… and all the boring Win brands. Which one would you choose?
Yes, (she is) truly inspiring 
Related posts:
SAP TechEd: Windows is Out. But Windows are In.
Posted on October 14, 2008 ·
My fellow Enterprise Irregulars are at SAP’s TechEd in Berlin, Germany. David Terrar is apparently in Windows-prison, as he observed:
Here in the Bloggers Room at SAP TechEd 2008, the Windows users (of which I am one) are consigned to one end of the room. We have to take regular abuse from the Mac fanboys. As you can see, the score is Apple Mac 8 Windows based PCs 3. In the blog world we M$ types appear to be a dying breed.
I told him he’d probably get a very different count in the keynote theater, where the real corporate folks are, who don’t have a choice – unless they all work for Citrix. 
Photo credit: David Terrar
But there’s something else strikingly obvious on this photo. Windows is out. But Windows are in – I mean the real ones, letting daylight in. This is something we’ll never get in the US. I almost forgot the luxury of having windows (not the MS-kind) is quite normal in Europe.
Apple vs. Windows Pricing: It’s All About TCO
Posted on August 6, 2008 ·
The debate du jour: should you pay twice as much for a Mac than you’d have to pay for a Windows PC?
(Data source: NPD)
Just about everyone attributes the price difference to Apple’s marketing, Brand Power. But I think by focusing on out-of-the box prices, they all miss the boat: it’s all about TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.
I started to chronicle the hassle of just running a Vista PC and dealing with random, unexplainable failures, but more or less gave up. Compare this to the anecdotal evidence of my Mac-user friends, who, despite occasional hiccups all agree: it just works.
I don’t know how you value your time (heck, sometimes I wonder about mine), but most computer users probably are not in the minimum wage bracket. Considering the days and nights I spent trying to fix this Vista monster, I’m quite sure I would have been better off paying more upfront for a Mac. My TCO would have been lower. And not even my Virtual Invoices can make up for that.
See today’s debate on: Apple Watch, DailyTech, TechBlog, Mark Evans, Microsoft Watch, Technovia , jkOnTheRun, The Digital Home, Hardware 2.0,
Update: Finally, some sanity – here’s Jake:
Focusing on out-the-door pricing seems too narrow to ask such a broad question. It would be very interesting to see a comparison of expected full costs (not just OOTB) for each of the major O/S.
Steve Ballmer Receives the Egg-treatment in Budapest
Posted on May 19, 2008 ·
Just as soon as the Microsoft CEO started his speech at the Corvinus University (my Alma Mater), a protesting student wearing a “Microsoft=Corruption” shirt stood up and threw eggs at the Microsoft CEO. Not exactly a sign of the famous “Hungarian hospitality”.
(If your feed does not show embedded videos, please click through to watch it in the blog. Update: Originally I had the index.hu video here, but as it started to slow down, I uloaded it to youtube and am now embedding the youtube version. A day later this vid received over 223K views)
On second thought, perhaps it was fair enough. After all, his boss, Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in the face ten years ago in Belgium – Ballmer only got some of the ingredients. 
Another ironic moment comes at 0:38m in the video: as other students stand up to give way to the departing egg-thrower, the camera closes in on one of them holding up his shiny Apple – and not the pie variety.
Update: The search is on for Ballmer’s replacement.
Another video from a different angle, and it ends with the Gates Pie Scene.
Update#2: OK, enough of the fun part. As the story circulates people start wondering what may be the background, and since the only sources are in Hungarian, here’s a summary of the circumstances:
A Hungarian Government bid, worth $25B Hungarian Forints, roughly $157M was allegedly skewed towards MS. (A ‘competitive’ bid with wording that all but ensures only Microsoft meets the requirements.) A Hungarian Watchdog Body (sort of like the FTC in the US) challenged the bidding process via the Court system, and a trial date was set for today. The trial was suddenly and unexpectedly rescheduled just as Ballmer arrived in Budapest. So there may be a perception of the Bully lobbying there.
That said, they could have protested with banners, without eggs. Or displaying more of those flashy Macbooks.
Windows Seven in 2010. Does Anyone Still Care?
Posted on July 20, 2007 ·
So the next OS from Microsoft will be Windows Seven (where’s Windows 6?) – does anyone still care?
I simply don’t get it: Vista is barely out, nobody seems to like it, CIO’s refuse to upgrade, analyst firms tell them to wait, individual users who tried it switch back to XP, others time their new PC purchase so they can still get an XP machine – generally speaking Vista was as poorly received as the ill-fated Windows ME.
Apple is gaining market share, the major computer manufacturers are offering Linux PC’s, the Web OS concept is getting popular, applications are already on the Web – can anyone clearly see the shape of personal computing in 2012? (Yes, I know MS plans for 2010, I’m just adding the customary delay.) Will it still matter what OS we use to get on the Internet? How can Microsoft be so out of touch?
Considering the resistance to Vista ( see this Computerworld article on making XP last for 7 years) why would the world want to upgrade switch to yet-another Windows OS in five years?
Of course I’m not saying nobody cares. This hypnotized crowd certainly does. 
Update (7/23): ZDNet’s David Berlind is asking the same question.
Update (7/25): Why ‘Seven’ and Not SP1?
Update (8/9): a very good analysis by eWeek: Broken Windows
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