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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely hope that HN will not turn into another Slashdot.

Having said that, if you have some substantial argument to back (or challenge) this point, let's hear them.

I will offer a backing point: Microsoft technology rarely comes up on HN or Techcrunch. Not that it's being despised, it's more like hackers and entrepreneurs don't seem to care. Making a leap of faith we will conclude that those are the people who will shape the future, and conclusion of Microsoft's irrelevance is within reach.

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For the sake of balance I will also offer a counter-point: Microsoft has quality server stack.

  * C# is making progress towards python in friction-free coding
  * .NET has great performance and decent set of libraries
  * Visual Studio is a good IDE for small-medium projects
  * Windows Server 2008 is a modern, solid OS. It's also reasonably priced 
    - Web Edition (which is what this crowd cares about the most) is about $400-$450 if memory serves. 
  * You can also have pay-as-you-go http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/licensing/default.mspx

agreed - all the above stuffs helps you to build new products but then you need customers to buy it and if they dont put money in your pocket because they want something that is cross platform and open source then these stuff won't sell or help you to survive. MS has to change the attitude and the path - just like they have to bow down to ODF couple of days a go they have to do the same with all their products.

In other words, you are saying that increasingly pervasive connectivity adds a lot more emphasis on interoperability and the good old lock-in is not as convincing anymore. I'll buy that.

flexibility and understanding the change is the source of progress and survival ... read "Microsoft Should Know Money Can’t Buy Love" at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/microsoft-should-kn...

A downmod? Good grief.

No arguments to counter my point then, I suppose?

- The point implies (correctly, I think) that Python still is ahead.

- I'd be willing to argue the "decent set of libraries" point but the .NET libraries still can't compare to those available for perl, python, et al. And .NET only runs on Windows computers (Mono notwithstanding, but installation and maintenance of Mono is still a significant drag on the workload.)

- Server 2008 may be the best OS in the MS world now, but the quality and price still lag far behind Linux/BSD, particularly considering the anti-features (licensing and DRM overhead, for example) of MS OSes.

- You can also think of Ubuntu as having a pay-as-you-go option: Purchase price: free. Pay-as-you-go: free.

Care to back that "DRM overhead" up with data? I have measured performance of win2008 vs win2003, there is certainly no degradation, and there was no DRM in 2003.

So?

also read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198437

the history repeats itself - what microsoft did to ibm - google and apple are doing to microsoft - so to survive ms has to do the same what ibm did for survival - i.e. change in leadership, change in vision and change in path.... unless this happens ms is on the way Non-MS.

let's see whether i can explain properly - the biggest market of 21st century is asian market along with brazil and russia. people over there are increasingly using open source stuff only - linux is becoming popular day by day so much so that government organization only want open source solutions. Also very few know that most of the hotmail users also have gmail as their primary email app. More and more people are using open source docs like Openoffice or StarOffice (free with google app) ... online web-app is also becoming popular (google doc , zoho etc.). MySql is way too popular than anyone can ever imagine. BRIC countries are 3rd world countries and they cant afford XBOX - also this gaming box from MS is not doing that well in north america either. So I wonder if MS stays the way it is right now then in 5 years I don't see anybody buying anything from MS. do you?

Maybe the following answer is not what you would like to hear, but anyway:

I am a Microsoft customer. I use Windows XP at home, which I am fully satisfied with, it never crashed and I haven't had any virus in four years. Maybe I am lucky, but I really had zero problems with it. I also use Microsoft Office 2000, which I consider a very good software.

In work, we also run Windows XP, and developing software using Visual Studio 2008, which I consider a very good development tool.

Other than that, I mostly use third party shareware and open source software.

If I will buy something from MS in the future, you ask? I will very propably buy Windows again with new computer I will purchase. Any other questions? ;-))

I recently recomended at my project that we should be using regular text files for documentation over word docs. I was looked at like I grew two heads. The only MS product I use outside of work is my xbox 360 which (in my opinion) is a great product. I will surely by the next model in 5 years.

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