
Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free? - AlexMuir
Today I installed ubuntu and have been blown away by it. It actually is easy to use and works very well.<p>I'm looking at microsoft's product line and there are mature free alternatives to most stuff:<p>Windows - Linux<p>Office - open office, google docs<p>Exchange - gmail<p>I'd be worried if I was Microsoft. And I know their profit is driven by enterprise, but today's startups are tomorrow's enterprise customers.
======
kenjackson
Can Open Office and/or Google Apps access OLAP datastores as well as Excel can
SSAS? Do either versions of their word processor have programmability layers
so we can develop workflows directly in our office documents?

Across all departments we have probably close to a million lines of VBA, COM,
and VSTO code that we use most in Word and Excel. And a little for Outlook.
And I just recently, like last week, seen some incredible stuff integrating
Pivot, Silverlight, and Sharepoint. Sure it's enterprise and not Web 2.0
social web, but its the type of stuff that makes CIO cough up millions of
dollars.

We've looked at Open Office and Google Apps in years past and they were
literally at MS Office 2000 level. If all you want to do is write a memo,
Word, OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, or Notepad will work fine.

When you're in a real enterprise with real enterprise needs, the features in
Office that you think no one uses, are a huge win businesses. And once you're
using Office, BizTalk and Sharepoint just bring everything together.

And the other tool that only MS has is Visual Studio. Still hands down the
best dev environment I've used.

We should be clear. Windows has never been the only OS choice. IMO it has
always been Office that has been the key to MS dominance. And while pundits,
who generally aren't in the enterprise, think that world can move away from
Office. I think just the opposite. The new features, that aren't of general
use to Joe Schmoe, make it more invaluable for the enterprise.

~~~
SecurityMatters
I don't know about accessing OLAP databases, but it seems like a bad idea,
anyway. The programmability of OpenOffice is quite powerful and workflows can
and are automated with it.

Visual Studio is not bad for people with little understanding of development.
Unfortunately, CS schools turn out many people like that these days. I don't
know why people want tools that get in the way and slow you down as much as
Visual Studio, but it is popular.

To me, the built in unreliability of Windows is something I wonder why more
people don't focus on. Building your business processes around something that
needs proprietary tools that can disappear with little notice just seems
crazy.

~~~
NumberFiveAlive
I also don't get the built in unreliability comment, either. Windows has been
pretty darn stable since they went to the NT kernel. Really, all three main
desktop OSs are pretty stable these days. I get a BSOD on Windows 7 maybe once
every six months or so, and that's with ~8 hours a day in front of a windows
box at work. I'd rate my OSX home box just slightly less stable than that, but
when you're talking about such infrequent crashes, who really cares? These
aren't the halcyon days of Windows 95/OS 7 with half a dozen lockups a day.

~~~
SecurityMatters
I was talking about reliability, not stability. The activation Windows has
used for a while makes the product unreliable. This may not be obvious at
first. I had a client with a computer problem, which ended up needing some
replacement hardware. The computer needed reactivation, and the owner asked me
what assurance she had that it could be activated in another 3 years when some
other part died. The computer was running a very expensive piece of vertical
industry software that only ran on one version of Windows. I read everything I
could find and talked to several senior Microsoft engineers. The answer is
that nothing assures that I'll be able to activate Windows to keep a business
critical process running. I get vague statements that the engineers can't see
why Microsoft would stop the activations, but nothing I can tell someone to
bet their business on. I can understand why most people don't see this
problem. I did not see it, until prompted by a customer.

~~~
NumberFiveAlive
Ok, yeah, I've run into that before, and it is a pain. But I've heard that if
you call Microsoft they'll always reactivate a license in that situation.

------
duck
_Exchange - gmail_

I see this comparison so often, but it really is apples and oranges. I love
gmail and use it daily, but it isn't a replacement for Exchange. First, gmail
is just a client... you have no control over the server aspect with Google.
That is fine for a lot of small businesses, but for most mid to large
companies that isn't an option.

