accept anything from any vendor that exists outside of their own world.

I remember a word processing support manager I worked with in 1990 who was absolutely in love with old Wang hardware. She only liked the old Wang VS and IIS systems from the mid 1980s.  The hardware was 5 years old at the time and very difficult to maintain. Instead of attempting to learn anything new, she simply went into technical denial mode and refused to believe that anything could exist that was better. She used to bake a cake and bring it into work on Dr. An Wang?s birthday. Very strange.

We work in an industry where change is inevitable and often very quick.  Some people prefer not to embrace change because it takes them out of their comfort zone of what is most familiar to them, and it begins to make them feel inadequate, underskilled and job-threatened.

Microsoft Windows bigots of today are nothing new to the industry. We had Novell bigots, PowerBuilder bigots, Lotus bigots, IBM Mainframe bigots, IBM product bigots, DEC VAX/VMS bigots, IMS bigots, COBOL bigots, DOS bigots, in the past. Should Microsoft be eclipsed in the industry, a new bigot will appear to replace it, and take the ranks with the SAP bigots, Oracle bigots, SQL Server bigots, and other bigots that are out there as well.

As for me, in the nearly 30 years that I have been working in the IT, research and high tech industries, I have never had the luxury of being able to refuse to support a technology. I have always had to be multiplatform, and that skill has kept me gainfully employed during times when many others were unemployed.

The ease of support argument spoke in conjunction with the need for a single platform standard, is in my opinion, completely bogus, especially in a web-integration oriented enterprise world of 2005. Systems do integrate, and if you know what you are doing, it is not that hard to support anything.

Personally speaking, the departments I have led had a better relationship with users because we are careful to work with users and we have been flexible on standards and good at delivering to requirements and promises.

By Apple Computer?s own figures from the late 1990s, most Mac users are multiplatform users. I believe that the 1998 (?) figures from Apple showed that 75% to 90% of their user base are in fact multiplatform professionals who have or use both Windows and Mac systems. A huge percentage also use different flavors of UNIX and other operating systems on desktop and server platforms in their companies.

This is one of the things that Microsoft?s own marketing department really does not understand. They often talk about crushing the Mac OS and getting to 100% market share. Not likely they will ever see that happen. Mac users are largely a subset of Microsoft's own customer base.  The customers that they want to have, are, in fact, multiplatform customers like me that Microsoft already has. I use a Mac for the same reason I use SuSe and Red Hat LinUX, AIX, Windows, Solaris, etc. It gives me something that I perceive as valuable.

I don?t completely agree with other postings that claim that there is no difference between Windows and a Mac.  Although today?s world is very much an internet world which has become a great equalizer, the converse holds true that there is no reason NOT to have Macs and LinUX in your environment when the client to your business systems is a browser.  

I still find the MacOS to have significant advantages in Plug and Play, particularly when you plug in USB devices into different ports.  I find the MacOS to be far easier to support and far less support intensive than Windows with some impressive practical numbers that quantify out that I spend less supporting Mac users.  Safari is an excellent browser, and there are several other apps that I find compelling:

OmniGraffle and ConceptDraw (two Visio like apps that cost a lot less than Visio).  OmniOutliner (terrific for taking notes during meetings and briefings).  FastTrack Schedule and LeadingProject (excellent project management software).  Final Cut Pro is an outstanding package for Video and Audio editing.

Networking, Windows and Active Directory support and integration with MS Office is basically seamless. 

As a manager, I try to encourage each professional who works for me to embrace every technology that they can find. Technology market share is very capricious, and if you only stick with the technologies you like and are most comfortable with, you bring mediocrity to your career and to your environment. There is a place for every technology out there, and it is foolish and self-aggrandizing to use something that is barely "good enough" when something much better is readily available at a comparable cost.

It does not surprise me, Erik, that you were attacked for recommending Apple. I have seen other articles on this site that display a similar stench. There are a lot of single platform bigots out there who are too lazy to give any other technology a serious examination.

