Contrary to increasingly popular belief, Microsoft is not a “dead” company, nor at immediate risk of collapse. I do, however, believe that Microsoft’s “Windows on the endpoint” monopoly days have passed, that Microsoft’s senior management are aware of this and are actively taking steps to compensate. Similarly, I believe that …

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1. 1. 1. 1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 20:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        People like to firget in what situation Apple put itself at the end of the '80s and the beginning of '90s... the old MacOS was really outdated (just look at its history, it was well behind Windows 95/NT) - only cooperative multitasking - a la Win 3.x - and not preemptive one, PowerPC processor that started to be unable to keep pace with Intel ones, despite thir RISC architecture.... and what happened after 1997, when Jobs returned to the helm? A new OS that had to get rid of all the old code, and was BSD + NeXTStep, and a switch to Intel processor.
        
        Who is living on Fantasy Island, or Fanboy Island, perhaps? Apple was not all the time the money machine it was in the past years, it had its hard times as well.
        
        2 1
        
        Tuesday 30th July 2013 21:21 GMT Robert Forsyth
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        IIRC NeXTSTEP fat binaries ran on four differing architectures: Sparc, PA-RISC, Intel 486, 68k
        
        1 0
    2. Monday 29th July 2013 19:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
      
      I believe downvoters are people *born* in 1995 and have no clue about the IT landscape back then. A browser in 1995? Most people didn't know even what "the Internet" was - and almost any PC for the home came without a NIC - and I still remember in those years when we had to open new PCs at the office to add a NIC for the LAN. TCP/IP? A lot of networks were still running on Netware's IPX connected to Netware servers - LAN Manager installations were only a few, and NT 4 was just released.
      
      Linux was only released in 1991, and it took years to be known outside its circles and becoming an alternative (and it still lacks too many professional applications to be a real alternative).
      
      Apple in 1995 was in very bad waters, Jobs was back only in 1997, it was at its lowest, struggling to deliver a new, modern OS.
      
      IBM OS/2 was doomed since MS broke the alliance, it had almost no software to run, device driver support issues, and even IBM after buying Lotus kept on delivering software first for Windows instead of its own OS - and because it couldn't run Win32 software like it did with Win16, the switch to 95/NT killed it.
      
      Dear downvoters, put yourself in the shoes of a 1995 computer user - what would you choose?
      
      2 1
      1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 00:58 GMT Robert Forsyth
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        Before Windows
        
        There was X Windows, many companies had Sun and Apollo workstations
        
        Sun allowed you to run multiple MS DOS sessions on their 386 workstation
        
        Quarterdeck Deskview/X
        
        NeXTSTEP
        
        Mark Williams Company Coherent
        
        Even VAX/VMS used Motif
        
        2 1
        
        Tuesday 30th July 2013 08:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        X Windows/Motif were already old in 1995. Sun and Apollo workstations, like NeXT one, were very expensive, much more than the average PC. How many of them you used? Apple bought NeXT when it already abandoned the hardware market because of little sales. DESQview/X (not Deskview...) was an X port of the older DESQview, and had almost no applications.
        
        0 1
        
        Tuesday 30th July 2013 10:23 GMT Trevor_Pott
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol)
        
        2 0
        
        Tuesday 30th July 2013 10:38 GMT Dr. Mouse
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        @AC:
        
        "To be fair, it's by far the best solution on the market - with a wonderfully integrated stack from top to bottom - and a massively lower TCO than any other solution that provides similar functionality..."
        
        and your next 2 posts.
        
        You have presented an opinion as fact. Personally, I don't consider O365 the best solution on the market. I find it a jarring experience, difficult to administer, and unreliable. Unfortunately the CEO is completely sold on it and won't hear a bad word...
        
        I have to say you come across as an MS salesman, especially as you hide as an AC. You may not be. Maybe you just really like MS products, which is a perfectly valid point of view, though not one I share.
        
        When it comes to office suites, the only thing I see in favour of MS is that people already know it. That does not make it a better product, it just means that it will take some time to learn a different one.
        
        Given the amount of time it takes to learn where the hell MS have put everything in a new version of MS Office, I would say it makes no difference.
        
        4 1
        
        Tuesday 30th July 2013 22:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
        
        "Personally, I don't consider O365 the best solution on the market. "
        
        So what's better? It beats Google hands down.
        
