I would be lost without Microsoft products!! 2

[Kallen]

I have been brought up using Microsofts for the past 10 years. I bought my first PC when I was unemployed, unhappy, and uncertain what to do with the rest of my life. With my computer I found my answer!!!!

This was in the early nineties when many people in Corporate America did not know the power of computers and what they could do. I went out and bought MS Office applications and started out learning the operating system and word. This landed me a job as an AA. I took this time to also learn Excel and Powerpoint, got promoted and used those skills. Went on to learn Access, some VBA and other applications like Crystal and am now learning SQL Server. I am promoted again and making over double my starting salary as an AA 7 years back. While I cannot give Microsoft all the credit (I think I was a geek but not aware of it), they did give me the tools to get excited about computing.

I now want to learn LINUX (just to be diverse!!)

 

[Zech]

MS has hindered it's development greatly by pushing it's non-standards compliant browser out to so many users.

Which standards you are talking about?

I think Microsoft has actually done more to hinder the acceptance of standards in the industry over the last 10 years than any other single company.

Again, what standards are you talking about? There are many standards out there ... ISO/ANSI C/C++, IPv6 Protocol standard, SSH Protocol, etc.

Word processors, another great example... at a time when many others are publishing their document formats so alternate programs can read and write them, Microsoft keeps its document format closed and secretive to maintain product lock-in.

I am not trying to argue for MS here but RTF format is a document standard pushed by Microsoft to allow document exchange between various word processors and operating system.

However, I do agree that MS is trying to establish its own standards into the industry (which may or may not be a good thing). Given MS' resources, I would say that the change is inevitable. We can already see many MS' standards in the industry, such as COM/ActiveX technology.

 

[skiflyer]

When it comes to the browser I'm referring to CSS 1 & 2, Javascript, and HTML 4.0 (all as defined by whichever body governs them. (

http://www.w3.org

is a good place for some research).

When it comes to other standards, it just depends who we're talking about. Something like documents are still in flux in alot of places, RTF is a good example of a nice open standard, which is widely supported, but not widely used (especially not within Microsoft products).

ISO is a standards body not a standard, and they are responsible for publishing alot of what I'm talking about.

There is definitely a debate to be had about the existing groups which publish standards and how they are accepted, what gives any such group the right/ability to push for the standards and whatnot. But the problem I have with Microsoft is the lack of publication and openness in data format. I don't expect or want them to open their source code, but at the same time, the data is mine. So, I do expect clear instructions for their data formats and API's rather than forcing people to reverse engineer a best guess which is broken when some rare functionality is employed.

I really don't care if the field delimiter for a flat text file is |^f531&|, but I want you to tell me that somewhere, and tell me how you plan to escape that string if I want to use it and so on and such.

 

[RiverGuy]

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Microsoft does a good job at aiming products towards developers. MSDN is probabaly the most complete deveolopment site out there....and they have many API's for many things. This is usually far more convenient to most developers than having open source and having to reinvent the wheel to do simple things.

Also, VBScript never really caught on....so I think the fact that they support Javascript at all is saying something good for them. They have Windows Media Video....but they haven't dropped support for MP3.

There is no need, in my opinion for Microsoft to make sure that Corel correctly implements Microsoft's text document format. The reverse it true for Corel making sure MS supports Corel's document type.

No one would expect SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 to natively be able to link tables or even export from other databases easily. They are making their products in the way in which they feel is the best. So I don't think MS has problems by creating a peice of software (Word) and not pushing others to adopt its format.

 

[skiflyer]

Firstly, I use several development platforms and I just flat out disagree about MSDN. And yes, they do have API's for many things. And yes, Microsoft is definitely showing improvement over the last couple years in regards to my above and below points.

That said, they have APIs for many things, they also have many undocumented and unpublished APIs which they change without sufficient notice to the development community.

Secondly, supporting Javascript isn't saying something good for them, it was a necessity for them to survive. The thing is, they didn't do it completely right and by the book, so developers are stuck here because customers can say "but my browser supports Javascript" and all we can really do is modify our properly written, standards compliant javascript to work with the little oddities that make IE so much fun while turning to the customer and saying "thank you for informing us of this bug, we'll fix it shortly".

Media formats are a different discussion because dominance is still being determined... but I'd point out that the discussion isn't do they support MP3, it's do they make it easy/possible for other players to handle Window's Media files.... I'm not educated on this topic so I won't answer it, I believe they do play nicely here so far though.

