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
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