Idea 1: Microsoft claims that TCO of Windows is cheaper then Linux.
I'm basing this one off of Paul Thurrott's article here, which is about Microsoft claiming the same thing it keeps claiming.
But what really caught my attention was a claim made in the comments (then fought over in typical flame war fashion) that Microsoft has cheaper support (Software Assurance $800 vs. $3,000 for RedHat Linux) over the alternatives. Now it is extremely dubious to base your numbers on a comment in a thread, but it did get me thinking. About a book I once read. By Bill Gates.
The book of course, is about a decade old. But the technology agnostic advice still stands true. The book pretty much talks about a digital nervous system and what that entails. But the part that pertains to TCO suggests using off-the-shelve-components and other similar ideals.
The book urges the use of such cheap components for companies. And then Microsoft does this TCO campaign every so often.
The only hole in it is the large companies who manage their own software extensively. Silicon Valley giants who run Linux, BSD, and variants of such. But maybe this fits in with the teachings of the decade old book?
I'm not going to claim one is cheaper right now, because I'm not currently running a company that needs to crunch those numbers but it is all very interesting. Microsoft positions itself as cheaper then the competition all the time. And that holds into the writings of one of its founders.
Still, with big companies that run their own maintenance and the cost of Linux maintenance coming down this gets harder to do, but it is very interesting all around. Very interesting indeed.
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