        "I find it a jarring experience, "
        
        Cant say I do. it's completely transparent. You hardly know your data is in the cloud.
        
        "difficult to administer,"
        
        it uses the exact same tools as on site Exchange. So you are either lying or incompetent....
        
        "and unreliable. "
        
        Are you using wet string for your internet?
        
        1 4
  2. Tuesday 30th July 2013 01:34 GMT david 12
    
    Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
    
    >they’ll wonder how MS (with Windows 95 ...) managed to hang onto PC hegemony
    
    Perhaps they will look at the contemporary reviews and user experience, and realize again that the UI was not just "best of class", but identifiably superior to everything else on offer.
    
    Of course, you've marked yourself as unreliable by using the label "Windows 95 on DOS", which tells us that you deal in slogans, but are so stuck in the past that you can't even get a job in management.
    
    1 3
    1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 12:50 GMT Stephen Channell
      
      Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
      
      “marked yourself as unreliable”.. ouch, Ok Win95 use of DOS was little more than PSP, but full-screen DOS mode still suspended other processes.. prompting Marc Andreessen (& others) to described Win95 as a glorified program loader. Free IE killed Netscape Navigator and its CORBA migration to NC.
      
      0 0
2. Monday 29th July 2013 11:05 GMT PerlyKing
  
  Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
  
  "Mind the oranges, Marlon!" Thank you, that brings back good memories :-)
  
  1 0
3. Monday 29th July 2013 12:41 GMT K Cartlidge
  
  Re: People get the OS they deserve
  
  My main machine is a MacBook Air. Much as I prefer the hardware to my Lenovo, I can categorically state that *for me* Windows 8 is far superior to OS X. I still use OS X in preference, but only because of the hardware it runs on.
  
  2 4
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 01:36 GMT david 12
    
    Re: People get the OS they deserve
    
    Yes, I know, you get voted down for documenting personal experience. I don't understand it either.
    
    2 1
4. Tuesday 30th July 2013 03:44 GMT ben_myers
  
  Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
  
  Buyers (or licensees) of Microsoft products and services could do some sort of cost-benefit analysis comparing the way of the Microsoft borg with alternatives. You never know.
  
  1 1
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 22:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
    
    Google is The Borg. Consuming all knowledge about you....
    
    2 3
5. Tuesday 30th July 2013 06:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
  
  "They're buying "all your files belong to us" Office 365 and "all your phone calls belong to us" Lync systems which will mire any future attempt to move away to someone else in man-centuries of pain."
  
  To be fair, it's by far the best solution on the market - with a wonderfully integrated stack from top to bottom - and a massively lower TCO than any other solution that provides similar functionality...
  
  1 6
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 09:40 GMT Trevor_Pott
    
    Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
    
    It's the best solution on the market only if all you care about is the technology. The instant that other things - trustworthiness of the vendor, the government the vendor must submit to, complying with your own laws, TCO, lock-in, business continuity and so forth - matter to you then Microsoft becomes a terrible plan.
    
    Microsoft may well have the best technology on the market. What Microsoft and the Redmondian buttsnorkle brigade simple cannot grok is that "the best technology on the market" simply isn't good enough. There are larger concerns and the competition is "good enough."
    
    Which was rather the point of the article.
    
    3 1
6. Tuesday 30th July 2013 09:13 GMT Jess
  
  Re: There simply is no alternative to Windows for normal day-to-day office work.
  
  But sadly for Microsoft that comment could be reworded "There simply is no compelling alternative to Windows XP for normal day-to-day office work."
  
  Windows 7 is an alternative, but it is a pain to move to in some environments (it doesn't just slot in as a replacement in many environments), but it's only significant advantage is it's not so close to end of support.
  
  Windows 8 is not an alternative. (Macs are a better alternative in a lot of situations, than Windows 8)
  
  There are likely to be a significant number of situations where it is easier to start again with an alternative system (more likely Mac than linux). Especially when those still on XP know they will have exactly the same issues a few years down the line, if they choose 7.
  
  I'm pretty sure Microsoft would be in a better situation in the business world had they stuck to XP and improved it incrementally, perhaps they could have used the model citrix use(d?) with feature releases, some new features only come with a new purchase, and could be bought as an upgrade.
  
  4 2
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 13:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: There simply is no alternative to Windows for normal day-to-day office work.
    
