Bob Munck wrote:
> > You know, MS keeps giving me reasons to ReallyReallyReally dislike them.
>
> So Netscape wanted $21,250 up front and Microsoft was willing to give
> him something for free and wait to make their profits on future sales
> to his customers. I don't understand what it is that you find
> distasteful. Both companies did a major piece of development up
> front (obviously NS wasn't going to start work when they got the
> $21K) and both companies want to make a profit. It seems to me that
> Netscape was the less user-friendly of the two in this vignette.
> Of course, if you ReallyReallyReally *want* to dislike Microsoft,
> it's easy to find reasons. Hey, I Really*3 dislike Newt Gingrich.
But MS isn't making their "future sales" based on customer choice in
most cases. They give you just enough product to get you committed,
then they introduce you to the pieces you need to complete the puzzle at
high cost.
> > And for anyone who still thinks that they didn't/aren't using existing
> > products to "buy" market share for MSIE, please see this
> > commentary from an ISP who chose MSIE over NN ....
>
> Is there supposed to be something wrong with giving breaks on one
> product to encourage use of another? This is a cornerstone of
> American business; the standard B-school example is George Gillette
> discounting or giving away razors to build up the sale of blades.
It's a cornerstone of America business to provide a working sample with
the intent of showing something works, and developing partnerships.
When you give away a sample that gets you linked to a chain of products
from which you can't extricate yourself as they accumulate, we call it
"pushing". Microsoft's business methods are closer to those used by the
people pushing drugs to kids on schoolyards than they are the american
business dream. ("here little boy . . . try this . . . it tastes *just*
like candy . . .")
> I think that the knee-jerk reaction against Microsoft that permeates
> much of the web developer literature is extremely unfortunate. In my
> experience developing web sites (since '94), IE4 is *vastly* superior
> to NS4; I can't think of a single example where I've found it easier
> to do something for NS than it was for IE. It seems to me that
> prejudice against Microsoft is one of the major factors keeping the
> NS browser from joining Mosaic in the software graveyard.
I disagree here all around. Developing for IE4 is only convenient if
you develop only for MS users. Developing cross platform sites is
amazingly easier for NS.
And when it comes to the backend stuff, I'm convinced the people that
preach MS IIS are people who only use installed versions, and don't have
to rely on more than FP wizards and whatnot for their interface. This
stuff comes off very slick for the end user who has little tech
involvement--it sucks for the admin.
Having had to set up an NT firewall and an MS Site Server 3.0 this past
month, with an MS SQL7 box on the way, I now have absolutely no doubt
that Unix is easier than NT to administer. Unix suffers from way too
much FUD. The NT firewall has been a thorn in my side for two
months--the base problem is that it won't allow us to properly use DHCP
inside the firewall and do proper dedicated IP in the DMZ. The OS
simply doesn't "get it", so we have these pages of "workarounds" andf
all kinds of third party software fixes to deal with.
DHCP inside the firewall, of course, is what makes Exchange Server play
nicely with our limited IP range, so it's somewhat necessary. It's
ludicrous that MS can't make this work right.
As for Site Server 3.0, simple example: the software came on one CD
with a 50 page install manual. The aftermarket training materials came
in a 1200 page manual with 4 CDs. It is the most confusing, obfuscated,
redundant and poorly coordinated piece of software I have ever
installed. Compared to the several seconds it takes to make site-wide
changes on a Linux box by modifying a few config files (which can be
nicely linked to other systems to replicate themselves), the process of
making a system wide change on Site Server is Grobian endeavor that then
requires you to carefully make sure every other machine it talks to is
also in sync with it. There's even instances where you have to tell two
different servers that are part of the same package about changes
individually -- they use the same registry, but make you enter the info
twice.
I can't wait for the SQL7 server. :P It's required as a backend for an
MS specific product. I look forward to converting the tables to a
format for something that runs on Unix so I can at least get a part of
this site back into an environment that makes sense.
And while it took me 6 months to get comfortable with Unix, and 6 more
to enable myself to do useful things (with a total of three books from
O'Reilly of less than 880 pages total, and that covered programming, web
servers, mail servers, etc. as well), I don't see how NT and it's
related parts are going to be any easier to learn.
My prejudice against MS is simple. They make things I don't find
useful, and then they use their market dominance to back major providers
and customers into corners where they end up MS dependent . . . and then
I run into this junk everywhere and effectively have little choice but
to deal with it. If I were doing nothing but making websites and
employing frontpage wizards, I'm sure I'd mind a lot less. But when you
have to get your hands on the guts of the system and implement solutions
from the ground up, it's like being asked to climb a rope with handcuffs
and shackles. My customers simply do not have a choice about what
software to buy. None. Zip. And MS didn't get there purely by making
allegedly better products--they make one or two good products, get
people locked in, and then dump the rest on them and further restrict
their choice.
I don't think the reaction to MS by commentators and developers is
kneejerk at all . . . I think it's often well-earned from time in the
trenches battling with MS software. More than likely what has happened
is not that commentators starting hating MS more of late, but that more
than a few of them have installed Linux/Unix out of curiousity, and
found themselves saying "oh, wow, so *this* is how computers are
supposed to work . . ." Once they get that haze from years of being
handheld through demos and forcefed MS PR materials off their brains,
things seem much clearer :P
Brett
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