[...] > > I think it just has to be accepted that unless Microsoft and > Windows will dominate the commercial and home use markets for > many years to come because it's now much too hard for > companies and people to make the change: the costs in > re-training and replacing hardware and legacy software would > be unacceptable.
I don't think they'll dominate the home market for much longer. At that level the boxes are now largely the same - the web is the great unifier - and the boxes will become like any other appliance. As long as people can connect wirelessly to the web, download music, games, video, use email, show pictures and swap files with work the rest is determined by looks, price, cool and similar factors, not by the criteria that professional techies think are important. The commercial market is different because apart from highly specialised machines you have to take the cookie cutter approach and consider the costs and ease of mass use. The bank that recently sold us on had an estate of over 40,000 desktop machines, several 1,000s of laptops and 1,000s of servers in several datacentres to maintain & integrate just in the UK; the company which bought us and is now getting rid of us, has a similar estate spread around the world. Maintaining and supporting that, along with the networks that pull it all together, is a very difficult and costly exercise. Over the years Microsoft have targeted that very successfully and I don't believe Apple is ever likely even to try to break into it. Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
