I gotta say, I think you put too much weight on piracy. As has been mentioned around here before, most people are very happy with their older machines and see no need to upgrade either hardware or software. For most people, a P4 running XP is all they will need for the rest of their life in all honesty, until the machine dies on them. Plus, if you ask the average person on the street about Vista, they will tell you that it sucks or that they have no idea what you are asking them.... that's a fact that is killing the sales of their bread and butter.

Office, their other bread and butter, suffers the same problem Vista suffers; people are perfectly happy with any older version they have. M$ made a new filetype to try to curb that fact, but it doesn't seem to have mattered, most people still just pass around the old formats. For the average user, what they have on their machine now is just fine. M$ took their 2 main income sources, drastically changed the interfaces and pissed off their clients, it's not really a surprise it's not working out. Piracy has nothing to do with all that.

Interestingly, when Vista came out, M$ touted it being impossible to pirate (that turned out to be untrue, but I'll go on anyway). I read from countless sources how that would actually hurt their business model. I realize, it's not THAT big of a problem compared to the hardware and software incompatibility, but it's still interesting to see it in play. The majority of users hate Vista, and most seem pretty impartial about Office....... piracy has played little part in that.

I think, more so than anything, consumers are just not buying new machines, because they don't need them, don't want Vista, or are just not spending their cash because we're entering a depression. M$ loses money on the vast majority of their other products and services and they prop them all up with Windows and Office sales. Now that those sales are drying up, it's time to trim some fat. I really think we'll see the fall of the company under Balmer's direction too, but that's another issue entirely.

As for me, I used to pirate software like crazy. Then, one day I decided I wanted to start playing it more legit. Instead of dropping thousands of dollars on software, I just started using free and open source software, eventually converting completely to Linux and FOSS applications and I haven't looked back. I also know that I'm hardly a unique story there.

-Joe

James Finstrom wrote:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/microsoft-layoffs-live-msft

I lived a short while in Washington and knew many Microsoft employees so in a general sense Microsoft laying off 5000 people sucks but in another sense I would like to think that this is partially our (the Linux world's) doing. Having to compete with (free as in beer) software and pirates it really is hard to keep going. This shows a flaw in strategy for the Redmond folks. I would say if they did a survey especially of the 30 and under crowd about piracy 80+% would see nothing wrong with it and would not morally classify it as stealing. this mind set is really going to be the death of sold software. It is often said people don't adopt Linux because because there is no reason too when they can get the other stuff free too. We live in an age where information/data is free (as in beer) weather that was the intent of the creator or not. Just amaizing that one of the richest companies in the world is not sucking it up and eating loss for a few years. I do have to wonder though if bill gates was still at the wheel if they would eat it. Bill gates love him or hate him is a verry generous person and I believe he would have fought this over all.

James Finstrom
Rhino Equipment Corp.
http://rhinoequipment.com ~ http://postug.com
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss