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Businesses Technology

Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts. 179

Posted by CowboyNeal from the fairly-obvious dept.
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "By some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments, Walt Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the computer industry caters too much to big businesses and their IT staff, Mossberg argues: 'The computer industry loves, and caters to, the IT segment because it buys machines in large quantities and is run by a geeky priesthood that speaks the industry language. By contrast, the non-IT camp, even though it is larger in the aggregate, buys one, two or three machines at a time and tends to be nontechnical. ... This focus on the corporate world can have real, and sometimes negative, consequences for consumers and small businesses. For example, some of the big security problems in Microsoft's software in recent years came because the company included features used only by corporate IT staffs in the products it sold to everyone. One was a communications feature, meant for network administrators, which sleazy operators misused to bombard people with ads. Why was that on my PC in the first place?'"
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Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts. More

Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts.

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  • This guy has no understanding of the marketplace. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:08PM (#14371006) Homepage Journal
    I'm in the IT business and I tend to agree with the ideas in this article but I don't necessarily agree with the negative connotations.

    My company primarily consults with large corporations in the contracting and engineering fields (internationally). We don't offer any advice for what brand of hardware to buy, for what software to run, or for what employees should and shouldn't know. What we do offer is advice in how the company can become more profitable, more efficient, or both.

    Your average home PC owner does not look at a computer as a way to make more profit or save more time -- generally speaking. I firmly believe that the average home PC user sees the PC as a form of entertainment, just like a VCR or DVD player. As such, the ability for manufacturers to offer value added options or set a realistic upgrade/replacement path is significantly reduced. My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.

    Beyond even the value added options and replacement path, you also have residual output costs such as customer service and even warranty costs. Many of my customers have warranties on their hardware, but their in-house IT division will work on replacing failed hardware (and their own cost!) and repair software flaws, rather than calling the supplier. The employee that uses the failed PC is back to work faster this way, so more money is saved than spent. The home PC user, on the other hand, is more likely to call Dell or Gateway, and when they do, they're losing their heads over what may be a user error.

    We tried for 2 years to offer services to the home users. I will never go that way again. The minute a customer asks me for home PC advice, I send them to Best Buy and the Geek Squad. I have 3 customers who "force" us to service their home PCs, but we charge the US$300 per hour -- no joke. The only way for me to profit is to charge them in advance for the "warranty" issues that we have to pay for.

    Finally, the home PC user is much more price conscious than the corporate IT buyer. It is easier to sell a corporate buyer on the return-on-investment figures than it is to tell a home user that buying a better printer will mean cheaper ink, or that buying a better scanner will save them hours over the lifetime based on speed and quality issues alone.

    There is nothing wrong with avoiding sales to a specific group -- especially the home user. When you go into business, you focus on not the number of sales you can get, or the gross profit from all those sales as a total figure. You look at all input costs, output costs and stability of the customer base. The home user offers the worst ratio of all 3 of these business variables. The article ends with the key: Alienware is aimed mainly at gamers, eMachines at bargain hunters. Gamers, who shop around online for the rock bottom price, offering the retailer almost no profit. Bargain hunters, who do the same. Both who demand top level service for rock bottom prices.

    • Re:This guy has no understanding of the marketplac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rednip ( 186217 ) * on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:53PM (#14371195) Journal
      We tried for 2 years to offer services to the home users. I will never go that way again. The minute a customer asks me for home PC advice, I send them to Best Buy and the Geek Squad.
      Frankly, just because, your company didn't have the expertise, locations or willingness to service the home market, does it mean the the home market isn't 'worth' it. Using your own very solution, Best Buy doesn't think that way. Sure the large corporate market is 'juicy', but the small company, and home market does present itself with the potential of large profits, just look at Dell, it started with the 'average' consumer, and built itself into a blockbuster of a company, even now selling to your favorite market. Many people forget that the average corporate leader is also a member of the 'average' home consumer, and a reputation derived from consumer satisfaction, will allow the Geek Squad (for example, if they don't F*ck it up) to expand into small and then large business.

      BTW, I wouldn't expect to keep the business accounts of the people who 'force' you to service their home PCs (if my guess is correct and that is how they do it).

      • I never said I didn't think there wasn't a market in home PCs -- it just isn't my market. I think the home PC market is one of the BEST ways for the average IT employee to become their own business owner -- start small at a low rate and grow beyond it. I actually have helped about 10 local "kids" start their own businesses this year (all over the country) by focusing on this tough market.

        I completely agree with your comment, and I didn't intend to say that the home market is unprofitable. EVERY market is

        • Re:This guy has no understanding of the marketplac (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Just a quick compliment... I love your posts on your business, I operate an IT consulting business myself and find myself relating to a lot of what I've read you post lately(especially that other thread where you discussed paying minimum wage and offering a portion of the contract when it's done). Okay, admiration out of the way...

          I'd like to totally agree with you here on the home market. There is money to be made there, no doubt, but you reach a point where you see the plain facts... In my case, small bus
      • Geek Squad however did not start as a best buy entity (and is still seperate...the best buy part is mostly the same best buy techs with a different nametag and a smarter manager). They were a Minneapolis tech support house catering very much to business users of the size where they dont have their own full IT department but it isnt some guys computer sitting at home filled with junk. Their average fees were far more than the average home-user was willing to pay (though you always got a free shirt with a r

      • Re:This guy has no understanding of the marketplac (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Heh. You failed attempt at making the home market sound attractive has fallen flat on its ass. The home user market is cheap. They already paid for the box and don't want to pay for service. "It came broken with the little monkey on it" they will argue ...and argue and argue and argue. They want 'home service'. They don' no nuttin bout the 'puter, but want people to explain it all to them. It's a bit hard explaining in detail exactly what went wrong. They have no concept of what goes on, but want a
      • I know Circuit City at least, uses independent contractors. They post things to computerrepair (apparently now named Onforce), and I think i saw a couple of Geek Squad postings. Point is, the pay was awful. Partly, this is because much of the requests are doable by your average geeky highschooler (image a computer, install a print driver, "remove spyware"). Maybe these are simply the worst of the worst, the things that the company has decided cannot be done profitably (or fast enough). But look at it this w
    • My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.

