| William H. Magill on 28 Feb 2004 23:32:02 -0000 |
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On 27 Feb, 2004, at 22:25, Jesse Huestis wrote: Please take the opinion of someone who has worked with the latest trend for most of my 20 years of working in IT. When IBM and DOS showed up on the sene, Apple was mostly King in the Desktop market. It was different then, because Main Frames and Minis were the current wave. The key was what could be done with these new computers. You could connect to the main frame or min from these computers. They were harder to use than the MAC's, but IBM, the ruler of the day, had blessed them. I remember businessmen and teachers going form easy of use to the integration of information. MAC was veiwed as a new toy, cool but not financially responcible. Actually, the thing which drove this more than anything else were the infamous "Consultants Reports." I forget which one it was in particular, but they basically said -- "The future is with Microsoft. Apple has no future." This was in the general time period of the early-mid 90s as I recall. Linux has to have some groups take the lead in Office productivity, and in data integration. Once I can buy a cell phone and a cable or just be able to pull information from my server via laptop cell phone, watch, car, imbeded chip, well then MS is done. MS does not see or understand the market. They just aquire what is doing well. They do not have the forsight to merge with the Linux world before it will be to late... Yeah, today, the "Consultants" have gone from the "Big 8" to the wimpy 3, and nobody trusts them anymore. However, both IBM and Novell are "Enterprise Computing" players. The "masses" are driven by Dell and to a lesser extent HP. HP pushes Linux, but only on ITS "Enterprise Customers." Small and medium sized businesses won't change until something comes along and forces them -- like another major wave of new-business creation which will force them to change or die. Not so strangely, for the reasons mentioned earlier in this thread, these "sophisticated" users are the most reluctant to change. Linux needs to offer them a true competitive edge. A working Desktop is simply the first step along that road. Now if Linux could offer them VoIP and cut their phone bills. THAT might make some of them take interest.
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