I do not believe MS has any obligation to make sure that Corel correctly implements MS's text document format, nor should the reverse be true. What I'm saying is, they should publish the standards by which that document format is created/read. I should be able to know what every character in that document represents, because it's my data, it was my time that went into it, and I may want to do all sorts of things to it down the road... if I have millions of files, I'm going to want to write my own interface to that document, one which bypasses Microsoft all together.

And I do expect SQL Server/Oracle/DB2 to be able to communicate via an external interface, and you know what? They all can, it's not the best and it's not the fastest, but each one of those supports drivers and interfaces which are published and accessible such that I can get at my data with a myriad of programming languages.

The low down dirty of it is I should be able to use whichever product works the best for me. If the feature set of that product is not good enough, then I should be able to get a different product and maintain access to my old data. Instead MS takes the approach of locking you in. Does everyone use word because it's the best product? Hardly... instead everyone uses word because at one point it was the best and now it is not cost effective to convert the old documents... additionally, it has become an accepted closed format which people use to trade documents, therefore, we're stuck because only Word can read those documents 100% reliably.... we've been locked in.

This is common business practice, don't get me wrong... I'm in the business of writing a program which handles a users data... and when woo'ing new customers, a big point for me is converting their old data to my format (because alot of this data people are storing in proprietary data formats rather than a real database)... but then, a big selling point for my product is that I use a real standards compliant database (MySQL or PostgreSQL in this case depending on need)... and I assure them access to their data because it's theirs. I say hey, I want to make the best program, and I'm convinced you'll stay with me because my program will do what you need it to, and it will do it better than the competition. But I don't attempt to lock them in by taking the data and obfuscating it.

 

[Zech]

Secondly, supporting Javascript isn't saying something good for them, it was a necessity for them to survive. The thing is, they didn't do it completely right and by the book, so developers are stuck here because customers can say "but my browser supports Javascript" and all we can really do is modify our properly written, standards compliant javascript to work with the little oddities that make IE so much fun while turning to the customer and saying "thank you for informing us of this bug, we'll fix it shortly".

Javascript depends on Java plug-in for the browser. There is a time span between when the OS was shipped and when the consumers buy their computers. Therefore, it is important for users to update their software (that includes JVM and java plug-in).

What I'm saying is, they should publish the standards by which that document format is created/read. I should be able to know what every character in that document represents, because it's my data, it was my time that went into it, and I may want to do all sorts of things to it down the road... if I have millions of files, I'm going to want to write my own interface to that document, one which bypasses Microsoft all together.

You should know that Microsoft provides convenient APIs to manipulate Word, Excel, and Access data. Like RiverGuy said, it is more convenient to use their APIs than to rewrite your own parser for each data format. Furthermore, if you are in the software industry, development time is very important. Time is money.

Also, they have rights to do anything they want with their source codes (it's theirs). Since when do you have to document everything to the public or/and give away your source codes?

And I do expect SQL Server/Oracle/DB2 to be able to communicate via an external interface, and you know what? They all can, it's not the best and it's not the fastest, but each one of those supports drivers and interfaces which are published and accessible such that I can get at my data with a myriad of programming languages.

Microsoft also provide APIs for database programming, which involves ODBC and DAO. And yes, you can use and execute SQL commands with those APIs. You can write programs to communicate existing database and to manipulate the data. (HINT: CRecordSet and CDatabase).

If you don't like Microsoft products, you don't have to use one.

Btw, SQL is not a database format. SQL is a query language.

 

[RiverGuy]

I agree with Zech, but BTW, I wasn't referring to being able to hook to databases via ODBC, OLEDB, ADO, etc. I was more or less illustrating the point that no-one expects those databases to be near 100% compatible. You can't administer Oracle from SQL Server. You can't detach a SQL Server file and attach it to Oracle. I was just wondering why user tools such as Word need to be held to a higher standard in which they interchange with other products--they don't have to be. If that was the case, then there would be an open source file format and engine, and each word processor would simply be a GUI interface to the engine. Just as Enterprise Manager is not the core of the product for SQL Server and Oracle, the Word interface is not the core of Word. Word is a different product from WordPerfect, and should be expected to remain so.

As far as longing to be able to switch off word, but it being cost-ineffective to migrate to another doc type....well, there is always copy and paste.

Really, Microsoft has made a lot of innovations, and has some good products. I only wish they were cheaper.

But you see, these types of scenarios happen everywhere. Intel should not be required to support 3DNow and 64 bit for desktop cpu's just because AMD does.

If you don't like Microsoft products, you don't have to use one.

