Windows Cheaper Than Linux, Says Microsoft

Microsoft has dismissed claims that Linux is more cost-effective for businesses, arguing that Windows is cheaper over its total lifecycle.

When asked by Gartner about Microsoft's intensifying battle against the open source operating system, European president Jean-Phillipe Courtois claimed that Linux is in fact more expensive to run than Windows.

Arguments that Linux is free, and therefore a good alternative for governments and organisations on a tight budget, are incorrect, he said.

Courtois claimed that Microsoft has been tracking the total cost of ownership (TCO) in 12 organisations across a range of business sectors, and that in 95 per cent of cases the "TCO was better on the Windows platform".

Licensing costs account for just five per cent of the total cost of an operating system, he said, and those plumping for Microsoft have an easier life in terms of application integration both internally and with external business partners.

But Courtois was challenged by Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's president of research in Europe.

He argued that the perception among chief information officers is that Linux and open source software is more cost-effective than Windows and Microsoft's Office applications.

"I do expect that some of your clients are looking for a response on licensing or more flexibility in the packaging," he said.

Courtois replied: "As soon as you start digging down you go beyond licensing. It's not that we are perfect with licensing; we need to make it simpler. But it's about the end-to-end environment."

He claimed that, with such a rich diversity of software applications and hardware devices now on the market, companies can achieve tighter integration by using Windows.

However, there is growing interest in Linux in the public sector. Last month, West Yorkshire police took delivery of Linux desktops as part of a trial for the operating system for English and Welsh forces.

And the European Commission handed open source advocate Netproject a €250,000 (£160,000) contract to conduct a feasibility study into running the operating system in government departments.

Well the appropriate parallel is not being discussed, though you threw a bunch of nonsense out there. An admin that doesn't know how a machine works and how it works with the network is like an auto mechanic that doesn't know how an engine works, much less how it works with the rest of the vehicle. You wouldn't take your Car to walmart automotive center to have your transmission rebuilt - would you? Yet admins with no idea what an interrupt is are in charge of networks with a much higher prictag on them.

I suppose you'd tell us little johnny down the block is qualified to drive an m1a1 abrams because he has played Battlezone..

Wow that's hilarious, first you accuse me of throwing in a bunch of nonsense, then you throw in nonsense so far and above anything I'd even think of as to be patently rediculous and insulting.

An admin needs to know how the OS handlews things, they don't need to know any layer below that. Just because the OSes you like leave that layer so wide open that you HAVE to know all the nitty gritty doesn't mean it's necessary for everybody.

As long as littly Johnny down the block is driving the tank in your backyard I don't care what qualifications he has. Back to a reasonable and intelligent parrallel, Johnny doesn't need to know how diesel engines work to drive the tank, he only needs to know how to drive the tank.

As far as your spiel on tanks is concerned, the military not only disagrees with you, but villigently so. When you drive a tank for the Military, they expect you to know it inside and out. How it functions, how to repair it, how to operate every station, etc. It's because it's an expensive piece of equipment that they depend on. It's called thoroughly training so that if something goes wrong, they have a clue what to do about it.

As regards a security issue, if an admin doesn't know what a worm is, how it attacks a network, and how to defend against it, there isn't much likelihood your network will be secure. If they don't understand the os, there isn't much hope they'll understand why cleaning up temp files and defragging the drive might affect system performance and stop memory errors. In short, if your admin knows nothing, your network will run like your admin knows nothing. Just like if you have walmart rebuild your transmission, it will run like walmart rebuilt it.

It's amazing the lengths that some of you hacks will go to to minimize the impact of such things. And most admins I've met wouldn't be allowed anywhere near my home pc. If you're going to work on my machine, you have to first have a clue what you're doing. Just because an ms exam study tells them what buttons to push doesn't mean they know what a trace route is or how to tell if someone is snooping on the system. Then again, most MS admins wouldn't know if the company were running something like PCanywhere Under the os along with a keystroke capture.

I'm sure you'd let little Johnny drive the tank if it had MS written on it. You have more confidence in MS than in common sense.

I believe that would be the tank commander not the driver, I'll poke around.

