[Sussex] Linux market to exceed $35bn by 2008

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 09:19 +0000, Paul Graydon wrote:
> But then people don’t really see computer games consoles as PCs.  Then
> again, neither do they expect them to crash.  The X-Box runs an OS
> unsurprisingly based on Windows.  I've never heard of an X-Box crashing
> ever.  

Early models where apparently very unstable.

That's east to write off as teething trouble however and they seem
pretty stable now.

The version of Windows in an Xbox is based on Microsoft's embedded
product which is a much simpler beast than Windows XP.   It's actually
relatively easy to make an embedded OS stable - they rarely have to cope
with the demands that desktop usage puts on a machine.

You will know however that set top boxes have a chequered stability
record (most people I know have to reboot there box regularly)
unsurprisingly these boxes run Windows embedded products :-) 

> Sticking Linux on a console is hardly going to be the greatest
> advertisement, they'll just get the impression that its okay for gaming
> software, but that hardly relates to machines in the workplace.  An old boss
> of mine expressed some concern when I was trying to persuade him that we'd
> get much better value for money if we bought some Athlon based PCs instead
> of Intel ones, because he thought Athlon was a gaming chip, wheras all the
> adverts showed him Intel was for all purposes..  I lost that argument,
> grudgingly, because he at least agreed with my decision that we should stick
> to a single OEM company (Dell in the end.. Hence the reason I lost the
> argument!)

You should have asked him why he employed you if he didn't respect your
technical knowledge more than his own?

I had a senior exec at a previous employer who argued with us about
buying a 2x600Mhz Ultrasparc III Sun box because he could get a 1ghz,
single CPU Pentium III box for the same money.

Now quite apart from the fact that he was want to swap 2 600Mhz 64bit
processors for a single 1Ghz 32bit processor he was also ignoring the
fact that the contract this machine was being used to fulfil stipulated
that the machine on the end of the line was running Solaris 8 on Sun
hardware.

That debate raged until the IT director of the stock exchange in
question rang this guy up and told him in no uncertain terms that if he
didn't stop acting like an arse he would have all of his contracts with
him revoked.

> I think the industry is more in the old "No one ever got sacked for buying
> IBM" situation.  No one ever got sacked for buying Microsoft because
> managers have heard of it.  

There was an article on Cnet last year about managers who had been
sacked for buying Microsoft (mostly in the banking industry).. will see
If I can find a link.

> It’s a brand name they know, and they use on
> that machine in their office, which after all doesn't crash all that often.
> It also costs them a fair amount of money, thus it must be good because
> no-one would pay that much for crap.  Besides, there are adverts on TV
> showing them that they save money by using it.

All true.  Exposure is the only way forward, get it in the door,
anywhere and build from there.


-- 
Geoffrey Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Cmed Technology