    Macs? Just the hardware alone is more expensive than the average office PC, and you get bound to a single supplier. They don't fit so well like Windows machine into an Active Directory domain, which means more administrative efforts in a large deployments. Moreover for every user who needs software which is not available nor on Mac nor on Linux you need some kind of Windows license to run it locally in a VM or remotely.
    
    And Linux releases gets desupported too - and you may not recompile some software as easily as you wish on newer releases, especially if no one mantains it any longer. And that's true for OSX as well. From many point of views, Windows retrocompatibility is one of MS strong points. Sure, there are applications that run on one Windows version only - but that's usually because they were coded as if they were Windows 3.1 ones - not because of API support.
    
    3 3
7. Wednesday 31st July 2013 18:08 GMT Vic
  
  Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.
  
  > something, something, oranges, something
  
  An upvote just for that reference :-)
  
  Vic.
  
  0 0
Monday 29th July 2013 10:10 GMT Anonymous Blowhard

"A decade from now even the embedded systems powering "the internet of things" will be utterly dependant on the SaaS cloud"

The day my ABS is reliant on the cloud is the day I go back to the horse and cart!

8 0
Monday 29th July 2013 10:41 GMT Anonymous Coward

Android is no threat

The key target enterprise platforms for mobile/tablet are iPhone, iPad and Win 8. That's it. For infrastructure, you go Windows (or Azure/Hyper-V), ActiceDirectory etc. These provide the tools and features needed by the enterprise). The "killer app" is MS Office and all the customised plug-ins/applications that people use. That is, for many, the enterprise. No alternative offering can give 100% fidelity, so no alternative can compete (and the alternatives can even sort out their own specs, leading to ambiguity and feature incompatibility which raise TCO).

Until Google gets serious and gives Android some enterprise chops (and someone creates desirable hardware/branding) we won't see it in real use. In fact, it's probably already too late for Android in the enterprise. Chrome OS is an interesting toy, but again it has no chops where it counts and it has no desirability..

It's different in the consumer market where you can't really compete with free. But then it's not really free, is it?

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1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 07:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Android is no threat
  
  " In fact, it's probably already too late for Android in the enterprise"
  
  Yep - far too insecure. For Android to succeed in the enterprise they would need to build on something more secure than Linux imo. It's too much of a Swiss Cheese liability.
  
  2 4
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 07:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Android is no threat
    
    " build on something more secure than Linux imo"
    
    imo - not humble opinion I notice - well Vogons were never humble !
    
    4 1
  2. Tuesday 30th July 2013 09:58 GMT Trevor_Pott
    
    Re: Android is no threat
    
    "need to build on something more secure than Linux imo. It's too much of a Swiss Cheese liability."
    
    You're so full of shit your eyes are brown.
    
    4 0
  3. Tuesday 30th July 2013 10:43 GMT Dr. Mouse
    
    Re: Android is no threat
    
    "For Android to succeed in the enterprise they would need to build on something more secure than Linux imo. It's too much of a Swiss Cheese liability."
    
    Well, I have to say that it is not the most secure OS in the world (although it's one of the better ones), but I would love to hear what you would say was better. Lets see what are the options?
    
    Solaris/Some other proprietary Unix? It would be very difficult to port to ARM processors, given the closed nature.
    
    FreeBSD? Yes, that's an option. Good solid product with good security features.
    
    Windo.... Sorry, I just can't bring myself to finish that. The least secure modern OS in existence.
    
    4 1
    1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 23:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: Android is no threat
      
      "Windo.... Sorry, I just can't bring myself to finish that. The least secure modern OS in existence."
      
      Windows is a lot more secure than Linux these days - it has far fewer vulnerabilities that are on average fixed faster - And security is built in from the ground up - not as an afterthought like Linux SEL and NFS 4.1. Plus Windows supports least privilege / access delegation that Linux simply doesn't...
      
      1 5
      1. Wednesday 31st July 2013 11:44 GMT Dr. Mouse
        
        Re: Android is no threat
        
        "Windows is a lot more secure than Linux these days... And security is built in from the ground up"
        
        Where to begin?
        
        Only my opinion, but if you take a default Windows installation compared to a default Linux installation, I cannot see Windows (any version) being more secure (in any sense of the word). The same is true for well set-up instances of each. The only way I can see Windows being more secure than Linux is comparing a well set up, corporate Windows system with a default, run-of-the-mill consumer Linux system.
        