      Dude, where did they get a VCR like that? I want one!
    • My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.

      I think you are posting at the wrong place. I have a decade old laptop and an older 486/66 still ticking, and I am a young'n here.

    • This isn't about support for home users... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @04:07PM (#14371501)
      I'm in the IT business

      Walt is probably one of the most famous PC columnists around, because he's been a columnist for decades. I think most people find he's got his head screwed on right.

      I don't know how you got off on the wild tangent about providing support services for home users- that's not what Mossberg is complaining about. He's complaining that the majority of users are getting insecure features that are useless to them. Much of why IE is so insecure is because Microsoft loaded up all this CRAP so enterprises could have a user click a link and get some widget installed onto their machine...or so that an enterprise could roll out a webapp that could be virtually unlimited in how it could mess with the client. Hell, half the time, stuff is set up specifically so the user CAN'T override it, because the IT department doesn't want the user to be able to avoid a virus scan, or somesuch.

      Yank it all out, and at the very least TURN IT OFF BY DEFAULT. Let the boys with the enterprise management tools use said tools to build systems with the stuff installed + turned on.

      • Yank it all out, and at the very least TURN IT OFF BY DEFAULT. Let the boys with the enterprise management tools use said tools to build systems with the stuff installed + turned on.

        Strongly disagree. Not surprisingly, I do mostly corporate IT. I can safely say that the division of features available even between Windows XP Pro and Windows XP Home is annoying enough to act as suggestion that what you're asking for is a bad idea.

        I don't have a problem with many things being shut off by default. On activat

        • Speaking of absurdity, WinXP Home doesn't have the concept of a non-administrative user. Staggeringly mind-numbingly idiotic. That's the market segment that needs that feature the most.

          Not true. I have several clients setup as non admin on XP home. Half the time I don't even give them the password for it. What XP home doesn't have is an easy way to change file ownership.

          I honesltly think that XP home's only reason for being is to piss people off enough to pay twice as much for pro.

    • generally speaking. I firmly believe that the average home PC user sees the PC as a form of entertainment, just like a VCR or DVD player.


      This would be why several friends of mine own PCs and put up with Windows - they're not running CAD software, they're not using the machine for office work, they're not running "creative" apps. They're using the thing as a Nintendo and MacOS/Linux just Do Not Have The Games.
    • My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.

      I hope your family is better educated about technology than that.

      A VCR has a single function. It deals with inputs and outputs that have been pretty well settled on for something like forty years, and will only be obsolete when the switch to digital TV is complete.

      Now, in theory the ten-year-old VCR could be just as out of date; one could make a VCR that reads XDS data from Line 21 in order to set its o

  • Shock, horror... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) * on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:09PM (#14371013) Homepage
    ... business goes where the money is. This article should be a Fox News Alert.
    • Actually, I think the point of the article is that they are NOT going where the money is. Though I think that it's worthy to note that even though big business IT department people may not be the largest part of the market share directly, we are in-directly. We advise the "general public" on what to buy and what to avoid and in my opinion it makes cents (sorry) for everyone to cater to me. Doesn't it?
      • Actually, I think the point of the article is that they are NOT going where the money is

        Check out the flyer from CompUSA in your Sunday paper. A bunch of shitty $400 computers that come with free shitty printers and AOL subscriptions. Buried in the middle is a tiny picture of a $1200 Mac. If there's any money in home/soho computing, you wouldn't know it by the advertising. Except for Apple and Alienware, it's all very low-profit trash.
      • The margin in a computer sold to an org that will support itself is much higher than a home user who continues to be high maintenance after the sale. Market size is not the only factor, and is dwarfed by the costs involved in support.

    • Yeah the guy even answers his own question (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @03:17PM (#14371297) Journal
      He points out that it is the big shops that buy a lot of machines at once. While home users and small businesses only by 1-3 machines at a time.

      Everyone know that actually making a sale is were the real costs are. It is why fastfood places are so keen to supersize you. Yes you get more food for less but the cost to them is not the food, it is getting you into the restaurant in the first place.

      Same with computers, having a store/warehouse, a tech support, an inventory and advertising is the real cost and remains pretty much the same wether the customer then buys 1 machine or a thousand. Leaving it easy to conclude that more profit will be made on the 1000 volume sale. (It is also the reason Intel won't sell you a single chip. They only sell them in batches of a 1000 because selling them seperate would make it impossible to generate enough profit.)

      Further more I do not get his crap about software being included in small setups vs large setups. I think he is talking about that net send tool (sorry am been on linux to long) wich was used for a while for spam. The one he doesn't mention might have been the personal webserver wich had a worm attack a few years ago that was highly amusing (to a guy not responsible for the windows servers only the real ones).

      Well these were security risks not needed for a lot of setups? Well yeah but we are talking MS Windows here. The same MS windows were hardcore servers are vulnerable to the WMF exploit because for some reason a MS SQL server includes image rendering code. And a browser. And a media player. And a instant messenger. And directX and god knows what more.

      The knife of MS including everything and the kitchen sink into its OS cuts both ways but is also the MS way. Don't like it, don't use it. It is hardly fair to blame the entire tech industry for the faults of one company.

      And that is my real beef with this article. It should have been a rant against MS not computer makers. I never seen a consumer Dell PC that included unneeded features like hardware scsi raid they forgot to tell you about. I WISH!!! How many times have you bought a dirt cheap machine and found they fobbed you with damn pro ECC memory eh?