Does Exchange cost a lot of money? Yes, but with that you get a first class
messaging platform that you control.

~~~
AlexMuir
I just don't get this insistance on control over utility servers. If we take
sensitive businesses out of the equation there's really no argument for it.
How many times has gmail been down for me? Never. What about exchange/lotus
notes? At least once a month. And even when they work they're shit.

~~~
ChRoss
When you're using gmail, you also dependent on the internet connection. And my
opinion, for business email, having abc@yourcompany.com looks better than
abc@gmail.com

~~~
petervandijck
1\. You can have gmail offline easily, using a variety of clients.

2\. You can have x@yourdomain.com, no problem with gmail for business.

------
carbocation
For me, Office is the killer. You cannot seamlessly transfer things such as
PPTX files from Office 2007 to OpenOffice. This is a critical problem, and is
_the_ thing keeping me on Windows. All of the scientists at my institution in
my field use Microsoft software for presentations and for some amount of data
exchange (the 'high-level', post-processing stuff--the actual data lives in
flatfiles or databases). This, unfortunately, keeps me a bit locked in.

I suppose I could just run Wine...

~~~
_delirium
That used to be the case for me, but around here the Office ecosystem has been
increasingly fragmenting between versions--- some departments are all on
Windows 7 with Office 2007, but quite a lot of machines are still on XP with
Office 2003, and some folks (esp. on laptops) are using the Mac version of
Office. The interoperability mess that causes is pushing people away from
sending out Office file formats at all (mostly moving towards PDF), and to the
extent they do, they choose save-as for some old version of Office rather than
sending docx/pptx.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I think the problem is worse than that.

I've taken Word 97 files and tried to load them into Office 2007 only to have
the document formatting be completely messed up. I mean, I've come to expect
that when loading a Word file into OpenOffice, but to have it fail from one
version of Word to another is pathetic.

------
Khao
Personally, I don't think that any OS is even close to being what Windows is.
Maybe Macs are the closest and I believe they got a few things down better
than Windows, but this alternative isn't free either. As for Linux I have
tried different linux OSes and I see only use for them in server environments.
None of them have made me want to lose Windows completely because they weren't
as plug and play as Windows is.

Another killer point for Microsoft is the whole Visual Studio environment and
the .NET language. I haven't found a single IDE that is as powerful as Visual
Studio and the language (C# notably, but also any other .net language) is also
by far my favorite language. Compared to Java, I know that the language isn't
that much different, but because Visual Studio makes it so easy, so plug and
play, it gives you the freedom to concentrate only on the code and nothing
else. I've had bad experiences where IDEs made from Java for writing Java
software are really slow and buggy, and that's not what I've seen so far from
software written in .Net either as free or paid softwares.

~~~
squidsoup
I'm a .Net developer that has recently started working in the Java/GWT/Google
Apps ecosystem, and honestly have found Eclipse Helios to be a perfectly good
IDE. I can't honestly think of anything that it is missing - it has a unit
test runner, "intellisense", easy dependency management etc.

Eclipse also has some neat plugins like eclimd that let you run genuine vim
inside the IDE.

------
rodh257
Their competitors may have free up front costs, but the purchase price isn't
the only cost a business has when they adopt a product.

For startups who are short on cash, these free up front solutions are good
because thats what they lack, cash. For big enterprises they aren't going to
go with something that costs them heaps in training, customization, has no
support etc (not picking on anything in particular) just because there is no
up front costs. Also, the Google apps version of Gmail isn't free if you have
more than 50 staff.

------
sandGorgon
OpenOffice does not even come close to MS Office .. especially for the Excel
part.

The problem is not that XLS(X) is a better or worse format than OOXML. The
problem is that it is defacto - so if I want to be able to communicate with
the rest of the business world, I need compatibility.

Softmaker comes close, but not good enough. Plus now that OpenOffice's future
is tenuous (oracle?), I would rather buy Office or Softmaker.