        And don't get me started on "from the ground up". Security has always been an afterthought on MS systems. It has been central to the design philosophy of Linus (and Unix in general) since day one.
        
        2 1
Monday 29th July 2013 10:54 GMT Ossi

"Microsoft has largely run out of things to add to their productivity apps"

This is simply not true. The problem is that they only bother with changes that are in Microsoft's interests. There are lots of functions that haven't changed in generations. An example is mail merge, where I would love to have the ability to merge to separate automatically named documents, or create emails with body *and* attachment text.* They could also fix things that have been dodgy for generations, like the way that numbering occasionally seems to have a mind of its own.

*I never bothered with 2013, but I don't think these things have changed.

6 1
Monday 29th July 2013 10:56 GMT John Styles

Hmm

I know I am an old fart, but to me lumping in 'real' PCs (server / desktop / laptop) with tablets and mobiles for 'endpoint' volumes makes as much sense to me as lumping in 'real' PCs with cans of baked beans and then saying that by shipped volumes (i.e. number of PCs vs number of cans of PCs) Microsoft should be worried that Heinz has a massively larger market share.

28 4
1. Monday 29th July 2013 12:01 GMT Flocke Kroes
  
  As an old fogey myself ...
  
  Dosbox on a Raspberry Pi would thrash my first PC. With that in mind, lumping modern phones in with desktops makes sense.
  
  4 0
2. Monday 29th July 2013 13:54 GMT BenN
  
  Re: Hmm
  
  Except that the number of baked bean tins sold by Heinz has no impact on the number of 'real' PCs sold.
  
  On the other hand, many consumers who would otherwise have bought a 'real' PC found that they could make do with just a tablet or smartphone, or at least that they could significantly slow their 'real' PC upgrade cycle.
  
  And what counts as a tablet anyway? Is a laptop with a touchscreen not a 'real' PC? Where did the old Compaq TC1100 Windows XP tablet fit in - 'real' PC or tablet?
  
  1 0
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 09:17 GMT Otto is a bear.
    
    Re: Hmm
    
    Agree, with you both, the thing with endpoint devices is that you need to select the correct device for the job you want to do and when you want to do. If you do any substantial amount of authoring or data entry, an iPad is no good, a Laptop/PC, a desk and a big screen is what you want. If you go to a meeting an Note is brilliant, you can handwrite notes, lookup the web and so on, though a PC is still required for presentations.
    
    The thing is, a dedicated device is always better at a task than a multipurpose device, a Nokia 6210 is a better phone than an iPhone, but an iPhone is more convenient, a big TV is better than a PC. A cased Windows PC is still, I think the best all round device you can buy, ok, it's not mobile, but. I think MS need to move it towards being a better, secure home server.
    
    The other thing to consider is health & safety, in how we use our devices, wandering into the road texting, hunched over a laptop on the knee (Yup, me now), laptop shoulder, and so on.
    
    We all have our favourite device and I'll bet it depends more on our lifestyle than anything else. The PC will be around for a long time to come, but perhaps not for everybody, remember if you want privacy, you don't store stuff in the cloud. For another OS to supplant Windows, you need to have a seamless upgrade between the two, not really the case.
    
    0 1
Monday 29th July 2013 11:07 GMT Miek

"Microsoft haters" -- Or just critics? There's nothing wrong with being critical about a company, particularly when they are at fault. Labelling everyone that has something non-complimentary to say about them or their wares as a 'hater' is a weasel's way of trying to dismiss those people's views. For example, "don't listen to them, they are just tin-foil hat nutters ..."

15 2
1. Monday 29th July 2013 11:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  I find some of the people who are most likely to accuse us of having metallic foil lining our headwear are those who mainly have used OSes from one vendor.
  
  Me… I started with DOS, then Windows 3.1. A few years later I got to see Windows NT 3.1 Workstation, then 3.5 and 3.51, finally NT 4.0. I got introduced to Windows 95 about the same time I saw Linux for the first time. Red Hat 4.0 to be precise.
  
  Since then it's been a whirlwind of OSes… OS/2 Warp, SCO OpenServer, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, IRIX, Solaris, Minix… Linux has been one I keep going back to.
  
