Re: VFP 9 on Windows 98 SE

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Ken Dibble (balderdash_at_spongemop.com)
Date: 06/09/04 

Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2004 00:09:10 GMT

Hi Anders,

Hi Anders,

I don't have the stats, but I would bet that most of that churn
involves very large companies that recycle their stock every 2-3
years. That's a lot of computers, yes, but a relatively small number
of customers. And even those customers are wising up. That's why MS
cancelled plans to "retire" the most popular OSes in the business
world today--Win NT and Win 98, and it's why they recently announced
their new 10-year extended support cycle.

But my real point is that there's a huge disconnect between that end
of the market--big companies with short "upgrade" cycles--and my end.

At my end of the spectrum, organizations are much smaller, and much
more conservative when it comes to technology. Most have neither a
plan nor a budget for scheduled equipment replacement. They keep the
old stuff running until they can't get replacement parts anymore.

And some of us are more discriminating than others when we finally do
upgrade. When I buy a new machine for my organization, I specify Win
2000. You'll never see me buy an XP machine. Perhaps at some point I
won't be able to buy Win 2000 any more. Many people do not realize
that Microsoft still burns, ships, and sells all of its OSes except, I
believe, Win 3.11 (and that includes DOS). You just have to know where
to order it. But assume the worst--that someday I won't be able to get
Win 2000 anymore. By that time, I hope the changing realities of the
market will have compelled Microsoft to offer a secure, robust,
no-frills, un-bloated basic OS--one that does not seem to think its
mission in life is to play videos, and that does not call home to
Mommy every time I swap some parts in and out of the machine--for
organizational customers. If they haven't, then certainly by then it
will be realistic even for a sys admin of only average capabilities
like myself to convert the agency over to Linux.

It may very well be a viable strategy for a software company to
emphasize serving the high-end market--though as I mentioned, that
market is getting more conservative. But it's pretty likely that such
a company is not going to be a very good match for the majority of
much smaller organizations that exist in the world. Microsoft
considers anything with fewer than 8,000 employees to be a "small"
business--a notion that is ridiculous to most people who work in truly
small organizations. It is pretty obvious to us in this sector,
though, that MS doesn't have a clue about what we need or want--and
really doesn't care. They have their eyes on the (enter)prize. But
those of us in smaller organizations are going to throw our loyalty to
companies that really want to meet our needs--not as an afterthought,
but as their bread and butter.

Ken

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 20:55:39 +0200, "Anders Altberg"
<x_pragma@telia.com> wrote:

>Hi Ken
>In the United States and Euriopean Union there are more than 30 computers
>per 100 inhabitans. That means some 200 million machine. Yearly sales
>workdwide of new machines are well over a hundred million - nearly all with
>Windows XP. The number of machines with 7-8 year old Windows versions gets
>smaller and smaller - the machines are simply scrapped. Statistically, that
>is.
>-Anders
>
>"Ken Dibble" <balderdash@spongemop.com> wrote in message
>news:v0aac0plupbk8i13uj7geiokp2fut95fb0@4ax.com...
>> Since this is one of my favorite hobby horses, I'll just throw in a
>> few observations:
>>
>> The fact that Microsoft doesn't "support" an OS doesn't mean that it
>> will suddenly cease to work....so far. However, if you keep buying the
>> latest and greatest Microsoft OS, you may one day find that you have
>> bought an OS where that is exactly what happens. When your
>> "subscription" runs out, Microsoft will turn your OS off. This is
>> reason enough to stay off the Microsoft upgrade merry-go-round as long
>> as possible. Maybe if enough of us do that for long enough, MS will
>> get the message and adopt a different strategy.
>>
>> However, it's not even true that MS doesn't "support" Win 98. Support
>> on that OS is continued to 2006. And I'll wager even money that if the
>> business community raises yet another stink about MS's ruinously
>> expensive "lifecycle" policies in that year, it will get extended yet
>> again.
>>
>> I will also make the point that very little that is "new" in basic
>> software patterns--word processors, databases, spreadsheets--is
>> substantial. Most of it is GUI fluff. And much in the small subset of
>> new stuff that is not fluff still does not rise to the level of
>> "essential". Everything that we are doing today with this kind of
>> software was being done ten years ago--just a bit more slowly. And it
>> didn't matter that it was a bit slower then because it ran at the same
>> speed for everybody.
>>
>> The software upgrade merry-go-round is driven by the hardware upgrade
>> merry-go-round is driven by the software upgrade merry-go-round is
>> driven by the hardware upgrade merry-go-round. And yet there has been
>> surprisingly little real value added over the last decade.
>>
>> It's all about making money by convincing people that they need new
>> stuff when they don't, and even forcing them to buy the new stuff by
>> deliberately obsolescing perfectly good old stuff, because software
>> doesn't wear out. If you're an auto mechanic you can go to jail for
>> such marketing practices. I think we ought to look seriously at
>> applying the same rules to the software industry.
>>
>> Yeah, that's kind of harsh, isn't it? But I'm not in the software
>> "business". I work in-house for a not-for-profit agency, and the
>> dynamics of software economics that put bread on the tables of most of
>> the people who participate in these public forums have the opposite
>> effect on me. I'm on a tightly limited, slow-growth budget. I have to
>> support old OSes on old machines. And there are tens of thousands of
>> agencies like mine out there. Maybe I represent the oft-cited "silent
>> majority" of VFP developers who never make a public post. And maybe
>> the reason they don't is the high intimidation factor represented by
>> the posts criticizing yours.
>>
>> In any case, I'm getting pretty tired of hearing that the whole thing
>> is about "enterprises" and "cutting edge technology" and "keeping up"
>> with the latest short-term trends. It's not. Most of it is much more
>> like what I'm doing--delivering solid, reliable, no-frills
>> applications that provide excellent value for relatively low cost, to
>> customers whose requirements change slowly, when they change at all.
>> And it is both insensitive to the importance of REALLY small
>> businesses and the not-for-profit sector, as well as insulting to the
>> intelligence of tens of thousands of people who know the difference
>> between marketing hype and genuine value, to constantly be put down by
>> people whose economic interest lies in cranking up the merry-go-round.
>>
>> Ken Dibble

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