with the amount of users apple and linux OS's are generating i think it will be curtains for windows soon  

I know...it was just a random pun rofl, people will never fully migrate to any other OS than Windows

On a serious note, this article basically echoes a lot of thoughts I've always had. The dreams of getting rid of MS are fantastic in concept, at least some parts, but there are a *lot* of problems to solve to get there. And if you do solve all those problems, it's hard to imagine not basically just becoming another MS-like entity. What it comes down to is that there is tremendous advantage in standardization mixed with accountability (even if that standard is only "de facto" and proprietary, and the accountability costs money). It's hard for the open source community, or even any myriad of smaller companies to offer that. Still, I'm quite curious to see how we'll move beyond MS. I mean it has to happen eventually, right? 100, 1000 years from now, will we be booting up Windows 500 in our space rockets (or our braaaains)? It's hard to imagine...

- Oshyan

What it comes down to is that there is tremendous advantage in standardization mixed with accountability (even if that standard is only "de facto" and proprietary, and the accountability costs money). It's hard for the open source community, or even any myriad of smaller companies to offer that. Still, I'm quite curious to see how we'll move beyond MS. - Oshyan

But that's been the very problem: standardization is fine as long as it is Microsoft's version of it. Web standards have been wildly successful despite Microsoft, who has fought them every step of the way (the reluctance to move off of IE6 is just one example). Because Microsoft wouldn't work with the Open Document Format, it created its own XML-based format and then spent two years politicizing it into a "standard" that's hardly found anywhere online or outside its suite. Microsoft has two choices in the next decade:  (1) move to a *nix-based OS,  or (2) become even more closed, and start developing proprietary hardware to run its software as Apple has done. It's no secret they have to drop the legacy baggage at some point.

Unless you're running MS Office, there are no compelling reasons to use the Windows OS. You can make the same arguments for running proprietary OSX. Even under Linux, I can run any version of Office if I had to. Everything else can be had via virtualization or is not needed, e.g., myriad security products. Assuming I'm not running MS Office, why pay for OS? One reason: because you want to.

As long as you're aware of the strings attached, that's perfectly fine.

Quote from: zridling on February 01, 2010, 01:18 AM

<snip>
Unless you're running MS Office, there are no compelling reasons to use the Windows OS.
</snip>

Wrong... I can think of *several* compelling reasons other than the MS Office suite to use the Windows OS.  They might not be compelling to *you*, but that makes them no less compelling in my eyes.

Heartily agreed.

- Oshyan