But I have a hard time believing a sweeping statement about MS being cheaper. It seems to me that the size of the installation, # of admins, # of servers, etc. would vary so much that you can't say a particular solution is best for situations.
Did they count the cost of the time spent rebooting?
Yup, no surprise here, just more FUD from Microsoft, since TCO is about the only argument they have left against OSS.
Arguments that Linux is free... are incorrect..
.. with such a rich diversity of software applications and hardware devices now on the market, companies can achieve tighter integration by using Windows.
But you'll still need to buy those extra applications and pay for support/maintenance whether or not you need it. If you don't pay for on-site support (which you'll need to wait for) you'll need to dedicate a fraction of a headcount for self-support. And beyond a certain amount of time (5 years or so, assuming the vendor is still around) you'll need to buy upgrades, because you can't get support for the old stuff at any price.
OTOH, you get gigabytes of applications bundled with a typical Linux distro. There are other apps and support information out on the Internet at very competitive prices (most for $0) if you want to dedicate a fraction of a headcount for self-support. If you go with RedHat you can also buy commercial support.
As you scale up, your per-seat licence costs increase. You'll probably have to dedicate a portion of a headcount to keep track of all your licenses (or let BSA do it for you, at a substantial cost).
You may find some situations where the OSS alternative is the more expensive route. If you have specialized hardware, for example, you might have to pay someone to write some drivers. Every situation is different, but in the majority of cases, going with closed-source is more expensive in terms of money, risk and long-term stability.
The absense of real numbers to support TCO assertions might indicate that there aren't any. MS is studying this very hard; perhaps they'll pay Gartner or somebody for a reasonably believable "white paper" soon.
It doesn't take but a few seconds to think of a dozen things more worthy spleen venting that this. It isn't like the penguin crowd is claiming that Algore won the election or something!
(sighs and rolls eyes) Aw well, back to the Election of Elation threads!
I can definitely say that running Windows 2000 saves me at least a few minutes per day in productivity, so it effectively justifies the licensing cost. I would suspect that it's the same for the vast majority of computer users. Let's face it... If you have an employee receiving $15 per hour and working on a computer, you don't want him wrestling with Linux just to save the $200 Windows licensing fee. Compared to the salary and benefits, that kind of money is down in the noise.
I've heard the arguments saying, "If a company has 20,000 employees, they would save $4,000,000 by using Linux!" Well that doesn't sound so great when you consider the dent that it will put into the productivity of a $600,000,000 payroll.
Linux for now is cost-effective for web servers, mail servers, and developers. That's where the significant user base is. Arguments to the contrary amount to saying that the marketplace is either wrong or too stupid to understand Linux's value.
Claims that the marketplace is wrong remind me of the democrat leaders saying that this week's voters were just too stupid or unsophisticated to hear their message. If you don't want to sound arrogant, you gotta accept the decisions of the marketplace as being correct.