I agree. But if you take every step to avoid Microsoft at all costs...then it can be hard to get a job in IT. Whether or not Microsoft is a personal preference for an IT Professional is one thing, but for IT professionals, their lives are going to be impacted by it regardless.

 

[skiflyer]

I agree with both of you to a large degree... it appears I'm not getting across the point I want to.

I'll go for the one sentence approach. I want well documented and unfetered access to my data and my work.

And I'm aware of Microsoft's COM interfaces to the Office Suite, and that's my point... they all suck, none of them are useful in bringing over both the content and formatting of an Office document.

And I realize that's not what you're talking about with respect to the databases, but it is the concern I'm referring to. If I want to switch from Oracle to SQL Server, I can use SQL Server tools to import that data, and now I have a new engine, it's good, it's simple, and Oracle doesn't throw in any data oddities or randomness such that Microsoft's product will choke and die during the conversion... to the contrary, Microsoft has been known to do such nastinesses... that was my point.

As far as not using what you don't like, again, that's not my point. I sometimes like them and sometimes don't. I think they're sometimes the right tool for the job and sometimes not. My point is that on the organizational level I've often decided their not the right tool for the job because they lock me in, and I don't have access to my own work down the road. But then there's the "Office" part of the discussion... it's a customer/partner discussion then, I have to be able to read and write word documents for them.

In regards to the javascript issue, the JVM runs Java and I can update that from Sun, but the javascript runs off of something else, and Microsoft simply doesn't do it correctly... though they are much better than days gone by... in the browser department my real gripe with them lies in their poorly executed CSS rendering.

Anyway, I'm out of here for the night... probably a good thing since I feel I'm starting to repeat myself... have a good night!

 

[infinitelo]

Now is the time to step back a little and take into account the reason things are the way they are. Microsoft started as a company focused on "personal computing". One computer one user. Fierce competition even on the operating system front. All of IT working on better graphical representation (something top level non-IT types could understand) The key here is ms always has allowed content/data to be exported to simple format{csv,sylk,ect...) It is just a ton of work to keep the bits top level management happy. Now the whole of IT is focused on personal networking. Microsoft is responding to this change in its core technologies (dot net, xml, longhorn) Ms has learned the lesson the unix/linux guys have know all along, if you want consistant stucture use plain text.
The key here is not maintaining 100% compatiblity, It will be "I use this because it looks better than the original and when i send it to uncle jim it gets there fast/reliable and looks the way he wants it too look".
generics, cross platform, hardware independence, layered rendering (document on my pc on my pda, on my cell phone, on my media device(big screen tv)) The one huge thing learned from the internet boom YOU MUST MAKE A PROFIT TO CONTINUE TO OFFER YOUR PRODUCT.

So far, it has been the sender's responsibilty to ensure information is passed in a manner that can be accepted by the reciver(web servers/ html) now is the time for the reciever to render information in a manner suitble for the device this is where ms products have traditionally done well(as long as you pay enough money).





if it is to be it's up to me

 

[CCCarson]

Well, I'm not sure whether you realize it, but collectively you guys have worked as a well-knit team, which most any company would consider an asset, in presenting a pretty three-dimensional perspective of the yin and yang of the computer industry and its evolution.

It's slightly amusing. Remove any one of you and your arguments, and the "team" would be missing an integral part, and would present a poorer case.

I'm merely an end-user. I bought my first $5000 computer system in 1987. It hard a hard drive, so it was pretty spiff. I think it was 10- or 20-um, we won't say MEGS, will we? It put me ahead of the offices in which I worked, which relied on two stacked 5 1/4" floppies and no HD at all.

I helped make Bill Gates rich.

As years passed, I regretfully came to understand that I also helped make Mr. Gates greedy, and, being about the same age, I lost a certain amount of my respect for the man. I believe more in the old ideals of capitalism (well, maybe they were always just a fantasy), that the game was not about winning, but rather about the play. It was not a question of maximum bottom-line profit, but rather a question of quality both in the product and in the marketing of the product.

Microsoft has produced many excellent products (and some rough-around-the-edges ones, such as badboy IE6, breaking all the rules and smirking). Linux has sometimes been quite candid about attempting to unashamedly copy Microsoft apps, and sometimes even having a hard time (NTFS) getting a leg up.

MS's ATTITUDE, and its greediness in marketing, and its willingness to destroy the meanings of words such as "piracy" and "fonts," has greatly upset me. If it has done much of a public service along those lines, it is to help thinking people realize that over-aggressive capitalism can be a terrible thing.