      Blame MS for MS faults and blame users for buying MS. Do not fault Dell for not hacking the shit out of Windows to make it a secure OS.

      Oh and the dumbfuck author forgot one tiny little thing. In a number of update EULA's MS gives itself the right to get access to the machine the software is installed on. This is often in clear violation of big industry rules. Banks especially have very strict rules about allowing outsiders (MS) access to their network. It is one of the dirty little secrets that ain't talked about much but you can be damn sure that NO bank is willing to honor those EULA. They would be in serious legal trouble if they did.

      So perhaps MS really caters to nobody? Odd then that it still outsells everyone else? Oh well, back to my nice secure Linux machine. At least I know who control the code here [NSA SElinux module: Yes US]

  • Lots of you found yourself logging in, probably multiple times, using passwords you could barely remember because you are forced to change them so often. Then, you entered a world of computing where much of the power and variety of the technology was closed off to you in the name of security or conformity by an information-technology department in your large corporation or organization. Various Web sites were off-limits, as were tools like instant messaging, even though they might have legitimate business

    • Re:Ignorance and selfishness are a bad combination (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:40PM (#14371140) Homepage Journal
      "Yep... this guy sounds exactly like a typical user [...] He mentions not being able to use his instant messanger. I guess he hasn't been paying attention to the rash of IM-based worms recently. [...] 'course, I'm preaching to the choir here on Slashdot."

      Horse hockey! I've been a sysadmin and/or programmer for nearly 20 years and I can assure you that I agree with him fully on the damage that lack of access to new technology does. Cutting off access to IM is the lazy way out that will ultimately make the companies that do so crumble under their own weight. I can't count the number of times that I've run into a problem, fired up IM, and asked a friend what I'm doing wrong. Sometimes that friend works down the hall. Sometimes he or she is around the globe. I get an answer in a few seconds and go about my work, and my friends avail themselves of the same luxury. How long does this guy have to trudge through mailing list archive after mailing list archive trying to find his answers? Or are those resources cut off to him as well?

      I work for a company that makes its reputation from solving problems in weeks that the industry around us would take years or decades to "study". I can't afford to have some punk kid with his hands on a firewall configuration tell me that I can't have access to the information that I need.

      Have security concerns? Address them! You just have to take as a criteria that your users still need to get work done.
      • Well, IM should be provided by the company, just as with email and telephones. That way they can manage it, both technically and in terms of policy. It's totally ridiclous that you need to go install AIM or Yahoo to communicate with your coworkers at most shops. You want to ask Fred down the hall about project status, and you find yourself clicking on "SuperBozo1975" in your "buddies" list.

        Imagine if you got hired into a new job and the IT Guy came by and told you they didn't have an email server, so you sh
      • Just a couple of comments...

        Sometimes you can't allow a technology while still keeping things secure. In the example of IM, you could run an internal IM server on Jabber, or what not, and avoid many potential problems. If you want access to AIM/Yahoo/MSN/etc with the outside world, then you open up another avenue for compromise, and one that you can't secure. You might not lose an entire machine, but the user account is compromised, and any data they have access to. Once that compromise is on the networ
        • Or you could simply hire a software security professional to maintain a set of local updates for an open source IM product like gaim (for Windows and Linux). There, now you have secure IM for the whole company, and can have it talk to an internal jabber server for internal communications and any old external server for external communications (just have your security dude tweak the interface so taht you have a little warning on any window that communicates with the outside).

          It's not hard to do, it's just ha

      • Re:Ignorance and selfishness are a bad combination (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Hiro Antagonist ( 310179 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @03:31PM (#14371352) Journal
        I think the difference here is that you are a sysadmin. Even if you don't run a Unix desktop, you likely keep up with the worms, viruses, and vulnerabilities on a daily basis; I know that one of the first things I do when I start in on a sysadmin gig is to sign up to every security mailing list related to the software that I administrate. You also likely know what trojans are, take care to not use insecure software, and also, use your computer for work during working hours, with occasional posts on Slashdot.

        The 'average office user' is nowhere near as attentive to any of this; they don't get why it's a bad idea to install a screensaver they got in an email from someone they don't know, or why they shouldn't look at that 'funny picture' that some random person sent them over IM. The idea that they can cause millions of dollars in damage through their carelessness never enters their mind, because a computer is nowhere near as dangerous-looking as a forklift or scalpel.

        Being a programmer doesn't make you immune, either; at my last job, one of the senior coders brought in a CD with some software from home, including a screensaver...yep, trojaned. Because he was senior, he had access to a lot of data, and it took us (the IS staff) about three full-time days to assess and deal with all the damage; I'm just happy it was a Unix shop, with tight security (we found the worm because it was banging against our firewall trying to phone home). If we had been an all-MS shop, there would have been a months' worth of damage control.

        The way I usually handle this is that I provide a Jabber server for internal users to chat amongst each other, and limit outside IM access. If I can get them, I ask for computers in the employee breakrooms, lock those down tightly, and then allow both IM and unrestricted Web access so that people can chat with friends and check their personal mail on break. This has worked fairly well, both with management[1], and with the users[2]

        [1] It's a 'no-cost' option that adds an employee 'perk' *and* increases system security.

        [2] People want to do this at their desk, of course, but usually respond well to the argument of 'Well, it's either the kiosk, or we have to monitor and log all of your IM conversations...'.
      • IM is a waste of resources, besides is use another form of EMIAL to me.

        Use EMAIL, the filters are place and all have it. The responces are just as fast.
      • Horse hockey! I've been a sysadmin and/or programmer for nearly 20 years and I can assure you that I agree with him fully on the damage that lack of access to new technology does.

        Then I'm sure you'd also agree with the damage that can be caused by introducing unneeded technology just because it's new? It's funny how long people managed to work without IM, but now IM's around it's a vital necessity.

