Michael W. Ryan on Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:55:20 -0500 (EST)


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Re: [PLUG] Microsoft's statement about Solaris-based Hotmail (old)


On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Adam Turoff wrote:

> Michael W. Ryan wrote:
> > Second, some of us actually work in the Microsoft environment.  
> 
> [Sorry, but you stepped into this one, Mike]
> 
> Care to tell us what they're doing *well*, since you're spending so much
> time in that environment?

Windows 2000 is, from what I've seen, a good, solid product.  One of our
developers has actually used Professional as his OS of choice on his
laptop, and did real development work on it.  The only reason he's moved
back to NT4 is due to the requirements of his current project.

Microsoft has been spearheading the development of WWW protocols,
including DHTML and DOM.  These technologies are very useful in developing
web-based applications.  I will point out (and do to my students
frequently) that these aren't necessarily ideal for internet development,
but are definitely good for intranet development.

> If that isn't enough, why are both KDE and Gnome converging on a Win95
> style desktop?

As a matter of personal opinion, I think Microsoft has made a very strong
showing in the areas of user interface and usability, which is what I
think you're getting at here.

Now, on the other hand, I think Microsoft might start to slip in the small
business market.  Active Directory, while a huge boon to a larger
enterprise, it can prove daunting to a smaller business.  This, combined
with Linux's lower system requirements and purchase price, might provide
more in-roads for Linux into the small business market.  Well, at least
for the server role.  The desktop role is going to need to resolve the
question:  will I be able to read MS Office documents and create documents
that are usable in MS Office?  BTW, is there currently a solution that
hits both ends of this?

Michael W. Ryan, MCP, MCT     | OTAKON 2000
mryan@netaxs.com              | Convention of Otaku Generation
http://www.netaxs.com/~mryan/ | http://www.otakon.com/

PGP fingerprint: 7B E5 75 7F 24 EE 19 35  A5 DF C3 45 27 B5 DB DF
PGP public key available by fingering mryan@unix.netaxs.com (use -l opt)


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