~~~
koeselitz
Tiny, pretty unimportant clarification: Microsoft xlsx/docx/etcx files _are_
OOXML. When Microsoft decided to emulate OpenOffice and create a XML-based doc
format, they called it "Office Open XML" - or OOXML for short. OpenOffice, on
the other hand, uses the XML-based Open Document Format (ODF) for its files by
default. Confusing, yes, but there you are.

~~~
sandGorgon
Thanks. My bad - I frequently get confused by that.

------
melvinram
"Free" isn't the thing Microsoft should be worried about. If Twitter grows to
become 50,000 people in 10 years, they won't select Google Docs because it's
free. They'll choose it because it helps them get work done better for an
overall lower cost, and that is really what Microsoft should be worried about
because their competitive edge in most areas is eroding quickly.

For example, Android isn't going to beat Windows Mobile because it's free.
It's going to beat Windows Mobile because it's really a better OS (i.e. it's
relatively open, has more apps, improving rapidly, etc.)

~~~
AlexMuir
I agree that price isn't the issue, but by being free (to con sumers at least)
these alternatives are ubiquitous, and therefore widely recognized as better.
If they were paid for none of us would have used them, so we couldn't all
agree that they are better.

~~~
Qz
Ubuntu is hardly ubiquitous.

------
jhen095
XBox? I would be keen on any free/open source gaming consoles if anyone has
any suggestions..

~~~
AlexMuir
Good call. And the xbox 360 has proven remarkably immune to modding.

------
SomeCallMeTim
Primarily, I'd say it's application software support on Windows. Games? You
get a few working under Wine, sometimes, partly, but they're far more likely
to work well under the version of Windows they were tested with. Photo
editing? Photoshop, or even Corel PhotoPaint, leave Linux in the dust. Video
editing software? Nothing on Linux comes close to Vegas Video in features and
usability. 3d Graphics? A slew of high-end solutions on Windows; Blender is
nice on Linux, but has an exceedingly steep learning curve. There's a reason
the original company went out of business. And as much as I want to like
OpenOffice (and I do use it instead of Microsoft Office), it's too clunky
compared to Office for me to recommend to non-geeks in good faith.

And, for developers, there's a market to sell applications to. When's the last
time you saw someone making a living selling software to Linux consumers? (Web
based products are an important exception to this rule, of course, but not
everything can work well from a browser.) And as a bonus developers get to use
the best IDE available anywhere.

These are just the needs I've had, for which I've actively looked for software
on Linux to fill. Every single time the software available has been pathetic
compared to the professional offering.

It's hard work getting that final level of polish on a piece of software that
brings it from "it kinda works" to "it works really well." That's what's
typically missing from open source apps: The push to make something really
easy to use and solid. Frankly not enough professional applications reach that
stage, but the ones I mention above all do.

Firefox is one of the few apps in the open source community to really reach
that level of polish. Google Chrome is another. Thunderbird is another. There
are a dozen other free programs I use, but none of them really feels polished
-- they're good enough to get the job done, but only just. And if more things
happen "in the cloud," that may be all people need in the future.

But until "the cloud" is brought to my house on fiber at gigabit speeds, I'd
like to keep doing my video editing on a local system, thank you. And until
it's less expensive to get a WiMax or 4G or whatever-new-technology wireless
connection, I'd like the computing to stay in my laptop as well.

~~~
dagw
I'm sorry, but saying that Blender is the only 3D app for Linux is simply
incorrect. Maya, XSI and Houdini plus several other professional 3D apps all
run on Linux.

~~~
eccp
"Linux infrastructure was heavily used in Avatar's graphics rendering done by
Weta Digital [...] The Data Center of Weta Digital was re-built in 2008 and
consists of 34 racks and more than 4,000 Hewlett-Packard blade servers with a
104TB of RAM. Ubuntu is at the core of all of this, running on all of the
rendering nodes, and 90% of the desktops at Weta Digital, according to Paul
Gunn, the data center's systems administrator."

