March 5th, 2008
Murphy's law, or why WinTel wins
My former co-blogger here, Paul Murphy, has a very nice piece out today comparing the costs of running Windows and Linux in corporate computing. (Here’s a book on that you can buy.)
The bottom line is you’re paying roughly a 50% tax (you spend 64% of what you would otherwise) running WinTel.
So why do companies still buy Windows? For the same reason their fathers and grandfathers bought IBM. Because everyone else does.
One of my earliest influences in computer journalism was a poster done by CP/M User’s Guide editor (now rock star) Tony Bove, called Murphy’s Law of Computing. (He’s still writing. He’s the author of Just Say No to Microsoft.”)
The poster featured the expected hazards of dealing with floppy disks and character-based operating systems, but its theme was that stuff happens and we live with it.
That’s the real Murphy’s Law. That’s the one Paul is describing in his column. Stuff happens and we live with it.
It’s illustrative of something happening in politics right now. Real change is not easy. There’s something comforting in the familiar, even if it’s being hit on the head lessons.
You have to do more than talk about change for change to happen. The drunk has to go to AA. The abused spouse has to move away. The SUV has to be left in the driveway.
In the short run all these changes are very, very hard, and it’s easiest to resist. Just as it’s easiest to resist a switch to open source.
I resist it myself. We all do. So how do you go about making the change, in your company or just your own computing environment.
How do you beat Murphy’s Law?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 03/05/08
