On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:57:07 +0100, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Indeed no - their job is to research new techniques for slowing software
> down as much as possible to boost sales of expensive new hardware.
> (Presumably this is why the hardware vendors love them so much...)

That's been my working theory for years.  Goes something like this:

NetWare:  Solid, stable, reliable OS.  No possibility for hardware 
upgrades (until 4.x came out) or extended support contracts, because it 
just worked.

Windows:  Higher hardware requirements, not as stable as NetWare, so 
requires ongoing maintenance, support, and you hope that they'll fix the 
bugs in the current version in the next version so you have an upgrade 
opportunity.  Of course, with the new version comes higher hardware 
requirements, so the vendor gets to make their hardware sales quotas, and 
you'll want support as well, so a reseller can also sell a support 
contract with the hardware and SW installation.

Things have changed a bit over the last few years, of course, but I never 
wondered why resellers didn't push NetWare over Windows, and I still 
don't.  There's no money in it for them.

I've always said that Microsoft was the king of making software that was 
"just good enough".  IOW, it's good enough that most people are not 
willing to go to the expense of switching, even though there's plenty to 
complain about.  They then managed to find the right upgrade price point 
that played to the business people - the point at which it's too 
expensive *immediately* to switch to something better as opposed to just 
getting the upgrades and praying.  Businesses that tend to look more than 
a quarter or two out on their financial planning tend to be more likely 
to switch; businesses where turnover is fairly high and people are only 
concerned about the next couple of quarters' worth of spending are less 
likely to switch.

Jim

Post a reply to this message