        I can't count the number of times that I've run into a problem, fired up IM, and asked a friend what I'm doing

    • Re:Ignorance and selfishness are a bad combination (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Metzli ( 184903 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:43PM (#14371153)
      Even more than the IM worms, etc., many of the original complaints in the article stem from legislation forced upon the business world. I've worked in financial institutions where Gramm-Leach-Bliley rules, I've been in healthcare where HIPAA rules, and every public company has to follow the mandates of Sarbanes-Oxley.

      We block IM at work to the outside word because the auditors forced us to do so. We block access to web-based email sites (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) because the auditors forced us to do so. When dealing with financial, patient, and/or business sensitive records, it's too easy for someone to forward them via IM or web-based email sites. We block many web sites, because they have no business purpose and the person paying the bills (the CIO) mandates that we don't waste bandwidth resources.

      We force passwords to be more complex and expire after 90 days. Why? Because the auditors forced us to do so. We don't allow users to install software on the PCs on their desks. Why? Because we became tired of fighting Gator and all the other "fun" spyware. It's also an audit finding not to have protections against spyware, virii, etc. Beyond that, it's just good practice to make sure that there is a centralized group who tracks what is installed where.

      I don't like being the "bad guy," but I'm forced to be. The average user has to realize that the PC on their desk isn't their home machine. They didn't pay for it and they can't do with it as they please. This also goes for the network bandwidth, the phone system, etc. It's just the way it is.

      • Re:Ignorance and selfishness are a bad combination (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mutatis Mutandis ( 921530 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @04:17PM (#14371533)

        If people would ask me the #1 reason to look for another job: The IT department.

        Diverse and interesting work, nice colleagues, bosses who value my work highly, and a good salary... but, that IT department.

        Every morning the thought of having to switch on that damn PC and struggle against it for the whole day... Need help on a complex Excel function? Press F1, then go for a cup of coffee.

        Need to visit a supplier and give a presentation? Be prepared to apologize, repeatedly, until your machine has finally become functional. And yes, their IT manager will helpfully tell you that you should talk to your IT manager about system performance.

        And the hardware of that laptop is decent enough. Just overloaded with bells, whistles, and security systems by IT, to the point where it barely worked.

        End result? I have often enough taken work home to do it on my own PC, after hours. Nothing critical, certainly no patient data involved, but probably against the regulations. I owned a system with decent performance and the necessary software, which IT could not deliver for me on a reasonable time scale (although it was downloadable). And doing some work in my own time was far less annoying than having to do it on IT-installed systems.

        Frankly, people in large companies often do not just think of the IT people as "bad guys", they think of them as hopeless. If they have an IT problem, their reaction is not: "Aargh, we will have to talk to those bastards in IT again." Their reaction is: "Well, it is an IT problem, so nothing will be done about it, and therefore we will just have to live with it. Asking IT for help is no use anyway."

        If you think I sound harsh: Actually I often enough find myself defending the IT people against the criticisms of my colleagues, which are even harsher (and often less than fair).

        • And the hardware of that laptop is decent enough. Just overloaded with bells, whistles, and security systems by IT, to the point where it barely worked.

          Did you even read the GP? The guy told you why all sysadmins (in the US, anyway) are now forced to do all this crap; the auditors are forcing us to do it because of GLBA, SarBox, and HIPAA. We no longer have a choice.

          You don't want it? Fine, you sign up for the orange jumpsuit. I can guarantee your CIO doesn't want to.

      • I'm seeing the same thing at my company. I tink we need to hire different auditors. The fact is, these auditors don't care about people being able to get work done, or how it affects the company, they just want to claim more and more things need to be changed because of SOX so they can keep billing their hourly rate.

    • I fully agree with the "typical user". I have yet to discover a large, centralized IT infrastructure departement that provides an adequate service, not to mention a good one.

      Such departements is actually behave very much like worms. They infiltrate all systems and consume computer resources at a high rate, denying them to the people for whose use these systems actually are, with detrimental results to the business. A serious worm attack may cost a company a full working day; that is bad but after all it i

      • I have yet to discover a large, centralized IT infrastructure departement that provides an adequate service, not to mention a good one.

        I had one working for me once, from about 1991 to 1993. We provided tremendous amounts of high-level, high-availability support, training, desktop tutoring and handholding. You wanted it? We would figure out a way to provide it. We had roaming desktops for Windows 3.1, something Microsoft said was impossible. Transparent access to all resources at all sites. A proact

    • 'course, I'm preaching to the choir here on Slashdot.

      Not necessarily and neither is it a given that the choir would agree with you on all of the big issues. I work for several clients, one of whom has recently gone to what I call the Death Star network security level. They locked down users machines, cut off access to almost any technology that isn't just straight web browsing, including web mail and IM. I could easily exempt myself and skirt their security restrictions but I don't think that's right.

    • All it takes is one user to break corporate policy simply because they don't understand it, and hundreds or even thousands of other people are affected. Suddenly the IT support guys are working OT for a week because someone thought that they were smarter than the people who wrote the rules.

      Taking a look at the average IT department, I'd say they're running about neck-and-neck in most places. It never ceases to amaze me just how many idiots become "IT staff" (using the word as loosely as possible) because t

  • Maybe its because (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:10PM (#14371021) Journal
    the bigger companies aren't such cheap skates. Having worked at a small ISP and now working at a large medical company, its like night and day. The attitude is much different too, at the ISP we would skimp on the quality of things and sometimes try to save money here and there. At the larger company, we only buy high quality stuff.

    • Having worked at a small ISP and now working at a large medical company, its like night and day. The attitude is much different too, at the ISP we would skimp on the quality of things and sometimes try to save money here and there. At the larger company, we only buy high quality stuff.