  So for me, I've seen where both Windows NT and Linux started from and can appreciate how they've both developed. Some things change, others remain the same. I no longer have to remember what RAMDAC chip my video card uses or take educated guesses at modelines. I no longer have to go hunting for third party software for system essentials like a network firewall or file system maintenance tools.
  
  Both OSes have matured greatly. I put myself firmly on the Linux side of the fence however, as that side of the fence seems to be in good company. A lot of software that runs on Linux, can also be ported to MacOS X. The same software can be a royal pain to port to Windows, an OS that's never understood the meaning of fork(), and whose cheerleaders are all too keen to try and point out the superiority of PowerShell over the Bourne shell, whilst completely forgetting why the Bourne shell gets used in the first place.
  
  As for Microsoft… without a doubt the sun is setting on Windows and Office. Certainly in consumer space, it looks to be moving towards tablets which are prodominantly iOS or Android. In business… there's a lot of legacy out there, it'll take a while for the flood to drain out to sea. Windows Servers? If BYOD is our future, then our future is going to have a lot of non-Windows workstations, something Windows Servers have never traditionally been good at managing.
  
  I think relying on a single vendor has always been incredibly risky. We saw this with IBM, and Novell, Apple seem to have reached their peak now. Your turn, Microsoft. I shall sit back and wait, I shall not however, hold my breath.
  
  17 3
  1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 07:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    "without a doubt the sun is setting on Windows and Office."
    
    The sun doesn't seem to agree with you - Office and Windows revenues are still pretty stable, and Office 365 is growing rapidly...
    
    "Certainly in consumer space, it looks to be moving towards tablets which are prodominantly iOS or Android"
    
    Until the entry of Microsoft late last year - they took over 7.5% total tablet market share in only 6 months...
    
    1 4
    1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 09:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      "without a doubt the sun is setting on Windows and Office."
      
      The sun doesn't seem to agree with you - Office and Windows revenues are still pretty stable, and Office 365 is growing rapidly...
      
      Well, Office 365 didn't exist 12 months ago, so hard to argue that it can go any direction but up. The fact that global computer sales seem to be down, and this co-incides not with the great financial crisis, but with the release of Windows 8?
      
      Windows sales are stable only because of Windows 7. This is going to start dropping as more companies play hard-ball supplying Windows 7 OEM licenses for equipment, and that is already happening with some vendors. Office will naturally follow the curve as it is trapped inside the sinking gaol that is Windows, unable to escape as it does not run on any other platform.
      
      I already know of companies that are reconsidering the need for Microsoft Office … the mob I work for mostly use LibreOffice as the standard SOE, with Microsoft Office only used for very specific use cases.
      
      "Certainly in consumer space, it looks to be moving towards tablets which are prodominantly iOS or Android"
      
      Until the entry of Microsoft late last year - they took over 7.5% total tablet market share in only 6 months...
      
      7.5% still leaves 96.5% between iOS, Android and minority players. Sure, early days … but they're so late to the party it's not funny. The boat has well and truly left port, and they'll have to do a lot of paddling in the water if they expect to catch up. There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that the plan was not well conceived either with plenty complaining about Windows' schitsophrenic nature. Not the polished product one would expect for a device in the upper price bracket.
      
      Sounds very much like a case of if you leave me, can I come too?! Chasing a market because "that's what the cool kids are doing" is not a good way to enter a market. Google entered not having an OS in the consumer world, so they had little to lose.
      
      Microsoft have gone all-in however, and bet the house on it. Not wise, they might've been better off sticking it out with Windows Phone a little longer, maybe building on the API there to make it applicable to tablets (much like Android has done) with a compatible API… then started to transition the desktop world to it. Not dragging their users kicking and screaming onto the Partridge Family bus off to the land of tiles.
      
      3 0
      1. Tuesday 30th July 2013 23:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        "with Microsoft Office only used for very specific use cases."
        
        We have that model too. The use case is 'I need Office and I need it to work'
        
        "7.5% still leaves 96.5% between iOS, Android and minority players"
        
        Erm, no it doesn't...
        
        0 3
        
        This post has been deleted by its author
        
        Wednesday 31st July 2013 11:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        (Re-post, since I buggered up spelling on the last one…)
        
        "with Microsoft Office only used for very specific use cases."
        