Some vendors have done an excellent job of playing on fear, personal relationships, and more to advance their cause. Microsoft when it spoke of a "single platform standard" in the early 1990s. IBM with FUD on integration during the 1980s. SAP even likes to emphasize against going "best of breed or best of class", and defaulting to using SAP solutions instead of deploying a time management, CRM or other solution that you have to integrate with SAP. What I have always found amazing is the number or IT professionals foolish enough to swallow that marketing. From the vendor's side, they are basically saying "buy my company's products, ignore its deficiencies, ignore your business requirements, and don't buy anyone else's products."

A lot of IT shops presently find themselves in very adversarial relationships with their users. In this scenario, a dictatorial hard line stance on platform standards when coupled with a poor performance to promise on delivering systems, and excuses about support -- no matter how poorly founded or well founded they are -- are increasing turning into a yellow brick road to IT outsourcing.

A technology bigot only makes the situation worse.

If you're going to standardize and hold the hard line, you need to support it well and deliver everything to promise. Quality of delivery and acceptability is judged by the customer, not the developer or the IT department.

Increasingly, corporate customers are looking at what they perceive as lousy performance by the IT department and questioning why they should settle for only solutions that are sanctioned by the IT department.

Some of the same vendor's own professional services arms are whispering in the ears of CEOs, COOs and CFOs and saying: "see? even your own people admit that they are having a hard time supporting even their own standard environment."

The journey down the yellow brick road to outsourcing starts here.  The simpler your environment is, the easier it is to outsource.  The more problem prone and support intensive your environment is, the more ammunition there is for outsourcing.  The more adversarial your user relationships are, the more likely you will be outsourced.

It is very hard to argue against the economics of outsourcing, when someone in India or another country can do the same job, "good enough" or better at 10% of the cost. Many users feel that if they are going to have a lousy relationship with IT, they may as well have a lousy relationship with an outsourced IT department that at least is cheaper than their existing in-house relationship.

The bigots in for the worst surprises are those who are already in "technology denial" over the security and OS patch requirements of Windows and some of the other products.

The only rule in high tech is that all technology gods and idols eventually fall.

When their gods and idols fall, they will have to scramble around and find another one. For those of us who are multiplatform, it will not be traumatic.

I began my career with Macs back in the late 90s. Myself and 3 other techs supported over 2000 of them along with 30 some Mac servers. We ran Appletalk Novell and TCP/IP on our school network. We also supported some 40 Novell Servers and 3000 PCs running Windows 95/98.

Through OS 8.6 i preferred Mac. I loved the hardware architecture (simple and elegant), as well as the simple diagnostic and repairs. Many moons ago, if your Mac didn't boot (sad Mac face), you just booted from external scsi drive, replaced they system file, unplugged scsi drive and you were done. No registry to worry about, no ini files etc...

Things changed with OS9 and the iMac.

Now, I see no big benefit of the Macs over the PC other than preference.

I could only read about half the 'discusion'... it 'sounds' like 90% you have the authority to tell your company what they are going to use...OR... you are gonna use whatever system you want...company be damned.

Then there are the other 10% of us... lost souls who are not as high up in the corp. ladder to think about changing the system 'cause 'we experts' say so.

You can rave about alternative OS all you want.  If a company hires me to work on MS systems... that's what I'm gonna work on!  Maybe someone brought this up on a later post, but frankly... I got bored reading all the ranting and whatever and maybe missed it!

Lando

You are Obviously a long time LOOSER and should Not feel sorry about how the greatest majority of folks find your long iterations about your poor-self after painting yourself in a corner because you represent everything most people dislike or find useless and valuable time wasting . 

Eric Michel Daoust , CD

EMD Pages ,  Chicoutimi ,  Canada

Gartner Analysis = Pull it out of my butt

They have NO idea about the IT field and seem to just publish to publish.  They don't understand what it takes, nor how to implement it, without the doom and gloom and the "death of IT."

Gartner is no longer respected by many of my peers and managers, so I'd imagine it is that way in many places.

