Hi all,

You'll notice that I don't post often to this list, but I find it hard not to comment in this case.

For those who don't know me, I write for a number of magazines including Internet and Linux Format, I've worked in most IT roles from techie grunt to technical director, in companies from two employees to many thousands, and I now work for myself, with a number of clients from small Norfolk concerns to a multinational travel conglomerate. My own Web servers are all Linux-based, and my desktop and laptop dual-boot between Windows (XP and 2000) and Red Hat 7.2. My main client right now has a large Oracle database running on Solaris, with the file and print services Windows 2000-based and all desktops running Windows 2000 Pro. We develop in FoxPro (don't ask) and VB6/VB.NET.

hmmm. It was some time since I was in SYS but when I was there it was obvious from the start that there was a bunch of syskids who loved MS and a bunch of syskids who didn't. This split appeared to be similar amongst lecturers and postgrads.

I studied there from 1988-91, and worked in tech support from 1991-95, and at the time we had the bunch of syskids who liked Macs and Unix (myself included) and the bunch of syskids and others who didn't (CPC included :-) I wasn't so dumb to realise, however, that there was a world outside the Macintosh and the Sun-3, and in fact in the university vacations I spent my days looking after Novell NetWare networks and IBM PCs running MS-DOS 3.3 (in university term-time I spent my days annoying the computing centre by asking them nicely for things and then humiliating them in public when they turned us down for dumb reasons).

I'd like to hope that nowadays with linux more common than it was then that there would be more anti-ms syskids than for MS.

And I'd like to think that universities produce individuals who are open-minded enough to choose the right tool for the job.

Whether thats the case or not, I'd be very impressed if anything MS could put on would sway someone who's against MS into liking them. Those who already love MS will turn up and get their loving (freebees, sign up as beta testers etc.)

If you're not open to the idea that something other than your favourite technology is the right thing to use in a particular business situation, you're at best stupid and at worst unemployable. Why are people against Microsoft? It's not because their products are crap, it's because they're portrayed as bullies (which is often justified, but which is sometimes done just because they're Microsoft).

One of the many hats I wear is as a judge on the UK Networking Industry Awards. We do barrack Microsoft sometimes, because there's no denying they're far from being a perfect company. However, when I gave the award in one of the categories I was judging last year to Microsoft, my fellow judges had their tongues firmly in their cheeks when they said: "Blimey, you gave it to Microsoft!". My reason for awarding it? Their product was better than the others in its category, and the reason my colleagues inserted tongue into cheek before invoking speech was that they knew that despite the bull you hear, Microsoft does occasionally knock out a gem of a product. We used to have the same thing in the networking industry with Cisco, in fact - some of their gear was utter crap and Bay Networks (now Nortel) in particular used to knock spots off them. But from time to time you had to admit that Cisco was doing it best, and gave them a good review.

Incidentally, one of the other hats I wear is as a judge for the British Computer Society programming competition (and some equivalents that we're running this year for IBM and for Barclays Capital). As it happens, I write all my sample solutions using GCC on Linux, because it's the platform I'm used to from my days at UEA learning how to program in C from Ian Marshall :-)

...

We have just been infomred that SYS have invited Micorosft to come with their promotional bus to UEA where they are going to show off all their really interesting stuff to unsuscpecting and highly guillable SYSkiddies.

Some ex-SYS types may remember that I've been along from time to time to do a lecture in the Professional Practice course for final year students. The point I always attempt to make in such talks is that university teaches you a great deal about the theory of how stuff works, but gives little or no exposure to current real-world technologies. Any understanding at all of real-world technologies, or even (in this case) knowledge of the current products on the market, is of benefit to the new graduate sitting in an interview trying to look more knowledgable than the next guy. Obviously in an ideal world one would have the ability to meet a number of manufacturers, but the usual rules apply: the biggest, richest ones are the ones most likely to spend the time and money doing this type of visit.

I would hope that many people on this list are grown up enough to realise that if you're going to produce the best solution for your company/employer/client, you have to be technology-independent and vendor-independent, at least at the start of the decision process. And it's true that there are factors other than how good a technology is when you're deciding - right now, for instance, I have a dilemma because the best product (in terms of technology and performance) for a project I'm working on is produced by a company whose prices are exorbitant and whose pre- and after-sales service sucks.

When you're a technology journalist you learn to be independent. I've nearly been shot in previous years for standing up in a Novell press conference (after they'd paid for my business class ticket to Atlanta) and saying "If you were Microsoft you'd give away NDS for NT for free, not charge your proposed $70 per seat, and you'd corner the market". Interestingly, the following day I had a one-to-one with one of their VPs who told me he'd been trying to tell them the same thing for weeks. There are valid reasons for being negative about Microsoft - the most obvious in recent years being Windows NT 4, which was as far from being a stable operating system as Concorde is from being a quiet, economical commuter jet. But they didn't get where they are today (and nor did Cisco, and nor did BT, and nor did British Airways, and so on for any other company that people automatically get negative about) by being universally rubbish.

Regards,

Dave C