“A writer for the Christian Science Monitor recently
observed: “More than anything else, XP reminds me of a tourist
trap. You arrive in a foreign city, and a handsome stranger walks
up to you and says he will show you around the city. He offers to
take you to the very best shops and restaurants. But you soon
realize that he is taking you only to places that are owned by his
relatives or by someone who gives him a kickback.”Microsoft’s eXtra Proprietary go beyond mere tourism: Most users
find that with Microsoft’s Passport they cannot get out of
Microsoft Country once they enter. Is this really where you wanted
to go today?Let’s get out of this vicious trap the way we got in: by
controlling what we do with our money. If you are already running
Microsoft’s products, do the sensible thing and BOYCOTT THE
MONOPOLIST. Let Microsoft’s latest products sit in warehouses until
Microsoft comes to their senses and removes all the eXtra
Proprietary technologies they’ve been engineering over the past
several years. Wait until Microsoft offers a level playing field to
other operating systems, applications and network service
providers.”
“…’Corporate buyers look at their monthly payments to
Microsoft and they see it increase, so the progress that has been
made with our desktop applications in the consumer space is pretty
amazing. But our business model is not based on the collapse of
Microsoft — we have plenty of business opportunity in front of
that.’That’s about the same tone that Miguel de Icaza — the
co-founder of the Linux desktop company Ximian — reserved for XP.
The Ximian Desktop (which is based on the Gnome desktop) is about
the closest thing to the Windows user interface available on Linux,
so XP would seem to be real competition — but de Icaza calls XP “a
nice OS.”‘They have some nice features,” he said. “They have done some
improvements on the user interface. I think the UI is more
consistent (than previous versions of Windows).'”
WIRED: Of
Mixed Messages, Linux and XP