[http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-
linux-...](http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-linux-used-
making-avatar)

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
3d rendering isn't what I need. I need 3d models for games.

------
patio11
A desktop OS my mother can use. Sorry Ubuntu. You've _sudo apt-got my-heart_
but, well, reality isn't coextensive with our aspirations.

~~~
AlexMuir
This was what I thought until I installed ubuntu. Maybe it's the honeymoon
period, but it just works. I doubt your mum is doing heavy graphics work or
playing games and those are the only two things that are keeping me on win 7.
The interface ubuntu is nice, it's stable and programs can be installed in one
click.

I'm not saying its perfect, just that it's much, much better than I thought.

~~~
konad
wait until she buys "garden designer 5" from Wal-Mart

~~~
patio11
The exotic technology need which required an engineer to cast magic spells
last time was, ahem, wireless. I know, not Ubuntu's fault, but Mom doesn't
care _why_ it is a paperweight. She doesn't know what a driver is.

------
jsz0
The biggest thing Microsoft provides is ease of management in large
environments. If you're dealing with thousands of computers in different
departments/locations with different administrative/technical requirements
nothing beats a managed Windows environment. There are other things which may
not be as clear cut such as security, support, legacy support, software
ecosystem, etc.

------
iuguy
Being a tech driven outfit, we have people that like Macs, like *BSD, like
Windows (except Vista, we all hated Vista) and even tinkerers with fringe
OSes.

We tried Ubuntu in the workplace for admin staff at the same time as Vista.
They preferred Ubuntu to Vista, but really wanted XP.

Because of the mixed environment (and the problems with running mixed Office
2003/7) we moved to OpenOffice. Most people are comfortable with it to a
lesser or greater degree, generally those not running Windows do better, but
it allows us to do things that we could never do in a sole Windows
environment. We keep an Office 2007 licence around in case anyone needs to use
.docx etc.

Having said that we're looking at Office 2010 as the split office environment
compatibility issues no longer apply and it does look light years ahead of Go-
OO.

Google docs is fine for real time collaboration, but Google Talk is essential.

I'd also take business Gmail over Exchange any day. Calendars, Gtalk, Docs,
everything. It's just so much better. For us, privacy can be addressed through
policy, although that might not apply for everyone.

------
Shakattack
The last line is what's most important.

So many people keep buying Office because it's all they've ever known, and it
works. And you see that much more on the older side of 40. But for the future
generations, that do know about OpenOffice and GoogleDocs, well why would they
pay for Office?

Look at actual computer sales too. Windows obviously has an overwhelming
market share, but look at colleges. When incoming freshmen are looking at what
to buy, not many are saying "I really want that new Windows 7 Dell laptop!".
Instead everyone wants the sleek, sexy MacBooks - I'd say anywhere from
60-70%. College students today are the consumers of the future, and if they
buy Mac for college they're probably going to stick to Macs for a long time.

Microsoft isn't retarded though (okay maybe Balmer is), they know the
situation. Zune, Xbox, Microsoft retail stores? You think Microsoft needed
that 10 years ago?

------
usaar333
Things that force me to keep windows installed (not all MS products, but in a
sense require you to have windows):

1) Powerpoint - Impress can't even import many powerpoint presentations
correctly, and offers far less pre-made themes,. and is overall very weak
competitively. (In general, the entire Office suite wins over the
alternatives; the powerpoint/impress difference though really stands out).

2) Games. - You can't play 95+% of FPSs on linux.

3) Laptops seem to work better with Win7 than Linux (Kubuntu), in terms of
input/out (I'm using a Dell). The linux touchpad drivers are lacking
TouchCheck, so accidental tapping while typing is a huge issue. Plugging into
an external monitor is not automatic.

4) Full-screen flash remains screwy on linux.

