"In a session at the Gartner Emerging Trends conference today, analysts Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver identified many reasons that Windows (and thus Microsoft) are in trouble. Microsoft's operating system development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many applications and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office... Well, it's just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft."
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Member since:2006-01-17
With OSS you get improved version of a software for free. With MS you have to pay, for _any_ improvement expect obvious bug-fixes and security improvements. So MS products never get properly polished, instead you get a new version each two years, which again has it's own set of deficiencies (as any version X.0.0 software). Maybe they should learn from Apple.
Also MS tends to change apps, like their UI, just for sake of changing it, so that it would have a new and shiny product look. OK, service packs are exception, but that happens too rarely, and often brings just a load of quite conservative bugfixes.
Big problem for MS is that this isn't the era of rapid informatisation anymore. Selling now means mostly replacing old version with a new, and, in many cases, retraining of staff. No wonder why businesses tend to stay with old versions as long as possible.
With OSS it's different. Community-based approach doesn't allow cutting out a good working part, until no one complains (after a long bitrotting). So software gets upgrades more carefully, incrementally, caring for example about users with old distributions.
Member since:2007-08-29
Member since:
2006-07-25
I agree ive had lots of blurb from Microsoft regarding selling Vista against XP, Exchange 2007 against 2000/03 and event 4.5. As you have stated really the main competition comes from Microsoft itself, why bother upgrading when all of the features of Office were pretty much met in Office 97, let alone, 2000/XP/03/07.