To offer an additional perspective on the previous comment, if we look at
history we can begin to see how technology, and for that matter how business
evolves.  The key point is the notion of being a "versatilist".
 To illustrate, when you look the whole concept behind service-oriented
architecture (SOA), it is supposed to be driven by end users who are experts in
the business. While the standards and data formats continue to be under debate,
the point is to create new capabilities in faster, more effective ways?by business
minds with empowering capabilities of technology professionals.  Also, if
you look at the latest needs in business, there is a need for more
"business intelligence" not reporting. Also, there is a full-court
press under way to improve business processes albeit in more "bite-sized'
chunks--unlike the days of BIG-BANG reengineering projects.  This is the value proposition of a technical
expert becoming reasonable versed in these disciplines?what a powerhouse combo!

This (versatilist) is an important trend and the technologists with whom I work
on client engagements would benefit greatly from expanding their expertise.
 As many of us are aware the policy at Google requires technology
development professionals to work on "outside" pursuits beyond their
day-to-day technical jobs.  This is what is meant by versatilist and being
versatile in general.  In 1999, COBOL programmers were commanding from
$125 to $300 prior to Y2K.  The going rate for this skill is dramatically
less today?in the $15-$45 dollar range and perhaps even less if outsourced to
China.  

Technology and business are fusing together like healing
bones, and in 10 years, the distinction will be difficult to make as both will
operate as a single organism to propel the business.  Gartner is not
perfect, but if you see the larger aspects of what business leaders are asking
for and their continued disappointments with technology, becoming a versatilist
will virtually guarantee a job and a career that cannot be outsourced to any
foreign land, no matter how lost the perceived cost might be.

I come at this problem from the opposite perspective....I am an accountant and insurance expert who has become IT savvy. I am working on projects that get new technology into the hands of the users in less than 3 months because we are not wasting time trying to track down business to make decisions when they don't even understand the questions. I am in demand and very well paid. My job is interesting and no two projects are ever the same. I have profited from becomming versitile and would assume that any IT professional who would choose to learn the business would have enjoy simiar benefits. The good news is that the business stuff is much easier to learn than the IT stuff....less jargon.

I guess I am one of the "versatilists", although IMHO it is a rather inelegant neologism. I came to IT with financial skills due to my years in banking, general ledger accounting, and financial statement analysis. With 8 years in IT now I have always found business skills to be an asset, and it amuses me greatly to be ahead of the curve on this new trend, if it really is one. Back in the 70s when I was at university, my firmly held belief in the value of a liberal arts education was considered woefully behind the times. My sister earned an MMR in the business school while I earned an MA at the same university's College of Liberal Arts. Now we are both doing well in IT, but with my wider background I am confident in my ability to go wherever the cycles of the business world and turns of my career path lead me. It is very satisfying for a Phi Beta Kappa Liberal Arts grad to get the last laugh.

Yank apart one of those god forsaken "singing" christmas angels...then burn it.

take us into the lines of code or the blocks of logic [ssl] [something about info][specific about info]
a cartoon [textcartoon] "the process of code"

Microsoft bought Connectix and their Virtual PC and Virtual Server product lines a few years back.

Prior to Connectix's product, there were similar products out there for Windows compatibility, both hardware and software solutions, which were very well integrated with the Mac OS, and nearly all solutions enabled cut and paste as well as other integration with apps running under the Mac OS.

Insignia Solutions (which was bought by FWB) had a product called SoftWindows.  Again, virtually identical to Virtual PC, even down to the structure of the container files which were literally only a few bytes different.

When MS took over Virutal PC they were, in my opinion,  very heavy handed and issued a cease and desist order on FWB for the sale and further development of SoftWindows, which had been on the market since the 1980s.  Ultimately, MS won because FWB could not afford an extensive lawsuit and MS controlled whether or not they load and sell the MS Windows OS with SoftWindows - effectively killing it.

What Microsoft did  that was good was to revamp the code base of Virtual PC so it emulated more modern PC hardware, and got around the PowerPC instruction set limitations that Connectix had architected into their video emulation model.  The G5 did not support an instruction that Connectix used, and Connectix did not want to rewrite their video emulation - hence Connectix had a product that did not run on the G5.

