I know this is risky, due to the religious nature of most folks' feelings about their computing environment, but I don't see a lot of dialog about this. No offense intended, just trying to "get the facts" ... :)

Microsoft has a section of their site called "Get the facts" (http://www.microsoft.com/getthefacts) that offers several arguments and case studies in support of their claims of the cost, time, and security benefits of running a Microsoft-only enterprise.

The "time" arguments I can easily see, as a company reinvests in software and training time and the user learns how things are done outside of an MS world, which impact the "cost" arguments, but the "security" arguments ... whew.

In our experience, with a skilled Linux administrator in a 50-system shop, the "costs" of running MS and their crazy ideas about "security" are far more expensive and damaging to us than our Linux installations have been.

My questions to you all are these:

1) When you factor in ALL of the costs of running a MS-only enterprise, including downtime due to crashing or virii or back-doors on both the support and user ends, and licensing of not just the OS but for every piece of software you want to run on each machine, and for every upgrade to all of that software and the OS ... is it really less-expensive?

2) When you see a note about a "new" security hole in an MS product (or dozens of security holes) that they are offering a patch for, do you feel like your enterprise is secure?

IMHO, these are the issues that are being glossed over by the MS "facts". Just because a huge enterprise decides it's cheaper to stick with the installed system than revamp to a different one of ANY kind (Mac, Unix, Linux, BeOS, whatever) does not mean that it will be less expensive to the functioning of their enterprise, but that when you stack up the transitional numbers it seems to be better for the stockholders.

I could argue just as effectively that the individual cost savings of eating McDonald's food for every meal justify never taking the time or provisioning the resources to become a good cook. Heck, McDonald's food is getting "healthier" all the time! At $5.00 for a meal, that sure beats burning expensive gas and working for a half-hour and buying food plus the time it takes to go to the store not to mention doing the dishes and paying for all that water and soap and all that stuff ... whew.

It's always tougher to take the "better" path, and sometimes more expensive to get started on that path than to continue downhill. But, IMXHO, the benefits of breaking the MS-dependency cycle are far too valuable to be shunted aside by a monopolistic entity that has done a lot of harm to the integrity of the computing world with their "all-cost-all-the-time" perspective.

I would say the same for ANY company that was in the same position and operated under the same set of principles. Even Red Hat! :)

Thoughts?

While I do use MS products, I also subscribe to the theory/conspiracy that these so called "security problems" are built in as a method for Microsoft to encourage people to constantly update their systems and/or upgrade to the latest products.

The single fact that MS still has Internet Explorer so embedded in the system that only a guru can effectively remove it without having a plethora of problems still has me quite anti-Microsoft. Why do I stick with it? I can't afford a Mac, and I've got about $3k in software that won't run very well on a Linux environment, if at all.

My wife and I were talking about the capabilities of Microsoft Money. That's just flat out scary. The concept of letting a Microsoft program access my bank account information, allow me to pay bills, and such... :eek:
If 50million people use Microsoft Money, and 20million of those are not very good at understanding computers and banks and such, AND the banks are using Microsoft software and OS's. All they need to do is skim a measly 10 cent off each user every month and presto, they make $1.2million a year.
It may sound far fetched, but with account interest rates and such, there is a huge amount of money each year that is tossed around via systems that round up or down when they have to deal with 10ths of a cent situations.

So maybe MS isn't that evil, but how do we know? How safe is the system against someone else doing something similar?

I'm sure there's movies made about it and such, but *shrug* maybe it's possible.

I guess a lot of people have different conspiracy types. Many believe in UFO's, others in the "mystery group" that actually runs the governments of the world.

Me? I believe in the ulterior motives of Microsoft. :)