      In other words, the smaller company is concerned with costs and your "medical" company doesn't bother... which helps drive up healthcare costs to current astronomical levels for me and everyone else.

      • In other words, the smaller company is concerned with costs and your "medical" company doesn't bother... which helps drive up healthcare costs to current astronomical levels for me and everyone else.

        Nah, they probably save moneyt buying only decent stuff. You'd be surprised how expensive cheap stuff can be.

  • Messenger (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doofusclam ( 528746 ) <slash@seanyseansean.com> on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:13PM (#14371033) Homepage
    I take it by 'communication service' the article was on about the Messenger service. I agree with this completely, but the reverse is true too - I installed Windows Server 2003 on a new server at work last week and IE has all the usual MSN radio links built into the favourites. WTF? And why is the indexing service built into a consumer OS when nobody uses it?

    I usually don't care for Microsoft bashing but they especially need to learn how to differentiate a consumer and corporate OS rather than through having different splash screens.

    • Hey, it used to be worse -- Windows NT 4.0 Server shipped with "Foreground applicaitons get priority" turned on. So if someone turned on the OpenGL screensavers, the server applications would grind to a halt.

      As for the indexing service ... it would be a useful consumer feature, IF it came with a user interface. (Recently they finally produced a MSN-branded UI as a download nobody will find.) But it basically proves Mossberg's point: MS tends to be five years ahead of Apple under-the-hood, but two years beh
    • Indexing Service was useful pre MSN desktop search, Google Desktop search came around. It indexed all the crap, including pdfs if you installed the filters, and worked from within the windows search, and was a million times faster.
    • That's ok, I have a bunch of WinCE (Windows Mobile) wireless scanners that have web servers running on them. They aren't configured to do anything, just sit there and eat up precious resources. I'd turn them off, but that means a 4 day detour through HQ every time one goes in for repair. Even better, the web server and it's configuration are stored on the 'safe' part of the drive, but the NIC configuration is stored on ramdisk.

      We've made progress over the years, but we're still fighting clueless configurati

  • Maybe it's because... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by howajo ( 707075 )
    ... when you go to get a slice of pie, you want the biggest slice in the pan. Also, there is the volume issue. The less flavors you offer, the more of a single flavor you can "buy", which reduces cost for everyone, including the end user.

  • Hello, Captain Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clintp ( 5169 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:21PM (#14371065)
    Given their choice...

    Car makers would manufacture only for fleet buyers.
    Arms manufacturers would only market to military sales.
    Food processing plants would only sell to volume buyers (fast food chains, etc..)
    Toy and clothes manufactureres would only sell to Wal Mart.

    Manufacturers aren't really interested in retail.

    Face it: individual consumers are finicky, difficult people to work with. A manufacturer is going to take a *large* cut in up-front sales profits to reap the benefits of lower pre (R&D, customizations) and after-market (support & service) costs. If I can sell 10,000 units of anything to one buyer, or have to sell 10,000 units to 10,000 buyers, I'm gonna do the former!

    Even if I have to sell them more cheaply.

    This is precisely why the "middle man" has evolved in most markets. He's not there to benefit you the consumer, but the manufacturer and wholesaler.

    The one danger in all of this, of course, is that as the number of buyers decreases the prices you can get on the manufacturing side will decrease. If only Wal Mart buys your widgets, then Wal Mart can demand almost any price for them including selling them for a loss.

  • Why was that on my PC in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infernal Device ( 865066 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:22PM (#14371072)
    Because the typical response to marketing software, be it through retail channels for commercial software, or as free software for *nix variants, is to offer a "one-size fits all" solution. There may be variations for differences in platform usage (ie., desktop, server, etc.) but everyone pays lip service to the differences in how users work within a given platform.

    Consider Windows XP, with the Home and Professional versions. Both are much the same thing, with all the same utilities, but XP Home has some window-dressing (ha-ha) to dumb it down for home users.

    Variations within the Linux world are even less differentiated on the user side, with most of the real differences appearing in update methodology. Sometimes the differences are political, with no real affect on the user interface.

    On the commercial software side, having multiple variants of a single platform software set can lead to some real problems in marketing. Money would have to be spent to emphasize the differences between sets and there's a very real risk of upsetting consumers when they realize they undershot their needs.

    On the free software side, the downside comes from alienating developers and users, who may feel left out if their favorite projects are not considered important enough to be included in a distribution.

    It's a catch-22 and in the end, it's just cheaper and easier to make less-specialized, more inclusive software releases.

    • nb Re:Why was that on my PC in the first place? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Consider Windows XP, with the Home and Professional versions. Both are much the same thing, with all the same utilities, but XP Home has some window-dressing (ha-ha) to dumb it down for home users.

      Same utilities?
      How do I fine tune user permissions in XP Home? Do I have anything between the two user levels? I don't think I can even limit who has access to shared folders and printers with XP Home.
      How do I use dynamic disks in XP Home?
      How about NTFS Encryption in XP Home?
      Did they ever add Remote Desktop to

      • http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/03/xp_hack/ [theregister.co.uk]

        Another entry for the justf'inggoogleit file: google for xp home pro hack

        Hack can upgrade XP Home to XP Pro Lite
        Two byte freebie
        By Jan Libbenga
        Published Friday 3rd June 2005 12:34 GMT
        Get breaking Software news straight to your desktop - click here to find out how

        German computer magazine C'T claims that by changing only 2 bytes from the file setupreg.hiv in Windows's XP Home kit, users can get access to certain functions only avalaible in Windows XP Profe

    • Have you ever visitited a site called distrowatch? [url:http://distrowatch.com/]

      There is a shitload of them and while there are a lot of the generic desktop ones you can find *nix like installs for every need. From different hardware platforms to performing just one role to "who the fuck is going to need this" distro's.

      Please do not lump the *nix'es together with windows.