And here you go jockeying for position. Now you're bringing up security. Of course your "point" is still lacking. Here's everything you need to know about a worm: where to get and how to install the patch that stops it. Nice redefine on "understand", here's everything you need to "know" about Windows to defrag the drives and dump the temp folder: how to run system agent to schedule tasks. Luckily for most sysagent defaults to starting and being on the task tray with most of these kinds of tasks pre-included and configured to run during obscene hours of the morning. I've never said the admin should know "nothing" I said the admin doesn't need to know the nitty gritty details of how the OS interfaces with the hardware.

Gosh you really don't know what in the hell you're talking about. The MSCE exam for NT includes in depth questions on how the various network protocols work and how to configure them and what the advantages and disadvantages of each are. That's good admin. What they don't get into is how the OS talks to the protocol because nobody cares. I'm betting you couldn't come close to passing an MSCE, it's a nasty exam.

You are suck a typical ABMer. You clearly don't know a damn thing about MS or Windows but you'll blather on and on about how "ignorant" MS users are, you probably couldn't even format a floppy under Windows.

Now if you want to turn this into serious debate I welcome it. But if you're just going to fluff your own ego and inslut people you know absolutely nothing about, go back to slash-dot.

BS. He's made it pretty clear that it's his expectation that they should know why and how the hardware/software functions. Which is beyond the scope of their jobs.

No, it's not beyond the scope of their jobs. If you're managing active directory only, then I'd agree with you. But that's not the extent of the scope of an admin in most practical environments. If you have a device crippling worm that takes out a hard disk on one server you're administering and don't know anything about hardware/software interaction, you'll sit and replace drives and waste company resources until your virus package is updated to do your job for you. Just because MS has dumbed down the OS doesn't mean you can put monkeys in the driver's seat and be ok. In the real world, Admins should know how a system works so as to protect the company they're serving as the job requires.

Furthermore, it doesn't take a software engineer to understand that Lotus notes eats system resources and that older versions of it will, over time of usage, slowly corrupt the environment. It doesn't take an engineer to know that if a driver for a video card becomes corrupted, it can act the same way as a failing video card. It doesn't take an engineer to understand that if a port is left open on a machine, someone can hack into it. But if your admins don't know what a port is, how they are opened and closed, etc, then they are going to be clueless to the notion that someone may have hacked in and downloaded a password database.

That you can't understand the importance of basic understanding of hardware on an admin level is reflective of your MS beatification. MS hasn't a clue about security 0ther than how to talk the game and make people feel secure with honey sounding words till people realize their systems are wide open for abuse. There are a lot of idiots in the world being paid good money to do a sorry job of things because companies are too computer stupid to know what they should be getting. And some are paranoid about people who know too much about computers. They should be more paranoid about the idiots that don't know and are compromising their data as a result.

Sorry, don't have an ego to fluff. Just having a real world conversation. You're the one getting defensive.

And I ain't jockeying position. Just giving some examples that make sense to the argument. So I'll give you a real world example.

You're a sys admin in a small company. One of your machines is loosing performance. Network communication is slow to and from it. You have mid to high level traffic accross the router that links you to the internet. Mouse movement is erratic. And the resource meter is all over the board. Tell me mr. Admin. What's causing it?

That is a real world example. If you know computers as an admin, knowing the computer will be the difference between well used vs wasted resources. And this is not a trick scenario. Admins fill different niches depending on company need and size. Microsoft didn't define what an admin is - it has tried to redefine it; but, that isn't the same thing.

Yeah right, that's why you can't put together a sentence without havingto insult somebody. Sure sign of runaway ego.

Yes you are jockeying for position, every post you're taking a different angle, discussing different specifics that are unnecssary because your last set of garbage got beat.

My answer: who cares, it's a stupid example there's tons of possibilities and regardless of my answer you'll claim I'm wrong and I simply do not play games trying to read the minds of whiners.

MS hasn't tried to redefine anything except what an easy to use computer is. No matter how much BS you spew making computers easy to use is a good thing. And of course anybody that actually knows how to administer Windows knows all the really cool stuff is on the command line, no buttons. But you've probably never messed with ipconfig so you wouldn't know that.

And of course, getting down to the nitty-gritty of HOW it works, does your facilities guy actually know how a motion sensor works? That's the level of knowledge the linux crowd keeps saying everybody should have about computers. And it's just not happening, and it shouldn't. That's why MS has the marketshare, that's why Linux will probably never have the marketshare, that's why if Liux ever does get the marketshare the faithful will be complaining that they dumbed it down and they'll be using something else.