Bill's 2IC had his boat tied up here in Vancouver for a few weeks last year. We all noticed it. It's quite big, you know. We all had time to wonder how much we'd helped toward the purchase of that boat. The crew at Microsoft are like little boys with a tremendous need to own, and a great fear of sharing. In that regard, of course Microsoft will have the most money. I know, because I personally contributed some of my money toward Bill's fortune. Perhaps you did, too.

The real danger, and the crux of all arguments about one operating system--or way of life--versus another, might well be in the distinct possibility that Microsoft, like America, equates money with success.

____________
Celeron4 1.7/512 RAM, ADSL, Win XP Pro SP1. 2 Maxtor 7200 HDDs: Pri Master IDE 80; Slave 30 (about 12 partitions). Sec Master CD-RW, Slave CD-ROM.

 

[keyser456]

Wow... That's a tough act to follow. Well spoken CCCarson.

For what it's worth, I have contributed more than my fair share to Microsoft's fortune as well. While I don't have 20 years of professional experience with computers, I did grow up with Microsoft. My first computer was an 8088 while I was in 6th grade with a 10 meg and 640k RAM (should be enough for anybody, right?) HD running DOS 4 or 5. Through the years I progressed through each generation of processor, and the operating systems offered by Microsoft to use that hardware; 3.11,95,98,NT,2000,ME,XP and various Server editions. I chose programming as my career and have stayed loyal with Microsoft (because of MSDN more than anything) and am now an emphatic C# fan.

Nobody can deny recent Windows versions' ease of use for even the least computer literate people. I don't think any distros of Linux will ever be able to touch what Microsoft has accomplished in that area. I've watched the Windows operating systems roll out over the years and have watched the icons get bigger and the words get smaller. Microsoft has dumbed things down so much with Windows that it has almost become an annoyance to me. However, it's become increasingly apparent that Microsoft is trying to cater to as many people as possible, and as stated it's MUCH more profitable to cater to the 70% of people out there who probably don't know what brand of CPU or even what version of Windows they are currently running than it is to cater to the 5% of people who know their way around computers like it's nobody's business. As much as I hate to admit it, at this point I think it's more important to bring the rest of the population up to speed on the benefits of computers than it is to provide the gurus out there with the advanced tools they so desire.

Supposing their focus was profit... Is it wrong for Microsoft to have such an emphasis on profit? For the years of constant research in new technology that you computer gurus have probably put in, don't you feel just the slightest bit underpaid? I know I do. Yeah, I cringed as I paid $500 last week for Office Professional Edition 2003 and $300 for Windows XP Pro. The reason I justified paying that much is because I am a computer programmer, and I'm counting on the fact that people like me will be willing to pay good money for an amazing program that someone has had the dedication to complete. We're talking countless hours of research, development, and the mammoth task of debugging. As much as we like to pick apart all of Windows' numerous problems, let's not ignore that for the most part, it makes all those little circuits, capacitors, gadgets and gizmos made by several different companies work in harmony; processing 1's and 0's faster than our little brains can ever comprehend. IMO Bill Gates has paid his dues. He didn't just start out as a billionaire, he made it happen. The things you hear about in the news regarding Microsoft (antitrusts and what not) are simply him fighting to stay on top in a constantly changing business world. While you may not agree with all his tactics, you have to respect his ambition and his dedication to success. Shall we discuss the amount of money he's donated to worthy causes? I think it's safe to say it's a bigger percentage of his salary than most of you have donated over the past few years. Its not like you see him acting like a pompous ass all the time. I've never met the man but I'd like to believe he's a genuinely nice guy who has worked his way to the top, and I can only hope to make half as many positive contributions as he has to the computer world.

 

[MasterRacker]

Bill's more grounded and saner than Larry Ellison or Scott McNealy (to name a couple of other "stars"). If you want greedy, uncaring and cutthroat examine Larry and his attempt to take over and shut down PeopleSoft.

Also, there's nothing wrong with owning. Bill's charitable contributions can be favorably compared to anyone. There's absolultely nothing at all wrong with being rich and keeping anough of it to remain rich.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Zech]

I do respect Microsoft and its products. However, I also feel that Microsoft has been trying to cross a dangerous line in trying to secure its long-term ability to generate more profits. In doing so, Microsoft may destroy the long-term value creation for its customers.

From economic standpoint, profits should be the compensation that Microsoft receives from creating equivalent value to its customers. That assumes the market is competitive and not monopolistic.