      Even with the more generic distro's it is still relativly easy to get a very dressed down install. Getting a pure apache server that do


  • My company has bought over 80 pcs, 120 displays and 7 servers from Dell this year... I find it very, very difficult to talk to my Dell rep. I think the higher up the ladder you go (orders of over £10,000 go to a "special" account manager), the less clued-up the people are whom I talk to.

    Invariably, they make mistakes which costs me time and Dell a hell of a lot of money as they courier out replacement bits that they neglected to include in the manufacturing order.

    I've never had an issue when I've been

  • PC computer makers maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PriceIke ( 751512 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:30PM (#14371097)
    Apple, having long given up on the "big business" share of the market, caters to individual users quite well.

  • Doesn't get security either (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NatteringNabob ( 829042 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:31PM (#14371103)
    The rash of Microsoft security problems isn't because it was targeted at the corporate market, it is because it never had a security model to begin with, and then, to the extent that Microsoft manage to retrofit one, they immediately subverted in by introducing ActiveX. ActiveX was a feature that no customer, corporate or otherwise, was demanding. But Microsoft needed it to prevent Java from getting traction. The rest, as they say, is history.
    • The rash of Microsoft security problems isn't because it was targeted at the corporate market, it is because it never had a security model to begin with

      Not entirely true.

      When they started developing applications with the vision that they will only ever be used in the context of a corporate intranet, they let things slip past them.

      Example?

      Outlook.

      I have a CD of Office 97 which includes MS Outlook. This early release of Outlook has NO support for POP or IMAP. None at all; it was intended for use on an MS-base
  • I absolutely refuse to believe that businesses, out to make a profit, would want to sell to more competant and less needy customers.
  • No shit they cater to larger clients. As well they should... its called business (by most regards good business). First the crap online story from the WSJ and now this. Editorial standards have really shit the bead over there.

  • I've Said it Before and I'll Say it Again... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:39PM (#14371134) Homepage Journal
    ...if you use computers to make money, you're in the minority. Just check out my profile for more on that wisdom. The people who really make proper use of computers are people at home using them for creative endeavours that will never see a dime. People who use them to make music, print artistic photos, or even write their own *FREE* (in both senses) software are the people who make proper use of a computer. Anyone using it to try and turn a profit is just a talentless hack who thinks of a PC as a money making machine. If, and only if, you HAPPEN to make a profit doing something creative with a PC whilst actually doing the creative part out of love rather than avarice, then you are properly using your computer. This means that if you are a web designer who creates web sites because you like to and you would do it for free, then you're doing it right. The fact that people might pay you is incidental and vastly unimportant. That's the way I work with audio and music production on my computers. I love doing that work, so I do it for people at no cost. However, 99% of the time they demand that I charge them something and my asking prices tend to be low. So even there, they might force me to charge more. Case in point. I did some very simple photo editing for a friend of a friend recently. It took me about an hour and a half to do the actual work and my computer about 15 minutes to save out a postscript print file for large format printing. I told the guy I would only charge $10 an hour because that's all that photo editing work is worth. He disagreed and when he saw the results he paid me $50 an hour. I told him he didn't need to, but he insisted and thus I got a little over $50 when all was said a done. A nice surprise but completely unwarranted. Digital photo editing is not hard, it's not a skill and certainly doesn't call for that kind of pay.

    All those businesses with their IT departments are doing a disservice to computers. The industry seems to have largely forgotten that computers are simply a tool and only useful when in skilled hands. And skilled hands do not equate to profit, they equate to talent and a love of the craft. That is the ONLY reason to work with computers. Making money is simply a side benefit and a highly overrated one at that.
    • Anyone using it to try and turn a profit is just a talentless hack who thinks of a PC as a money making machine.

      Way to be supportive of creative folks...

      ..."if artists try to eat, they are talentless hacks."

      IT departments, like programmers, artists, small businesspeople, and consumers, are out to fulfill their own goals. There is no reason earning money is not a legitimate goal, and no reason it can't be totally compatible with enjoying your work and doing original things. Illogically vilifying people

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The "proper use" of my computer is whatever the fuck I say is its proper use. Being my property, no one else gets to decide that for me. Including you.

      Max

  • Public vs Private (Score:4, Interesting)

    by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:41PM (#14371143)
    Home computer:
    price: $1100
    retail profit: $150
    wholesale profit: $100
    manufacturers profit: $50
    cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

    Office desktop:
    price: $1100
    retail profit: $0 (sold directly)
    Wholesale profit: $0 (sold directly)
    manufacturers profit: $300
    cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

    net result: The manufacterers care lessd about you.

    • Should that no be something more like:

      Home computer:

      price: $1100
      retail profit: $150
      wholesale profit: $100
      manufacturers profit: $50
      cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

      Office desktop:

      price: $2500, discount $500, $100 lunch
      retail profit: $0 (sold directly)
      Wholesale profit: $0 (sold directly)
      manufacturers profit: $1100 plus extra sales of Office
      cost: $800 (includes warehousign and shipping)

    • The main problem right now is that the manufacturers haven't figured out how to go direct to the end user for the home market. Dell has a good idea what they are doing, and I think they have a better line-up for home PCs than any other major manufacturer. Of course, the best deals come from the small shops, but we're talking about big businesses. Also, many manufacturers don't push their direct to consumer lines because they don't want to alienate their retailers. The big manufacturers can't undercut th
  • Yes it is true that computer manufactures tend to cater to the IT departments at large companies. One big reason for that is the computer sitting on a users desk is an advertisement for the manufacturer. If that computer runs well and never seems to have any major problems than the user is more likely to purchase that brand of computer.

    By some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments,

    Well duh t
  • How can that be? I'll tell you. Coporate customers come with all sorts of custom demands such as custom software builds preinstalled, asset tracking and even custom hardware builds. Corporate customers also tend to want support for hardware and software as a static entity long after the reseller wants to support it.

