<OT> A bad day in Redmond

[Joel Hammer]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 11:02:32PM -0400, Kurt Wall wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 07:06:52PM -0400, Joel Hammer wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 09:04:16AM -0700, Tony Alfrey wrote:
> > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/technology/17cnd-soft.html
> > > 
> > > Seems the Europeans are not happy with Friends of Bill (no, not the guy 
> > > from Arkansas).
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > What would happen if Microsoft just left Europe?
> 
> There would be great rejoicing.
> 

Linux is still not ready for the mass market. Mossberg
in the WSJ has a review of Ubuntu preinstalled on a Dell
laptopo. He noted that too much stuff on it didn't work
out of the box to recommend it to the average user. The
extra cost of Vista over Ubuntu was $109, for laptops
costing about $1400. MS Office would cost even more, but,
you can run (like I do) OpenOffice on windows now.

Problems:

     There is no control panel for adjusting the way the
     touch pad works, and I found it so sensitive that I
     was constantly launching programs and opening windows
     accidentally by touching the thing. Every time the
     computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software
     crashed and had to be reloaded.

     When I tried to play common audio and video files,
     such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download
     special files called codecs that are built into
     Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of
     these codecs might be "bad" or "ugly."

     To get the computer to recognize my Kodak camera and
     Apple iPod, I had to reboot it several times. When
     it did find the iPod, it wasn't able to synchronize
     with it. Playing videos was a bad experience, with
     lots of flickering and freezing. Oh, and there's no
     built-in software for playing commercial DVD

Imagine the average European user being confronted by this.

     A European company called Canonical is the "commercial
     sponsor" of Ubuntu and provides support. But it's
     largely focused on corporate and techie users.

And, a commentary from the WSJ on this notes the following:

          Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith,
          points out that Apple's iPod dominates the MP3
          player market, in which Microsoft's Zune is
          the underdog, and that Google's search engine
          has whipped Microsoft's MSN and all other
          comers. Not to mention the near-monopoly in some
          mainframe-computer markets held by IBM, which
          joined Sun Microsystems in pushing Brussels to
          take on Microsoft in 1998. Mr. Smith seems to be
          implying that two can play at this game of making
          "strategic complaints."

Just something to think about.  MS's domination is
slowly fading. IHMO, having the courts jump in reminds
me too much of the legal battles in the past over cars
and steel. Younger people won't remember, and perhaps
can't imagine, that a few US firms dominated those
industries. The marketplace settled those issues much more
effectively than the courts.

Joel