~~~
pacak
1) Never used both of them, can't say here

2) Actually you can play most of them, at least those without copy protection.
<http://winehq.com>

3) That's because Dell made drivers for win and didn't for linux. They can't
hire one full day linux programmer? Maybe they do not want my money?

4) Works for me.

~~~
usaar333
2) Wow, I had no idea so many were gold rated. Now if only they could get
office working, I'd never have to use windows again on my desktop. :)

3) Are there any laptops with such features that work very well with Linux?

4) What distro to you use? Both of my computers have issues where the full
screen window appears behind the browser (and switching back to windowed mode
fails) - I'm on kubuntu 10.04.

~~~
koeselitz
4) I've never seen that problem on Gnome - which I use daily with both Ubuntu
10.04 and Fedora 13. Sounds like that's a problem with KDE.

Edit: actually, I've seen _similar_ problems with Flash on Linux in 64-bit. It
should be noted that the version of Flash for 64-bit Linux is atrocious at the
moment; the 32-bit is far superior. Don't know if that's your trouble.

------
byoung2
_I'd be worried if I was Microsoft._

I'd be worried too:

Windows Mobile - Android

IIS - Apache

.NET - PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc

SQL Server - MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc

~~~
trezor
While Windows Mobile is in a sorry state, I'm not really too convinced by the
rest of your list.

IIS is believe it or not a very good webserver, fewer exploits than Apache and
just as extensible. And you can extend it with .NET-code. No need for that
icky C to do that.

.NET is a very good development platform with lots of stuff happening. PHP?
Really? Of all things horrible, you mentioned PHP? Microsoft at least had the
balls to kill their MS PHP (aka classic ASP). Java? Seems like Oracle intends
to kill it utterly. Python and Ruby? You mean those languages which _also_
runs on .NET?

SQL Server is unimaginable better featured and stable compared to MySQL, plus
it has tooling support which makes using PostgreSQL seem like the dark ages.
And unlike MySQL its performance wont drop dead once your databases surpasses
the system's available memory. People using SQL Server aren't doing "clever"
things like "sharding", because it breaks relational integrity, and frankly,
it isn't needed. SQL Server just works.

Microsoft does really have a lot of good stuff on the table. Maybe the FOSS
options are sufficient for your needs, but that doesn't automatically apply to
everyone.

~~~
gmac
You're setting up a straw man if you argue that the _least_ good item on the
FOSS list is less good than the MS equivalent. You need to show that for the
_best_ item on the list.

For example, my experience with MySQL is mixed, but PostgreSQL is a beautiful,
beautiful thing. So here it seems to come down to the tooling you need (I
can't comment on this: I've no SQL Server experience).

~~~
byoung2
I would even argue that even if the FOSS alternative is inferior, it is more
attractive than the MS option because of the price. Look at this:
<http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx> vs this:
<http://www.mysql.com/downloads/>

------
flgb
Products that work well with lots of other Microsoft products.

This is a particularly wicked problem for enterprises that have built a lot of
custom line-of-business systems that are inextricably tied up in Microsoft's
technology.

------
ElbertF
Keyboards. That's about it.

~~~
trafficlight
I also love the IntelliMouse. Version 3 to be specific.

------
groaner
Support.

~~~
ankushnarula
Agreed.

~~~
AlexMuir
Why is anyone up voting 'agreed'? If you agree, just vote for the comment
surely?

~~~
Terretta
Why is anyone voting up "good call"[1]? Agreed, good call: both sound like
vote up.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668060>

~~~
AlexMuir
The substance of that comment is that the xbox 360 has not been cracked open
like the classic xbox.

------
jaytee_clone
Things that I don't need to get separately when I buy a computer.

I'm not advocating for Microsoft. In fact, I use Linux, Open Office, and
Gmail. But for regular consumer, they just want something that comes in one
package and works without additional effort. That's why iPad is hitting the
spot, because it's even more packaged than a Microsoft PC. Microsoft couldn't
careless about Ubuntu, but they should definitely be worried about iPad (or
packaged computing device in general).