A computer is not an appliance. And people don't hack into dishwashers to steal your dishes. So knowing the dishwasher inside and out isn't relevant to protecting your assets. Knowing computers and networks inside and out is relevant to protecting your assets. And people DO hack into them. "Linux heads" as you call them are aware of such things and don't choose to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it'll go away or won't happen. Knowing how things break is really important to understanding how to keep them from breaking. And such is the nature of system security. But then you have the microsoft argument of "let us handle it (wink), our system is secure" - don't mind all those security hole bulletins reporting how easy the product is to hack. And let's not worry about people understanding how to prevent it. That's someone else's job. You get paid enough to sit on your butt and be overworked. why should you care about security.

No, a computer IS an appliance. The fact that you, and many of the Linux crowd, don't get that is the basic seperation that keeps you in the minority market. Cute apples and oranges there. People DO hack your security system (which is an appliance) and your phone (which is an appliance). The need for security does not make something not an appliance.

I've never said a person with in-depth knowledge wouldn't be a better admin. I've said it's not NECESSARY. Much as how mechanics have an excellent feel for cars and can really push the outer perfomance limits just as drivers, the more you know about something the better you are at it. That doesn't change the fact that you can be an amazing driver and not know how to change oil, and you can maintain a fast, stable, secure network and not know the guts of the system.

Actually the Linux-heads are burying themselves in the sand, with the holier-than-thou attitude that just doesn't cut it with the market.

I most explicity DO NOT have your supposed "MS attitude" on security. And niether does MS. MS publishes long and informative tomes on proper security configuration, they're the first ones to tell you that the defaults are not secure in any way and instruct the user to get in there and start making security decisions and get things setup for real. They also instruct you to pay attention to those security alerts and apply the patches religiously.

Once again, blathering insults showing a complete lack of knowledge of anything MS.

If you have a device crippling worm that takes out a hard disk on one server you're administering and don't know anything about hardware/software interaction, you'll sit and replace drives and waste company resources until your virus package is updated to do your job for you.

Thank you for clarifying your position. I agree with you that an admin should be able to troubleshoot basic problems (hardware failures, software incompatibility/failures, etc); however, that's not to say that an admin should have to be able to debug code, run an oscilloscope, or understand how a particular program works internally in order to be effective. And let's get this straight: The fact that you "know" that Lotus notes eats resources doesn't mean you "understand" how Lotus is leaking memory. In order for you to "understand" that, you'd have to know a lot more about the internals of the program. And that is precisely what I'm saying an admin shouldn't have to know.

Perhaps that's why MS certifications aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

I'm sure you're winning converts to your cause with that kind of arrogance. As if ...

If you want a Cisco cert, you'd better know your protocols. If you want a RedHat cert, you'd better know that system by heart.

The AD protocol is proprietary for a reason: It keeps Sun from emulating an AD domain controller. Any admin can see and trace them in a protocol sniffer. But admins don't have the information necessary to take them apart. And that's the point: Many hardware and software issues have a degree of debugging required which renders them beyond the capacity of an admin. Debugging code is one of thoese issues. I wouldn't expect an admin to do that.

I'm sure you're winning converts to your cause with that kind of arrogance.

I couldn't care less about "winning converts" to any "cause". We're not talking religion here.

The AD protocol is proprietary for a reason: It keeps Sun from emulating an AD domain controller.

It keeps everybody from doing that... for a while at least. But I have faith in the Samba team. ;-)

Many hardware and software issues have a degree of debugging required which renders them beyond the capacity of an admin. Debugging code is one of thoese issues. I wouldn't expect an admin to do that.

Okay, OKAY, we GOT your point on this about forty posts ago. It's getting old now; time to move on.

I couldn't care less about "winning converts" to any "cause". We're not talking religion here.

Oh, please. I'm surprised you can say that with a straight face. Who's kidding who here? Linux and OSS are most certainly a religion -- with Stallman, Torvalds et al being the high priests.

It keeps everybody from doing that... for a while at least. But I have faith in the Samba team. ;-)

It's ironic that you chose the word "faith" after disclaiming the notion of religion. You can't help yourself. The BS is spewing out of every open hole.

Okay, OKAY, we GOT your point on this about forty posts ago. It's getting old now; time to move on.

Listen to you: You're talking about flogging dead horses -- and the whip's still steaming in your hand.

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