        We have that model too. The use case is 'I need Office and I need it to work'
        
        Ahh, then you've already been lacking in open-mind enough to reject anything that isn't "Office" … i.e. LibreOffice et all. LibreOffice works just fine where I work where it's the SOE.
        
        In fact, the last person who had trouble, was using Excel to view an OpenDocument Spreadsheet … I blame Microsoft since they had all the specifications layed out for them. In that case, Microsoft Office didn't work.
        
        "7.5% still leaves 96.5% between iOS, Android and minority players"
        
        Erm, no it doesn't...
        
        True, bug in my arithmetic … my brain decided to go into early Pentium FPU mode. 92.5% it is. Not 96.5% … still 7.5% is hardly significant, especially in light of what Microsoft did to get there. Trevor makes a valid point here.
        
        2 0
    2. Tuesday 30th July 2013 10:04 GMT Trevor_Pott
      
      Microsoft took 7.5% of tablet market share then stalled and even declined. Their tablets languish on shelves and they have give away a significant number of those tablets to even get there. Very few of the tablets were sold for what Microsoft feels they are worth and the OEMs that are manufacturing them are bleeding their cash reserves as well as market share.
      
      Oh, yeah, Microsoft's tablets are doing great.
      
      4 0
    3. Tuesday 30th July 2013 11:48 GMT hplasm
      
      re: Microsoft late last year - they took over 7.5% total tablet market share in only 6 months...
      
      Headache tablets, mainly.
      
      1 0
2. Monday 29th July 2013 15:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  There is nothing wrong with being critical about a company, however you must have noticed a pattern in comments here:
  
  Critical about MS, upvote. Critical of Linux distro, downvote. Complements to MS go with accusations of being a shill, complements to Linux go with general approval.
  
  It doesn't matter if the criticism is valid or not, it's always the same. It's very, very boring.
  
  3 10
  1. Monday 29th July 2013 15:43 GMT Trevor_Pott
    
    I think you're full of crap. There are plenty of people who talk up Microsoft's legitimate achievements and get upvoted. Plenty more who bring up legitimate issues with Linux or open source and get upvoted. The issue here is "legitimate."
    
    Microsoft make good tech. They also suck out loud at basically everything else about bringing that tech to the masses. They exist today only because of their ability to milk the monopolies of yore; they have a built in customer base that they can keep failing to execute properly on for some time yet.
    
    Contrast this with Linux. Open source developers - mostly - highly responsive to community demands. So much so that nothing ever seems to actually move forwards some times. In the instances where some major open source project stops listening to people the entire community loses its shit and a dumps that project nearly instantaneously.
    
    The tepid reception to Ubuntu's Unity gave rise to massive community backing for Mint virtually overnight. The Gnome team's awful handling of Gnome 3 lead to at least 3 major forks and unprecedented hostility. KDE 4 still has a bad reputation, in no small part because of the "up yours" attitude of the devs towards the community.
    
    I completely disagree with your thesis that there is an anti-Microsoft bias here on The Register....at least insomuch as it is stronger here than it is amongst the general population. I think The Register is representative of "people in general" in that there is a "don't treat us like shit; actually listen to what we have to say and factor it into your development plans" bias at work.
    
    Most commenters on The Register will cheerfully upvote an insightful comment discussing the technical merits of something Microsoft built. Those same people will get all uppity if you try to praise Microsoft as a whole because - shock and surprise - people tend to give fucks about more than bits and bytes. We care about how you treat us...and Microsoft treats us all like shit.
    
    24 2
    1. Monday 29th July 2013 16:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      @Trevor, I'm not sure if you're looking at the same forums as me, but the recent article about Hyper-v and MS supporting linux would be a classic case in point. People were being downvoted for stating basic facts about Hyper-v and correcting mistakes of others. Where as ridiculous unsupportable comments about Linux were being made and upvoted.
      
      I consider myself to be fairly OS agnostic, I work day to day with Linux, UNIX and Windows systems, from a storage/backup point of view, but with comments here, I find myself thinking that I'm pro-MS, merely because I spend so much time trying to balance/correct comments of others.
      
      I will point out, for the sake of clarity, that I don't believe for a minute that The Register itself has any bias, pro or anti MS, just that there are a number of commentors who can get carried away.
      
