Asa Dotzler: 'PC OEMs are wedded to Microsoft'
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| henke54 Aug 09, 2012 12:40 PM EDT |
Asa Dotzler wrote:Acer, here's my question to you all. What are you gonna do? You've got no card to play here? Are you gonna start shipping Android or Linux on your laptops? I doubt it. If you had positive results from your research on those alternatives, you'd have long ago quit paying the Microsoft Windows tax and moved to them.http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2012/08/windows-... |
| Fettoosh Aug 09, 2012 3:30 PM EDT |
The WinTel-OEMs cartel has been kept in tact by MS for too long. FOSS/Linux has shaken this cartel but not enough to break it apart. The latest trend of increased demand for mobile and hand held devices has really rocked the market and caught MS by surprise. MS finally recognized the danger from Apple and Google Android devices. MS finally recognized that it is too late to play a dominant role in this market by depending on OEMs only and has to take more effective measures. Apple has been reaping profits from this trend and consequently, MS is following its foot steps hoping to capitalize on whatever monopoly MS still has in the current PC market. With this move, MS is pretty much telling OEMs that it is time for each to look after "himself", because the cartel is no longer as effective as it used to be and best for OEMS is to file for divorce and not to expect any alimony. The way I see it, some OEMs will fold and exit the PC market (I still think HP will do that) and others will start offering users multiple OS options. |
| JaseP Aug 09, 2012 10:37 PM EDT |
Nah,... I don't see MS being there yet... I think they are giving their OEMs a shove with Surface,... but not a shove out the door, just a shove in the direction they expect them to go... Still, I think that Win8 will be a colossal failure, and will spawn Win9,... "the apology OS." But I think that eventually, they'll lose traction with their OEMs,... and it will be incumbent on MS to have reinvented themselves by then... Their lock is Office,... If they leverage it right,... MS will always be around,... if even as a virtual client on another host OS. |
| caitlyn Aug 09, 2012 10:57 PM EDT |
Quoting:Their lock is Office,...I honestly don't think so. I might just be picking up a contract in a large enterprise shop... government no less. They run Windows on the desktop but booted Office in favor of OpenOffice to reduce costs a couple of years back. They are also willing to consider whether or not they can boot Windows entirely. |
| Fettoosh Aug 10, 2012 7:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:I honestly don't think so. I agree with Caitlyn, LibreOffice is getting so good and businesses are getting to realize its advantages over MS Office. I would say more so internationally than in the US. Sometimes we don't notice how handheld devices are impacting MS popularity and monopoly. Users are getting more and more aware of other sources for their computing needs. |
| jdixon Aug 10, 2012 8:31 AM EDT |
Their lock is Office ... I honestly don't think so... I have to agree with JaseP here. While it's true that Open/LibreOffice is making headway, there's a whole infrastructure built around interacting with Office that the FOSS alternatives can't match. A whole bunch of outside programs interact with and tie into Office. It's very similar to the host of internal web based applications which businesses built on top of IE6 (and with IE6 specific features), which locked out Firefox for years. We all know these aren't good business practices, and we can tell people why, but... |
| JaseP Aug 10, 2012 9:34 AM EDT |
Jdixon's got the point I was trying to make. It's not enough that Open/LibreOffice is good enough or even slightly better. There are integration packages to be considered. Document generation is still huge. Insurance companies, banks/credit card companies, etc. All rely on being able to deliver customized form letters, automatically generated contracts, etc. They have sales analytics that are tied into certain MS dominated data structures, like excel and access. It's fine to move a small family business, a law office (harder to do when electronic filing dominates, and with MS compatible file formats), or a home heating/oil company, plumber, or other small business. But enterprise dominates the desktop. So many businesses are still using XP with IE6 because they have apps built for the platform. They're locked. MS has to exploit this to survive. And, I'm sure they will (exploit). |
| CFWhitman Aug 10, 2012 9:36 AM EDT |
I think that it's probably more specifically the Outlook/Exchange combination that enterprise customers are afraid to give up even more than the rest of Office. Depending on how dependent your infrastructure is on certain other parts of Office, though, especially Excel and Access, it can all be pretty tough to get away from. |
| flufferbeer Aug 10, 2012 11:25 AM EDT |
@jasep >> Document generation is still huge. Insurance companies, banks/credit card companies, etc. All rely on being able to deliver customized form letters, automatically generated contracts, etc. They have sales analytics that are tied into certain MS dominated data structures, like excel and access. It seems to me that the big gorilla-in-the-closet in all of the M$ Offal[ice] entrenchment you describe could STILL turn out to be malware and other painfully real enterprise security risks. I certainly won't forget that the whole Offal[]ice/Outlook/Exchange is designed PREDOMINANTLY for M$ Lo$edow$, and Lo$edow$ REMAINS the excellent carrier par excellence it has always been for viruses, trojans, other forms of malware, rootkit exploits, botnets, you name it. And even on large Enterprise systems. (Any enterprise CIOs out there still shudder when they recall the ever-mutating Conficker and its current copycats?) 2 big c's |
| jdixon Aug 10, 2012 12:40 PM EDT |
> It seems to me that the big gorilla-in-the-closet in all of the M$ Offal[ice] entrenchment you describe could STILL turn out to be malware and other painfully real enterprise security risks. It should be, yes. But who said we're dealing with rational decision makers here? Business folks long ago wrote the occasional virus outbreak off as a cost of doing business. A sorry state of affairs, I know. |
| tuxchick Aug 10, 2012 12:54 PM EDT |
It is a sorry state of affairs, as the cost of malware damage annually is said to exceed the value of the entire Microsoft ecosystem, which includes the lucrative parasitical "security" industry. |
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