  • Everybody wants a slice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bullfish ( 858648 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @02:49PM (#14371179)
    Yeah, what the guy says is true, and much more than that. Everybody wants a slice of that corporate pie. The profits are bigger and they have IT departments to handle the simple problems of deployment (which cuts the cost of service). It's why Intel is the biggest graphics manufacturer and why their CPUs outsell AMD despite AMD being the superior chip. The corporate PC manufacturer can source the cheapest parts by buying bulk and maximize profits. If a machine goes south (but most won't as they are not taxed doing most corporate work), it's cheap to replace it.

    Windows seized that corporate market way back in the late eighties. That's why you get so much crap on windows machines. If Apple could crack the corporate market in a big way, or a major Linux/hardware partner, do you think they would not cater to that cash cow, bringing whatever computer hay it wanted? The holy grail for Linux is mass acceptance - and that really means corporate desktop acceptance. That would bring compromises that would spill over into the home market. You build a baseline for your hardware or software and branch from there. It's where the money is after all. If the baseline is the rich corporate mother lode, guess what even the home users get a flavour of? It's why I build my own machines and install my own software. Look no further that the recent reviews of the Dell gaming machine, loaded with crapware. Look at who their biggest customers are and you can see the packaged one size fits all mentality.
  • Care to take a guess at the number of home or non-technical products and services Microsoft installs on their "business" operating systems? Far more vulnerabilities have been caused in the IT world because of them. UPnP (which as far as I can tell is completely unnecessary in a corporate environment where client are supposed to be getting services from the server not each other) has been the source of probably the most numerous and most severe problems. Then there is just the stupidity of having things l

  • Totally incorrect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @03:04PM (#14371242)
    That the hardware and software vendors cater to IT departments because "they're geeks and they speak the industry language" is bullshit.

    They cater to IT departments because the vast majority of them are run by total incompetents who have no idea what they're doing, and have no idea how to value hardware and software. I run a small business' IT department. Hell, I *am* the IT department. 40 some-odd servers, 20 or so desktops, 10 or so laptops. I do all the purchasing, and let me tell you, they sure as heck don't cater to *me*. They cater to the people who're willing to spend $80,000 on a crap piece of software which could be done by one of our dozen in-house coders (we're a software development shop) in a weekend. Or by me for maybe $2500 worth of time.

    They cater to morons who think that "Fibre Channel" drives are better than SCSI, and so are willing to spend $3000 for a 150GB drive. They cater to people who think that there's something magical about SCSI, and so think that even if 10kRPM 300GB drives were available with SATA connectors instead of SCSI, the SCSI drives would still be worth $1500. (Here's a hint - the differences between Fibre Channel drives and SCSI drives is the connector. They may do some extra QA on FC drives, to up the MTBF, but this is what RAID is for.)

    Vendors do NOT cater to IT departments because IT departments "know the language". They cater to IT departments because they tend to be massively over-funded for what they provide, and they're willing to piss away huge quantities of money.

    That's the thing I hate most about the IT industry right now. Prices aren't set by competitive pressure between the vendors, they're set by twits not knowing that it's silly to pay $50,000 for some shared storage they don't need. Why should IBM sell me a 10kRPM 150GB SCSI drive for $500 when they can sell it to an idiot for $1500? (They'll sell them to me for $1000, and that's the lowest they'll go. I still think it's horribly overpriced.)
    • I read this and nearly fell off my chair:
      Hell, I *am* the IT department. 40 some-odd servers, 20 or so desktops, 10 or so laptops. I do all the purchasing, and let me tell you, they sure as heck don't cater to *me*.

      Dude -- do you need some *HELP*? 2 servers for every workstation? Are you running solely Windows? With 20 or so desktops and 10 or so laptops that would require MAYBE 6 servers. This would cover privatizing the Intranet servers (2) from the Internet servers (1) for the *workgroup* you're catering
      • His company is a software development shop. Some of those servers may not be typical IT infrastructure systems.
        • Quite correct. We're an end-to-end networkable app, and there are (at minimum) seven different nodes. I've already started virtualising most stuff (so that one machine runs every node), but I'm relatively new here, only been here a year, and I'm having to fight some historical issues with respect to technology choice.

          Basically, the last few people who did any purchasing (the President included) weren't particularly ... effecient. So I'm having to carefully make sure that we're not embarassing anybody by sho
      • are you drunk? think! come on! he's at a software shop:

        scenario a) he's developing /server/ software.

        scenario b) he's developing webserver software and provides servers for his clients

        scenario c) ..come on, continue..

        PAT ;)
      • Dude -- do you need some *HELP*? 2 servers for every workstation?


        I don't see a problem with this. My house is 2 to one right now. A NAS device, a generic cheap linux box server for everything else, and my windows desktop machine.

        And if I ever get/build a TIVO-like device, then it will be THREE servers for every desktop. *Gasp*!
      • Read his post again. It's a software developer shop. More servers, faster compile times. Faster compile times, better productivity and effectivity.

  • Neither a surprise nor a real problem. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdesNO@SPAMinvariant.org> on Saturday December 31, 2005 @03:10PM (#14371271) Homepage
    The post here makes it out like there is some sort of unwholesome prejudice in favor of big companies and large orders. This just ignores the universal effect large customers and uniform market segments have.

    What do you think makes unions so powerfull? Why do we have anti-monopoly laws which are enforced even when a company is shy of complete monopoly (e.g. controls 85% of the marketplace). Quite simply a large segment of the market that acts together has more power than a similarly or larger sized segment of the market which makes individual choices.

    If Jim bob decides he needs feature A on his OS he might decide not to buy WinXP if it doesn't exist. However, if Jim, the IT manager at a fortune 500 company, has the same opinion MS might lose thousands of sales. Who do you think it makes more sense to go write code specifically for?

