Text 44973, 50 rader
Skriven 2008-04-06 11:35:28 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 44972 av TOM WALKER (1:123/140)
Ärende: U'U keyboard
====================
TOM WALKER -> CHARLES SCAGLIONE wrote:
 CS>> There are alternatives to Microsoft.  However, without viable
 TW> competition, M
 CS>> will never change their behavior.  In the business world and for the
 TW> most pa
 CS>> in Government, Windows is dominant.  But we're beginning to see their
 TW> domina
 CS>> lessen.

 CS>> Are you ready to switch Tom? :)

 TW> Wel with my Experience believing al lthe LINUX propoganda only to be
 TW> totaly disappointred I will say Decidedly NO at thsi point in time.
 TW> But deep down i nmy Heart I am eagerly awaiting for a REAL alterniatiave
 TW> to cole along. :_)

I suspect that the 'real alternative' is on the horizon, but it is coming in a
stealthy manner... it's being put together piecemeal by online services- by
Google and others.

I already use Google Mail, contacts (part of Mail) and Calendar... in the past
couple of weeks I started using the presentation part of Google Docs to prepare
slides for a talk rather than using MS Office's Powerpoint or Apple's Keynote.
Adobe's getting into the action with an online photo album/photo editing
'Photoshop Express'... and there are more and more online services already
available or coming up soon.

Moves are being made, by Google and others, to give users the ability to store
documents and operate these services even if they're not on the Network.

None of these services are as full-features as typical desktop applications--
but they're more than enough for many users and for many/most projects... and
most are free.

Moreover, they don't care what OS someone is using, and allow users to move
pretty much seemelessly from computer to computer- home to work to laptop to
vacation- and in many cases even to mobile device.

A decade ago, Bill Gates was panicked by a Netscape vision where the OS didn't
matter because everything was in the browser- the result was bundling IE with
Windows and more or less killing Netscape; it's taken an extra decade, but we
seem to be close to the point where desktop operating system is becoming
irrelevent.
-- 
--
- email: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
- website: http://www.zisman.ca

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