      I also don't think that the FOSS community as a whole has really anything that much to do with the comments made on The Register and their reaction to or against developments made by the distros don't really come into it.
      
      BTW: Accusing someone of being full of crap because you disagree with them is hardly a great way to start a discussion about something.
      
      6 4
      1. Monday 29th July 2013 16:51 GMT Trevor_Pott
        
        There certainly are a handful of hardcore anti-MS types out there, but there are just as many hardcore anti-FOSS types in these forums. I'd say that one balances the other. You get downvotes for anything that even seems pro-Microsoft, but you also get upvotes. Choosing to focus on a handful of downvotes and wave that around as "proof" that the forums are "biased" is crap.
        
        Some people in the forums are biased. No question. But I simply do not believe that the overall posture of the forums is anti-Microsoft. If anything I think there are more pro-Microsoft commenters that come out with every article to defend his majesty's Redmonian honour than there are those who seek to tear MS down simply out of spite.
        
        Where each party to the debate gets all muddled is that they have a deep seeded psychological need to claim that moderates, cynics and agnostics are part of "the enemy" and thus anti-whatever-it-is-they-are-pro and vice the versa. It's perception, not reality.
        
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        Monday 29th July 2013 22:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Some people in the forums are biased?
        
        I don't have an agenda, what does get in my craw is where MS ™ takes something generic, file formats® or communication protocols®, adds some feetures® to it, renames it and then claims to have innovated something totally original. Just sticking MS-- ™ in front of something doesn't mean squat.
        
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        Tuesday 30th July 2013 02:16 GMT Trevor_Pott
        
        Re: Some people in the forums are biased?
        
        Dear gods, yes. How DARE Microsoft call *anything* OCS/LCS does "SIP"? It's cross-compatible with zip!
        
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    2. Monday 29th July 2013 16:32 GMT Neil B
      
      @Trevor_Pott "I completely disagree with your thesis that there is an anti-Microsoft bias here on The Register....at least insomuch as it is stronger here than it is amongst the general population."
      
      This is just a mad comment. Based on volume of posts and propensity to down-vote, the reg community is enthusiastically anti-MS and uses every opportunity to say so. Contradict someone's loony ravings on MS software and at best you can expect to have a net effect on your voting record of zero.
      
      I would however agree that stupid comments about free software are usually down-voted appropriately.
      
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      1. Monday 29th July 2013 17:01 GMT Trevor_Pott
        
        @NielB
        
        Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. Based on the volume of posts I would say that the majority of El Reg's forums are neither pro nor anti-MS and are, in point of fact, quite agnostic to the whole debate. Most forum posters - and voters - seem to be entirely willing to acknowledge the good and condem the bad of Microsoft AND open source. This is The Register; cynicism is the name of the game, and that means equal opportunity piss-taking.
        
        The issue is that you conflate those in the middle with being "against Microsoft" simply because they'll upvote a good rant that aligns with their experience. You miss entirely the part where they will downvote an anti-MS rant that doesn't match their experience. The handful of true anti-MS zealots here is roughly the same as the handful of true butt-snorkling Redmond-flag-waving types. They more or less cancel eachother out.
        
        Maybe what you're missing is the fact that general attitudes amongst people have shifted against Microsoft. It has nothing to do with The Register specifically, but is an overall attitude amongst all the various customer bases. That happens when you spend years pissing in the entire planet's cheerios.
        
        Again, however, I find El Reg to be more restrained than most; they'll still upvote a good technological discussion even when they'll also upvote a good moralistic "fuck the man" rant. Maybe that should tell the Redmondian types something. Perhaps it should even tell them the sort of thing I wrote about in my article: that you can have the best technology int eh world...but it doesn't mean a damned thing if your execution is so poor that you destroy community engagement.
        
        But who am I kidding; the type of people who are actually capable of seeing Microsoft as the poor beleaguered victim of the tech world are not the kind of people who will ever be psychologically capable of understanding concepts like "community engagement" or "listening to customers." It's antithetical to the mindset.
        
        Oh, and before you set about accusing me of being "anti-Microsoft", you should stop and think for a bit. I'm rather demonstrably not. I am anti-how-Microsoft-treats-it's-user-communities-and-customers, but I am rather a fan of their tech and many of the people who work there.
        
        Looks like people - just as with companies and most other things in life - just ain't so black and white as we'd like 'em to be, eh?
        
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