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Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

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Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#21

Post by rodh257 »

duck wrote: post #15

Exchange - gmail I see this comparison so often, but it really is apples and oranges. I love gmail and use it daily, but it isn't a replacement for Exchange. First, gmail is just a client... you have no control over the server aspect with Google. That is fine for a lot of small businesses, but for most mid to large companies that isn't an option. Does Exchange cost a lot of money? Yes, but with that you get a first c…

For business, I'd definitely choose exchange over Gmail. Especially exchange 2010 with the great web app.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#22

Post by rodh257 »

Their competitors may have free up front costs, but the purchase price isn't the only cost a business has when they adopt a product.

For startups who are short on cash, these free up front solutions are good because thats what they lack, cash. For big enterprises they aren't going to go with something that costs them heaps in training, customization, has no support etc (not picking on anything in particular) just because there is no up front costs. Also, the Google apps version of Gmail isn't free if you have more than 50 staff.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#25

Post by oomkiller »

patio11 wrote: post #12

A desktop OS my mother can use. Sorry Ubuntu. You've sudo apt-got my-heart but, well, reality isn't coextensive with our aspirations.

My grandfather uses Ubuntu daily on his old Dell. He uses it to check emails, surf the web, and play hearts on Yahoo. Works quite well, and I don't have to worry about viruses or malware. Before Ubuntu, he had an old P3 600Mhz machine and I ran Xubuntu on it, and it was still fairly easy to use.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#26

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

_delirium wrote: post #4
carbocation wrote: post #2

For me, Office is the killer. You cannot seamlessly transfer things such as PPTX files from Office 2007 to OpenOffice. This is a critical problem, and is the thing keeping me on Windows. All of the scientists at my institution in my field use Microsoft software for presentations and for some amount of data exchange (the 'high-level', post-processing stuff--the actual data lives in flatfiles or databases). This, unfor…

That used to be the case for me, but around here the Office ecosystem has been increasingly fragmenting between versions--- some departments are all on Windows 7 with Office 2007, but quite a lot of machines are still on XP with Office 2003, and some folks (esp. on laptops) are using the Mac version of Office. The interoperability mess that causes is pushing people away from sending out Office file formats at all (mo…

I think the problem is worse than that.

I've taken Word 97 files and tried to load them into Office 2007 only to have the document formatting be completely messed up. I mean, I've come to expect that when loading a Word file into OpenOffice, but to have it fail from one version of Word to another is pathetic.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#28

Post by steveklabnik »

patio11 wrote: post #12

A desktop OS my mother can use. Sorry Ubuntu. You've sudo apt-got my-heart but, well, reality isn't coextensive with our aspirations.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but my parents have been on Ubuntu for two years now, and they've called me for help one time during, when they bought a new printer.

They migrated from the Mac, actually, so it was just "here's the new Firefox icon, have at it." and they were good to go.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#29

Post by blehn »

patio11 wrote: post #12

A desktop OS my mother can use. Sorry Ubuntu. You've sudo apt-got my-heart but, well, reality isn't coextensive with our aspirations.

I've been thinking about setting my mom up with Jolicloud (http://www.jolicloud.com/), which I believe is based on Ubuntu.

She has an HP netbook with an 8GB SSD, and WinXP gives her "running out of space" warnings all the time. She doesn't download anything, but her pagefile.sys file quickly grew to 2GB. After limiting the size of the pagefile, clearing a bunch of other temp files, and uninstalling everything I could, the problem came back within a few months. I think it's an indication of the collective ignorance of Microsoft and PC manufacturers that they would sell a "netbook" that can't reliably browse the web.

Re: Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

#30

Post by squidsoup »

carbocation wrote: post #2

For me, Office is the killer. You cannot seamlessly transfer things such as PPTX files from Office 2007 to OpenOffice. This is a critical problem, and is the thing keeping me on Windows. All of the scientists at my institution in my field use Microsoft software for presentations and for some amount of data exchange (the 'high-level', post-processing stuff--the actual data lives in flatfiles or databases). This, unfor…

One thing I've noticed is that corporate adoption of wikis is slowly chipping away at MS Word's marketshare. There aren't many times when you genuinely need a word processor today.

We still use MS Excel quite a bit - it's a good program.

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