In order to get sparkling performance out of an emulated (virtual) solution, you have to throw a lot of processor horsepower into the Mac.   This is because the layering is conceptually like this:

Layer 5  Windows Apps

Layer 4  Windows

Layer 3  Intel hardware emulated w/networking

Layer 2  Virtual PC/SoftWindows running as an app

Layer 1 Mac OS

Layer 0  Mac Hardware

WIndows effectively runs in emulation in its own world as an app on the Mac.  To quote an old Mac Evangelist I know, this isn't "spaghetti coding", it is LASAGNA coding.  Lots of layers between your app and the real hardware.

VMWare is not that much different conceptually.  It simply replaces Layers 1 and 2 with VMWare's own "OS", and the hardware is presently Intel and AMD server hardware.

With multiprocessors and fast G5s, the performance is far more acceptable in emulation these days, but you haved to remember that emulation is a moving target.  If the user is expecting the same performance in emulation as they would get natively out of the latest Intel or AMD based Winodows PC, they are not going to get it -- but you can get good enough performance in emulation  these days so the performance difference of Office apps, etc is not that much worse in emulation than a regular PC.

The performance solutions were based upon adding in hardware boards with Intel processors.  Some were created by Apple.  Some were from companies like Orange Micro, etc.   These did have very comparable performance, but they were expensive, as you have to buy an Intel processor.

There were and still are a large number of compatibility solutions out there that allow Macs to work more in line with what traditional Windows IT folks want to see on an enterprise network, and also allow more seamless file translation between the few PC-specific and Mac-specific legacy file formats that may still exist (nearly all of these issues are gone when MacOS X arrived).   Thursby Software DAVE and ADmit1, Computer Associates/Miramar Systems PC/MacLAN Connect, and more.

With MacOS X there is little or no reason or logic from the standpoint of compatibility for Macs to be excluded from a Windows network.  They have been able to peacefully coexist for a long, long, long number of years.  AppleTalk has basically been gone since the late 1990s.  Everything from a networking standpoint on the MacOS is done via TCP/IP.  Office on the Mac reads and writes files in the same format as Office for Windows.  WIindows centric folks often conveniently forget that the Mac OS is Open Source UNIX/LinUX.

The advent of XML has also been a huge enabler of application-to-application integration across platforms and OS, which has further enabled moving of info and data between Mac OS and Windows apps, and the coming of the internet and browser clients to the enterprise has made multiplatform support easier and seamless.   When your browser is the client into all your enterprise systems, and when all the server apps and off the shelf apps are XML and web enabled, it really doesn't matter what OS you are using anymore.  It is easy to give each customer what they prefer.   That's the way it really should be.

Compatibility solutions, security solutions, applications and utilities in the LinUX world find themselves very rapidly transported and incorporated to the Mac OS, now.

Some Windows-centric IT folks will quote long obsolete articles from Datamation and look for obscure reasons to exclude Macs, but there are generally well proven solutions out there for even obscure and unusual envirionments, and the solutions have been out there in many cases for over a decade.

If you deal regularly with Windows on a Mac, the places to examine are the following web sites:

1. Macwindows.com

2. Emulation.net

Although there are Mac aficionados who hate the concept of running Windows on their Mac, I have found that solutions like Virtual PC create added value to owning a Mac - both in my own personal sense, and for my users  I can literally carry around a light iBook or PowerBook, and run just about anything I darn well want to on it, regardless of the OS, and the apps, and have it all just work.

One of my most picky users carries around his PowerBook and proclaims that his Mac "runs more different types of software than any PCin the company".   To a good extent, he is right.  There are still some really good Mac applications out there that are not on Windows, and with this level of integration, they never really have to be ported to Windows.  XML and web services mean that the data moves where you want it to move, the file formats are read and information is shared between systems and apps.

It will be interesting to see what Apple does from an integration standpoint, once it is on Intel processors. 

"Macintosh users are cult-like"???   Clearly, someone's been enjoying the Kool-Aid lately. :)