[frenger]

> Wait, Microsoft makes chairs? No, not directly. But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software. Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software, sold by companies running Microsoft software.

The whole premise of this paragraph is wrong. Yes, most big businesses run Microsoft Windows, but most people hate and struggle with it. They run it not because it's the best, because it's not. They run it because monopolistic business practises forced out the competition. If he's trying to argue that Microsoft are misunderstood, that they do deserve respect after all, then maybe respect the hard-nosed business practises which have forced Microsoft products into every nook and cranny despite consistently having a shittier product than the competition.

[chris_wot]

So in other words, they make chairs, despite being forced to use awful, expensive software? I, too, thought this.

Actually, this puts a whole new perspective on the "Microsoft tax". Everything we do in life has been "taxed" by Microsoft. The argument is specious: you could be sitting on a chair that was sold for less money. You might be working in a more spacious building if better software was in use. You'd probably be paid more money if the costs for IT weren't so high.

Note I don't actually believe any of those things, but they could be valid counter arguments, depending on your own perspective.

The reasoning used in the article is pretty badly flawed. If Microsoft employees are disheartened by the general public's view of their company, that's probably something their management should fix.

[lloeki]

> You'd probably be paid more money if the costs for IT weren't so high. Note I don't actually believe any of those things...

I do, from first hand experience: we're developing insurance pro software, and also have an all in one hosted solution, where we handle everything for the customer (from storage to configuration to backup), we set up an IPsec link and they just connect via TS. The product, which has a codebase that organically evolved during 10 years (resulting in DWTF worthy stuff), solves a number of real problems for our customers and in spite of the warts and bugs, they do like the product. It's hosted on Windows machines, including Office and whatnot. The growing MS license costs are currently driving the hosting solution out of business. We know first hand that alternative solutions (like a hypothetic port to Linux) would have cleared enough money to hire two developers, and get rid of a dedicated MS sysadmin (so that makes three full-time engineer jobs). And we're not even talking about moving to a web-based solution, which would cost a fraction of that again (and we know that because we're developing and hosting web stuff too).

[tracker1]

I think if it were a web based solution your argument wouldn't be as sound.. MS server licensing isn't really so bad if you aren't also doing larger deployments of SQL and/or Exchange.

As it is, have you checked into porting your software to Mono (assuming it's .Net based), which may or may not work for what you have... if it's COM or ATL based, you're really SOL. That said, if you're mostly winforms, and don't have too many dependencies on third party gui controls, you have a shot there.

That would really lower your costs... and as you mention, a web based solution could make a lot more sense, if you can support that model, depending on your software.

[tjdetwiler]

This is exactly what I was thinking while reading that paragraph.