And then again, most people forget Total Cost of Ownership.
The TCO for Windoze is the highest for any commercial computer platform.
Even mainframe environments tend to have lower TCOs these days than a
Windoze LAN. And it was for the monopolist pricing of mainframes that
Wintel was brought into the IT world in the first place.
Before then Wintel was just another home gaming appliance. That's what
it has been designed for. The IBM PC was designed to get some of the
cake on which the Commodore VIC20 and 64 and the likes were having a
feeding frenzy in the home gaming market.
Since then, not much has changed. The Wintel architecture still isn't
fit for business and as a result the cost of IT has gone up further and
further.
It is simply not true that Windoze software is cheaper. We pay for it
through support and lost time. Studies of renowned institutions such as
the Gartner Group have shown this over and over again.
How often do you think a company in the 50s or 60s would have tolerated
a typewriter breaking down and requiring an engineer or a total
reassembly in order to get fixed ?
You are invited to make your own guess, but you better think in terms of
"one incident per n years" to get close.
In other words, it perfectly makes sense to pay more for a system with a
stable OS (i.e. a Unix based OS) than for one with a legacy OS and there
are more and more users out there who think like that.
I personally feel that it is absolutely inacceptable for a computer to
crash, even for private use. I do not accept my washing machine to
crash, I do not accept my coffee machine to crash, I do not accept my
fridge to crash, I do not accept my TV set or stereo to crash, at least
not before they have reached the end of their life, which I expect to be
in the order of a few years at least.
So why should I be accepting my computer to crash ?
Whatever you may say in favour of crashing computers and how difficult
it is for the techies to write stable software. I don't care !!! I do
not accept a product I shelled out a significant amout of money for -
usually more than other home appliances - to crash. It is as simple as
that and software hackers better get used to it if they want to be
called engineers, because that's what distinguishes the engineers from
the wannabees in other industries.
And when it comes to business those requirements towards quality versus
quantity should even be more stringent. Why should my company have to
pay that part of my salary that is wasted on computer glitches ? That
money is better invested in vendors who might charge more but deliver
quality products and my time is better invested in what I am getting
paid to do, which for most people means something other than dealing
with computer glitches.
The Newton is quite a good example of how hardware and software can be
properly designed to deliver a very high level of quality even though it
is a consumer device/personal device as opposed to a corporate or
government mainframe.
It is about time computer people stop making excuses for themselves and
grow up.
regards
bk
On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 02:54 , Vernon LeMoignan wrote:
>
>>> Or it could be that that they thought a lot about their decision and
>> explored all the options...but when they saw that there is 10 times
>> more
>> software for WinTel than Apple and at 50% of the cost they made a
>> decision
>> to expand their choices and reduce their cost.
>>
>>
>>
>>
> I don't (generally) pay anymore for my Mac software than my (at work) PC
> Software.
>
> As far as the volume goes, there are more games available, but beyond
> that I rarely have a problem finding the software I need.
>
> PC advocates have used these two statements to justify their dismisal
> of the Mac platform or to discourage new users from buying a mac, but in
> my experience they just don't hold water. The Vast majority of users
> simply don't need 6 or 7 word processors or spread sheet applications.
>
> There will always be specific areas were one platform or the other is
> better, but broad generalizations are just not accurate. I often pay
> less for my software than my PC friends, and 10 times? come on! The
> problem I generally find is that Sofware retailers don't stock the Mac
> versions. I'm amazed at how much more software is available at Mac only
> retailers.
>
>
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