However, in a monopoly market, the monopolist has a greater leverage over its customers, in such that the monopolist may charge higher prices at the expense of its customers. Thus, in this case, Microsoft's customers may be paying more than the value that Microsoft has created in return.

Let's take for example Microsoft's Sender ID technology that Microsoft has been promoting lately (

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1817&e=6&u=/zd/20040825/tc_zd/134028&sid=96120751).

The technology allows identification of incoming emails at a lower level to reveal to true ID of the sender, and thus allowing a better email filtering. The problem however is with its license. The license effectively bar anyone from studying how it works and adapt it. Thus, Sender Id cannot be used in the Open Source products.

In addition, the license also requires you to have Microsoft expressed approval before you can distribute products that incorporate this Sender ID technology, allowing Microsoft to track and control competitions.

If this technology is approved into the standard e-mail protocols, you can expect more and more people drawn into MS' deep vortex. If you use email, you may have no choice but to pay unreasonable fees for using the technology. Microsoft may charge monthly or even per-email fees if people are so dependent on it. Thus, without realizing, as we are being more and more dependent on MS products, we are also surrendering the choices we have.

I am not against Microsoft nor am I championing anybody or any products (Linux, Java, etc.). However, I do believe that competition is healthy for the users and the industry.

 

[keyser456]

If you don't think a relatively stable operating system with as many features as Windows XP comes with is worth $300 or the standard of business suites, Office 2003 Pro, which provides you with spreadsheets, databases, word processing, presentation software, and a web page designer, all VERY powerful programs, is worth $500, then I should just quit my programming career right now, because it just wouldn't be profitable. I believe the value you get for the price is well worth it. Just because Microsoft is a gigantic company and could provide it for a lot less, doesn't mean they should. In fact, I'm honestly glad they don't drop their prices. It would destroy the programming market and any chance of me receiving what I feel is fair for the programs I create.

If you had developed a new technology wouldn't you do everything in your power to protect it? Or would you simply hand it over to your competition and watch them profit off of your hard work while badmouthing your other products? Once again, this is just Microsoft being competitive. Sure, Microsoft has "borrowed" ideas on more than one occasion from other companies, but maybe where those companies went wrong is by NOT "barring anyone from studying how it works and adapting it."

And I would hope Microsoft won't ever start charging for sending and receiving basic E-mails. If it were a small monthly fee for the special filtering capabilities that no other company has been able to provide, I don't see how that's wrong.

 

[MasterRacker]

Office Pro is worth 500.00 to a larger company that is going to take advantage of the integration features, etc. The Small business owner and home user may want all the basic apps but do not need those features.

MS has done the right thing in tiering the OS with XP Home and XP Pro. What they now need to do is tier Office. Sure, they now tier it by leaving apps out. What they really need to do is tier it by leaving out the enterprise level collaboration crap that most of us do not need. I want a $100.00 home office suite. (300.00 for WinXP pro is also too much. 200.00 might be reasonable.)

As far as Sender ID goes, I wouldn't allow anything in that couldn't interoperate between competitors and couldn't have an open source equivalent to force all vendors to stay honest. If they don't open it up, all you have is something that only works for mail sent from one MS shop to another. It's useless for anyone else. If that were to be the case the product won't fly.




Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[RiverGuy]

I think their Office tiering solution is Works Suite, because it comes with Word. They just need to add Excel to it for home users.

 

[jurgen36]

Use open source office from Sun, it can read and write to MS Office and costs a small fraction of the MS price.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[RiverGuy]

Is it 100% compatible? I remember saving with WordPerfect to .doc, and it would look completely different from what I had saved it as when I would open it in Word.

 

[skiflyer]

The problem with the tiering of office is not really the price in my mind... it's the frequency of updates, and the fact that you get left out if you don't upgrade everytime because they can't stick with a stable document format.

I don't mind shelling out X dollars for a program once, but needing to shell out X dollars for a program I use at home very infrequently is a major liability.

I went with Sun's Open Office at home for just this reason... Office programs aren't that important to me at home, I tend to use text files 99.9% of the time. To answer you RiverGuy... no, it's not 100% compatible... I'd put the compatability in the high 90's. The stuff that doesn't work tends to be the stuff that hardly anyone uses though. Which leaves you in that uncomfortable position... I certainlly use it to write things I will be printing, I'm fine using it for sending documents whose goal is communication... but I wouldn't send in a resume I generated with it, or send a proposal to a company with it.

That said, it's free, I'd suggest giving it a download and playing around with it.

http://www.openoffice.org/