Author: Pete R.
Date: 09:31:30 12/02/99
Go up one level in this thread
On December 01, 1999 at 18:40:49, leonid wrote: >Forget about the business world. It is just when somebody understood that by >selling computers to "simple man" that PC started its existance. Before >everybody tryed mainly sell its computers where it was the most profitable - to >the big company. This is where the PC was valuable, because of the first killer app VisiCalc. Home users came much much later, and now that the Internet is the killer app everybody wants a computer at home. >Here once again you exagerate the importance of the big officies in the life of >PC. Mainly it is bought to work at home. I don't know what the ratio of home sales to business sales is, but I think you are taking a "techie" perspective. You can download and install Linux but most people won't bother, free or not. When you buy a PC it comes with Windows (does Dell sell their Linux-configured PCs for any less than Windows-configured PCs?) and people use Windows because they use it at work, and they are used to it, or they want to play games and all the software you want runs on Windows. How many people build a new PC and then go buy another copy of Windows for it, rather than loading the same copy they had on the old machine onto the new machine? Please, nobody does this. There are a lot of home users who don't even pay for a lot of their Windows software like Office and so forth, and this is very rampant in many countries. So I think you are exaggerating the importance of Linux being free to even the individual user. The real benefit of Linux where Windows can't compete is that if you have a very specific computer function you want, say for a science experiment, you can customize the OS itself. Other than that I don't see how Linux will build momentum even for individual home users, because they probably want games, and game developers are not going to bother until Linux is much more popular, and again you have a chicken and egg scenario where Linux has to somehow generate more momentum. I don't believe this will happen because Windows is not that bad, and it will get better. As I said I'm also not convinced that open source will improve anything. Netscape Communicator is open source and is significantly behind in technology compared to IE 5, and IE 5.5 will be released soon. I welcome competition for MS, but Linux being free and open source I don't believe is as important to its success as you do. If you are going to code in assembly, the Windows platform is the clear choice *if* you ever intend to do anything commercial with your program. Otherwise of course it's up to your preference. Enough said on this topic, we are free to disagree but I recognize the same pie-in-the-sky talk among Linux advocates that I've seen from Mac advocates, it's like a big social issue, like there would be world peace and an end to poverty if only everyone used Mac or everyone used Linux. ;))) The practical reality I think is a different picture. My wager is that Linux' popularity will plateau and MS' desktop market position both at home and in business will be the same as it is now.
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.