------
lelele
Have you been blown away by Ubuntu? Wait until its next release and watch your
hardware and/or software stop working.

If I was Microsoft, I wouldn't be worried that much. GNU/Linux is not a
business, thus MS products will keep having a grip on gray suites for a long
time. Microsoft has the resources to look after its OS. Startups thrive on
free-software, but once the pointy haired bosses outnumber the hackers in
them, the switch to enterprise friendly software is unavoidable.

~~~
koeselitz
Microsoft doesn't have very many resources compared to what Linux (and even
Ubuntu) does. There are more people who use Linux than any other operating
system in the world, and more developers working on it than on any other
software project in the world. It gets more eyes and sees more development.

If there's anything for Microsoft to be worried about, it's that: you can't
_buy_ that level of active development. The work that goes into the Linux
kernel alone takes thousands of developers around the world and manages tens
of thousands of changes to the code _every day_. No company could _ever_ do
that on the traditional level.

That's what Google means: they've been figuring out a few ways of harnessing
some of that extraordinary power for enterprise. Microsoft still works hard
and turns out a good product, but I think there's a reason they have to pay so
much more and work so much harder to develop something that is still perceived
by the market as mediocre. You say the switch to 'enterprise' software is
unavoidable - but Google, one of the largest and most successful companies of
our time, recently dropped 'enterprise' operating systems in favor of their
own version of an _open source_ operating system when they made the decision
to say that employees couldn't use Windows unless they got manager approval.

Having market share over document formats and things like that will preserve
Microsoft's position for a while, but how long? The fact is that development
on the old model - behind closed doors, by a team hired by a company,
specifically for company goals - has been shown to be slow and outmoded. The
companies that are really succeeding now are companies that realize this.

~~~
lelele
I agree to some extent, however I have some doubts. Namely, Linux has a big
developer base, however it's a bazaar: features into the kernel come and go,
as support for hardware does. Grey suits do not like bazaars. Yes, Google has
moved away from Microsoft, but that could be because they saw it as a
competitor.

The Microsoft advantage is that they are business-oriented, and they provide
the kind of support and services businesses expect: boring problems solved,
backward compatibility, etc.

I stand on the Linux's side, but we'll see.

------
NumberFiveAlive
No one's really mentioned some of their heavy hitting Enterprise stuff other
than Exchange and Office, like Dynamics AX. That type of stuff has very little
to fear from FOSS, and more to fear from companies like Oracle and SAP, which
are going nowhere.

Here's a post with some recent numbers:

[http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/07/28...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/07/28/by-
the-numbers-redux.aspx)

------
yekmer
Open Office sucks compared to Microsoft office, I switch to Microsoft when I
want to prepare a fancy office document, or open and edit docx files
correctly. And secondly, to try if my application works correctly on sucking
ie. That is all, I am so happy with Ubuntu

------
Adam503
more readable fonts

~~~
olalonde
Couldn't agree more. When are we going to see nice font rendering on Linux?

~~~
frou_dh
After you spend a solid week researching and tweaking, it might be nice, but
not great.

------
jamesbritt
OpenOffice is still way to wonky in handling .doc and docx files. And Word is
still way easier to use.

I do nearly all my work on Linux, but I would never attempt a serious
OpenOffice document; I'd use Word on a VMware instance of Vista first.

------
bradhe
A suite of development tools that are performant and easy to use on a platform
that is scalable with a community that is (reasonably) sane.

------
TechStuff
Q: What does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?

A: Unbreakable interoperability with other Microsoft products. That, and
Active Directory.

------
AlexMuir
And their web stuff isn't strong enough to hedge them against a diminishing
desktop market.

------
code_duck
They sell proprietary lock in? In terms of file formats, I mean.

------
jdc
Compatibility

------
kevinh
Brand recognition.

------
known
Welcome to Linux.

------
konad
An OS with a third party market for over the counter programs.

Think Zuma and Bejewelled