    This issue is only magnified by two additional points. First is that the individual buyers *aren't* geeks so don't have a clue about what various features mean. So if corporate users aren't going to buy XP if it doesn't have that annoying messaging feature present and individual users aren't even going to know enough to think about it including it will make MS more money! Secondly many home users want the same OS as they have at work. FOCUSING ON IT DEPARTMENTS IS FOCUSING ON HOME SALES!!

    Finally I would like to say I don't think this is a problem in the first place. Allowing that damn little messaging thing was just a mistake b/c MS didn't think that anyone would be on a real network except corporate users. If they had they just would have put in default options for a home config turning it off. In general as apple has shown with "OS X" you don't need to cripple a OS to make it good for the consumer. Rather you just need some sensible defaults so the corporate features and other powerfull options aren't security holes.

  • Remember these guys write for the masses (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Saturday December 31, 2005 @03:11PM (#14371279) Homepage
    Walt Mossberg at the WSJ (his counterpart David Pogue at the New York Times) [slashdot.org] write for the masses with columns targetted at consumers. Typical stuff is a review mid-priced consumer digicams, cell phones, printers, etc. In fact, long-time readers joke that the templates are often the same ("I reviewed X, Y, Z ... X and Y were good, but Z was the standout ... although it has a few issues that company ABC needs to address") - just replace the product names. This does serve a useful purpose ... but I'd keep in mind that these guys don't have a lot of exposure/experience with the nuts-n-bolts of a Corporate IT department beyond talking to their PR flaks ... and IMHO, often over-simplify things ... although there ease-of-use comments on consumer devices is often spot-on.

    BTW, noticeably absent from this Mossberg column was the "Katherine Boehret" byline - she has done a lot of the heavy lifting for a while (older columns often said "contributed by") and glad to see that not that long ago, she moved up to the byline.

  • The government listens to lobbists, who represent large corporations... funny thing is..

    Large corporations can't vote.

  • Instead of creating meta-machines that serve a lot of users, home and otherwise, he's correctly pointed out that machine makers aren't serving other markets, like having cogent product line including mobiles, PDAs worth a crap, and so on. Computer makers don't understand the CE marketplace at all, and so it's no wonder they can't make money at it.

    Michael Dell was the first to figure it out, but others have had moderate success driving consumer features. What they can't drive is consumer operating systems, b

  • Really? (Score:3, Funny)

    by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @05:45PM (#14371909) Homepage
    Gee, I thought wake-on-lan was something EVERYBODY wanted!
    • You know, wake-on-LAN would actually be useful if there were a (reasonably secure) way to send it by IP address across the Internet, not by MAC address across a local subnet. Then I could not leave my home computer on all the time.

      Here's my suggestion: computers with wake-on-Internet (since it's not LAN anymore) are off except for the network card, or the appropriate motherboard section. They run a port-knocking implementation. The router above it is informed that the computer has gone into WOI mode; if the
  • I read this column in the WSJ days ago. It figures that this Bialik guy would send it in to Slashdot, because most Slashdot readers would either laugh at Mossberg's assertions or frown in disgust.

    Lots of you found yourself logging in, probably multiple times, using passwords you could barely remember because you are forced to change them so often. Then, you entered a world of computing where much of the power and variety of the technology was closed off to you in the name of security or conformity by an

  • [gruff old fart rant]

    If any of you have been working with computers for over 20 years, you know that until the mid 90's or so, the schism between consumer and IT PCs was a hairline crack at most. Back then, there was no "consumer grade" variants of DOS, Win 3.x, or Win95. The OS used at home was *exactly* the same as used in the office. Applications (word processors, utilities, etc) were pretty much the same way as well, with no major distinction between home/business use. Plus back then, hardware & so

  • Microsoft's OS strategy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @06:50PM (#14372153)
    Starting with WinNT, it's pretty clear (at least to me :-) that the primary push in Microsoft was to take capabilities away from the end user and give them to corporate IT. In one respect, this was a response to the increasing complexity of administring PCs. But I think that was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Corporate IT departments grew because Windows was so labor-intensive to administer, Windows added more features for centralized administration, thereby adding to the administrative workload. But how do corporate IT directors and CIOs get measured? Not by their impact on productivity, but rather by the size of their staff! (Imagine how different Corporate IT would look if your CIO got charged for every hour any computer user in the company was not productive because of computer problems...)

    That's why accurate TCO measures are so important and also why they're so difficult. It's hard to measure the impact of loss-of-productivity on staff, and so few corporations have any alternative to their very labor-intensive Windows environments. (If they do have Macs, for example, they often don't believe the comparative numbers they get for those Macs. And what's worse, is their own billing charges often work against a good comparison. How many Windows problems get fixed in 15 minutes? It was very rare that I ever had a Mac question that went more than 15 minutes, but I'm sure corporate IT charged an hour for the call....) Similarly, when Corporate IT looks at support for alternative platforms, they use their (very high) Windows numbers and extrapolate. Where I used to work, part of the problem was that so few corporate IT people understood Macs in the first place, that they were used only as the last resort. Mostly we solved our own problems, either as individuals, or as a Community of Interest (mac-users mailing list) :-)

            dave

  • Fuzzy Math (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Saturday December 31, 2005 @07:05PM (#14372202) Journal
    Best Buy, CompUSA, Fry's, etc ... buy mass quanties of computers ... the THEY sell to individuals. The quantities are no different between corporations and large resellers.
  • The needs and requirements of the IT industry are very different from the home and small mom and pop shops. For example big IT has a requirement for zero downtime, 24x7x365. They need to be able to run apps that are decades old, not because no one is around to reprogram them, but because they continue to work. They cannot simply have an application "stop working" because of a small system upgrade. Nor can they have applications just crash just because someother application was installed and messed up a

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