You just don't get it. Microsoft makes no secret whatsoever about what
comes
bundled with the various OS's they produce and sell. Neither is Microsoft
under any "moral" obligation to sell any feature in any software package
You'd think MS would want to compete in the marketplace based on features
and quality of product, though. Of course, if they make money doing it the
old MS way, I can't knock them for it. Business is business.
It would be just as logical, by your argument, to complain that a cheaper
model of an automobile doesn't include Cruise Control.
No. The analogy would be if the 50k Cadillac Escalade required an upgrade to
use the reverse gear while the Honda Civic had it built in at 10K. ;o)
Granted, they'd still be selling 50K Cadillacs...
You claim to be a programmer
I program. Not sure if I'd call myself a programmer.
yet your argument lacks logic, and when
confronted with logic, you bullishly defend your illogical position. For a
programmer, the only thing worse than making a logical mistake, is defending
the illogical mistake, and not fixing it. This leads to bad software.
Letting the marketing department dictate your companies product lines also
leads to bad software (yes, I'm pointing at you Microsoft. ;o)
It is illogical to dislike Microsoft without logical reason.
They don't put quality of product at the forefront of their mission. Any
company that does that begins to get on my nerves. MS isn't alone in this,
many of the large software companies do this...namely anyone selling
'enterprise' software.
MS does some great things, they also do some infuriating things. I praise
their great things but don't defend their infuriating things. Besides, they
can take some criticism.
It is also
illogical to maintain that you "really don't get what you pay for these days
with software.
It's completely logical when you work in an organization that has spent
millions on some truly horrendous enterprise software products. It's
completely logical when you spend a year researching content management
tools and getting a pretty good look at the bloated, craptastic products out
there. It's completely logical when you find an OS product that does the
same things, but costs a fraction, and has a much livelier P2P support
group.
Now, I'm not saying commercial software = crap and OS software = great. I'm
saying price is not usually an indicator of quality of product in the
software world these days. There's truly crappy expensive software just as
there are truly amazing mid-priced software products.
As I have pointed out, you get exactly what you pay for when
buying software (at least from reputable companies like Microsoft).
We bought IIS, VS.net licenses, server licenses, workstation licenses, yet
the richest software company on the planet can't get VS.net to stop spitting
out invalid HTML nor their browser to support it. It's the simple things
like that discredot the 'reputable' comment a bit. ;o)
As for
"headaches," that is simply part of the programmer's landscape.
True, true.
If you think that the grass is greener on the "non-Microsoft" side of the
fence, you're in good company.
Yea, that was kind of my point. ;o)
It's not necessarily greener, but there's more people playing on that lawn,
it seems. ;o)
-Darrel