A few random ramblings... Alan talked about "Microsoft being in every office", although it interests me that he then specifically mentions that "everyone uses Word, Excel, ..." - I guess an operating system isn't really the important thing at all, it's the applications that are used. A shift to ODF in Microsoft Office - if it ever happens, an if it's a 'clean shift', without the traditional Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - would smash this lock in necessity. However, I do think Microsoft Office is currently the best office suite on the market presently. Whether it's worth paying that much for it is a different question, and at least this would promote decent competition in the office suite world, whereby Office would have to stay ahead by feature and technical merit alone.
Interestingly, I remember maybe one or two years ago doing a search on the BBC website for "linux", and receiving maybe one or two results. Now we see 11 pages[http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?uri=%2F&scope=all&go=toolbar&q=linux] - not sure how relevant that is, however I do see a lot more F/OSS and Linux visibility in newspapers and news websites, which seems to suggest progress. I think it's important to note that we're talking about Linux on the desktop here. Linux has been a viable and generally preferable option for the server world for a couple of years now. History shows that whatever starts in the business and back-end world ends up finding it's way through the servers, to the corporate desktops, and then finally down to home desktops. I do expect this to happen with Linux, but I don't think 'relevant penetration' will happen for a good few years. Interesting viewing though, and I didn't actually realise that he was the chairman of Amstrad :-) Kris On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Dave Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Josh Blacker wrote: >> Something of an, er, interesting comment beginning 7:11 on this video: >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7462104.stm >> >> The rest of the video is pretty boring, including the preceding section >> on 'Is Microsoft a monopoly?'. > > I haven't watched this clip, but according to his interview on the > programme that was on last night, he admits that he made a mistake not > using Microsoft software on his Amstrads. He was of the opinion that he > was making the hardware and shouldn't have to pay for something such as > software. Funny how he once thought that, and now thinks differently. > He thinks that it's too late to have another mainstream OS - clearly he > hasn't been watching the trends (especially) in MacOS over the last 5 > years, and more recently Linux gaining popularity on the desktop > enviroment. > > But hey, would you trust someone's opinion that made that mistake then? > After all Linux wasn't a viable option, and the arguably (IMO) better > OS - Amiga Workbench was hardware specific - like Mac is today. > > Kind Regards, > Dave Walker > > -- > ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk > https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/ > -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
