Reading a story at Reuters about Steve Ballmer (chair throwing, short tempered, brash and rude MS CEO) possibly having buyers remorse on the recent still undecided Yahoo bid, a few things came to mind.

My first thought was that no company wants management like that. Who cares if he and Bill Gates (who I highly respect), were college buddies? I just don't like the guy period. I've seen quite a number of large corporations take a knock because of similar "pig headed" management.

In some cases like the Enron debacle, it was just sheer greed and corruption that led to its demise. In another instance which didn't lead to the company's failure but massively impacted on corporate ethics and managements behavior way down to junior management, the inability of the CEO to keep his hands off female staffers. The common denominator of these two is they are "ethically challenged" and immoral in their management style and manner.

My second thought was apart from the obvious "competition void" that would be created by Yahoo failing (not for the same reasons as above by the way), would it really matter if Yahoo just faded into the ethernet? Very few folk seem to use them compared to Google anyway and there are some alternative search engines like Ask.com around.

Back to my initial question though. Would it make a huge difference to us all if Microsoft totally lost it and ceased to exist? I don't think so.

It may take awhile for us all to get used to open source Linux and it may take just as long for hardware manufacturers and "third party" software houses to adjust and get up to speed with drivers and compatible programs. Many will switch to Apple Mac systems and other propriety Linux/Unix distributions like Red Hat.

Overall the number of individual PC users are not going to reduce and the corporate world will continue without major catastrophe, right? Yeah it's nice and convenient to just buy and use a Windows computer but we can easily get by without Microsoft.


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Yes we could get by...........

Could we adjust to Linux or Mac or something else. Yes I would be using a Mac, you already know my feelings toward a Mac, they are great machines/OS.

Would it happen over night, probably not, there would be a many blackouts and etc but we woudl over come it.

It would be more difficult transition for business than it would be for normal consumers. The expense would be outrageous to make the switch, and not just to train people to use the new software, but for companies to find software that can replace the Windows compatible software companies rely on. All of the programs that I run on my laptop that interface with our products are made for a Windows machine. Even though I rely on them for my every day job, my company could not afford to have them replaced or rewritten. Many companies would go out of business try to port over to a new OS, especially one as closed as Apple because companies rely on the ability to add specific hardware to their computers as much as they do software, something Apple's ship sailed on a long time ago.

I don't think we could because Microsoft does a lot more than just operating systems. There would be a lot of software out there that would cease to be, both on the personal and business computers, as well as elsewhere. Microsoft worked on building the ECUs that are in all the Formula 1 cars, they have Windows Mobile, Sync, and likely hundreds of other projects that people likely don't realize have come from the company. Their research labs have created a lot of stuff as well. I don't think software development would be anywhere close to what it is today without MS, and I'm guessing the hardware race between ATi/Nvidia and Intel/AMD would likely slow to almost a halt as well as it would take some time for anything to really warrant bigger and faster hardware.

I also don't think so just for the simple stand-point from an SE position. There are too many jobs out there that rely solely on MS and if they went away, well, jobs would not be there. A large company like that going under would not be good. We may overcome it but it will take many years to do.

Just think what that would do to the economy and all those people out of jobs. People would be flocking to new positions and I think we would see an overabundance of software trying to be released. All those developers would have to learn new systems in order to find jobs, etc...

could I get by.. better believe it. could most the world.. probably not.

I still have a pen and pencil here somewhere; now let me see, where did I put them, oh yeah there they are (*phewph* blowing the dust off) Ok paper, oh yeah I can rob some from that printer thing that is now useless until I get Linux up and running.
Ok I am ready!!

What do mean the meeting is over!!!!!!!!! ((((((((-:

I could most likely get by. I currently run Ubuntu and Xandros on two machines and do everything I do on my desktop (with Vista) on them with the exception of gaming, and I could use Wine for Ubuntu to solve that issue!

Heh, I could get by, and as far as my job goes, I could demand a MUCH higher paycheck ... as for making it all work here, companies (and in my case, universities) PAY for software, it would be up to the supplier to port their own software, not up to the individual companies using it (unless they do in-house or single contract one time deal buys on software, which is foolish itself for the lack of long term support entailed) ... likely the biggest limiting factor on making *nix systems the universal for business is the lack of hardware drivers for less common items, which is the fault of the hardware developers, not the *nix programmers or user base ... the latter pair have done a LOT to overcome the lack of support from hardware vendors over the years.

As for the users of my systems here in my computer labs ... they're learning all new-to-them software as it is, and all a change from win->*nix would entail on their end is how it looks, and where they click to start the software they need ... a matter of a sign on the wall, or a brief mention from an instructor is all it would take, assuming the system isn't running KDE or Gnome, both of which look enough like Windows to remain, generally, fairly intuitive.

If the assumption is that the average user *cannot* learn something new, it's a foolish assumption .. I started in the days of DOS, learned windows, then learned Linux, BSD, X, a minute amount of Solaris, etc. Of course, I enjoy learning ... but the limiting factor on most people's computer learning isn't at all inability, it's an unwillingness to learn something new, when what they have WORKS for them ... proof of this - my dad, who for a very long time REFUSED to go near Firefox because "IE worked well enough for him" actually happily used firefox with no complaint ... running off of portableapps on my usbkey ... after IE7 flat out quit working (I've not had time to find the problem underlying this one).

If MS goes poof, and Windows fall out of date, and quits working, people will care to learn something new, yet again, just as they did from 98 -> XP (however reluctantly) ... the opposite of this is seen a lot today, where Vista still has it's list of problems being sorted out, and large numbers of people stuck with/reverted back to XP ... why? Because it works for what they need.

I was, for a time, a major *nix fanboy, and I still am to an extent, but I also know windows, and I get paid to work on windows ... because it does what most people need, in a way that they're used to, and they'll keep using it until that changes. Word Perfect vs MS Word is a good example of this as well, WP had a massive following for a long time, until one of their updates changed how things worked ... they lost a great deal of market share to Word ... they had to learn something new anyways, and MS had promises of a great product ... I honestly think that, had OpenOffice had strong corporate backed advertising at the release of MS Office 07, they would have stood to take a large chunk of market share much like MS had done in the past.