can YOU live without Microsoft?

[senne]

can YOU live without Microsoft?






senne.

[nkuvu]

This seems like a loaded question. I voted yes (like everyone else so far) but now that I think about it, maybe no. The reason I say that is that there are a lot of websites that depend upon Microsoft OSs, applications, web servers, etc. I'd love to say that every site I visit is run on an OS X or Unix box running Apache, but I can't say that. I'd love to say that every web site I enjoy is coded without the use of tools like Frontpage. Nope, can't say that either.

On my personal machine, I don't use any MS apps. Which is not too surprising in a forum for people running OS X. But What about all of the other companies that use MS technology (such as it is)?

[scruffy]

If only everyone else would, it would be much easier though...

[RacerX]

Could I personally live without Microsoft (as in my usage of MS products)... yes, for the most part. The only copies of any MS products I have on my system are for reading things sent to me from others or viewing sites that don't use W3C standard code.

Could the world in large live without MS... yes. If everything MS vanished today, we would all be in a little better place (though not as good as if they had vanished five years ago). We would see things like OS/2 Warp make a big come back in the personal computing market. And the web would be a much better place (considering Windows minority status as a web server, it still accounted for a majority of the problems on the internet... IIS is an unparalleled security failure that hackers just can't seem to get enough of). I would hope in this better world, formats would become unproprietary standards so that you would have any number of apps that could read a given type of document (sorta like jpg, gif, and tiff, or even to some degree Rich Text Format). Microsoft's primary control over the computer world is Office, and I have felt that more than any other possible punishment for Microsoft, making the Office documents format an open source format that MS could not vary from and than anyone could use for their products would end Microsoft's rain of terror. As for FrontPage, I have never quite understood why anyone would use it to make a web page other than the fact that it is bundled with Office. Maybe without FrontPage on the market Adobe would bring back PageMill.

As for companies that use MS products, it is often been the path of least resistance rather than picking the best solution. Microsoft's monopoly means that they can put out a mediocre enterprise solution, and people buy it without doing any research to see if there could be a better solution for their needs. I can't think of anything MS does that is not replaceable, often with added benefits.

Think about this, how many people with no computer experience entered the IT/IS world by taking MCSE courses? Are those people even aware of alternatives? Would they even try to give their future employers non-Microsoft solutions? Ask the average IT person about anything else other than Microsoft products and watch the reaction... which is usually distaste if MS has a competing product or they are completely oblivious to an alternative's existence (I tried this with Solaris and StarOffice, it was funny).

The point is, we are still at a point where the shadow of Microsoft has not killed off all the other alternatives that are out there.

[nkuvu]

I agree that there are a lot of alternatives to MS software. But I do feel that if all MS software suddenly stopped working (irrevocably, not just a crash like normal ) there would be a lot of effort to get everything up and running again. Specfically because so many people use MS and don't know about the alternatives...

Specifically, there are a lot of companies who use MS operating systems that would have to suddenly replace not just the software, but a lot of the knowledge accumulated for that software. Think of the number of NT admins who know nothing of Unix (shame!). I think that the Internet would be scarcely affected (oh no, fewer viruses! ) but a lot of Intranets would collapse immediately...

[AdmiralAK]

I live 90% sans microsoft
I only have 3 things microsoft

1) Explorer for those pesky sites
2) Office for those pesky co-workers
3) Winblows (in VPC) for job training


Tell you one good thing about winblows, it creates demand for me to fix things and that way I make $$$ hehehehehe


Admiral

[ddma]

This is a hard question to answer. For me, I will say I need Microsoft if I need it. Like say, when I am browsering a homepage that is optimized for MS browser, I must have to stuck with IE... And for the reason, why don't I use IE as my primary browser if every home page goes for it? I don't see any browsers on Mac could totally replace IE currently. Like say, OmniWeb is great, but it doesn't support CSS very well. Like say, Netscape 6, but it doesn't have a good UI and slow (compare with IE). Why I have to give up using IE if it has fulfilled my requirements? Because of the name of Microsoft? I am not a stupid computer user. I just choose the right application to do the right thing.

[ebolag4]

The main advantage for M$ being around is that it fosters competition.

I truly believe that Apple would still be a great innovator of software, but would it push as hard if it didn't have M$ to contend with. I'm not really sure on that score.

To top it all off, how many of us would be the Mac users we are today (as far as creativity, attitude, outlook, etc.) if we did not have M$ around to hate. Much of the shareware community is spurred on by the desire to do something better on a Mac than on Windows.

Like it or not, our lives may be, I said may be, somewhat better because Billy boy started his little company.