Is Microsoft Cool?
You tell me.
This has been an interesting media week for Microsoft. We just launched Halo 3, one of the coolest video games of all time. And I read in the press about rumored talks between Microsoft and Facebook , one of the COOLEST social networking sites around. (No idea if the reports are true; I hear the same buzz in the media that you do.) Anyway, It’s been a cool week.
The reason I ask this is because I was watching a cable news channel yesterday where 3 middle-aged men in business suits were talking about Facebook and Microsoft … and how they thought Microsoft was uncool. They mentioned that Microsoft involvement would ruin Facebook and its reputation of being cool. This made me laugh, since the people talking about Microsoft were about as uncool as they come. But it brought up a more important question--- Is Microsoft cool?
I think it is. I think there are a ton of great groups that are doing really cool things. Do we advertise those cool things as well as we could? Maybe not. But do they exist? Yes! I definitely think they do. I know I’ve hired a ton of cool people this year, and I’m not alone in doing so.
What do you think? Are we cool? Are we neutral? Are we getting better? Are we getting worse in the coolness factor? I’m all ears.
(And apologies for saying cool so much in this post—I wanted to get my point across and couldn’t seem to find a better word.) Maybe hip? Radical?
- Janelle
63 Comments
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Brandon Turner said:
Sadly, I think Microsoft may have lost its 'coolness'. I think a lot of teams like you mentioned are doing great things though. And I personally think Microsoft is a great company. This year is my last year at college and often times it comes up that I accepted a job at MSFT already. More often then not, the first thing out of peoples mouths is something about Apple being new new cool trendy thing and how bad they _heard_ Vista is. Sometimes people will see my Zune as well and ask about it as well. They often will have postive comments on some of the features of it, but soon after claim it as just another rip off of Apple; and its Microsoft's attpemt to be as popular as them.
Robert Howard said:
I guess it depends on your definition of cool. I don't do Facebook etc. I think MS is cool and is producing cool products and concepts. MS has the vision and power to turn fringe concepts into mass consumables. More power to you.
Yi Qiang said:
I think that you are being 'uncool' by asking whether or not Microsoft is 'cool'. You don't see Google, Facebook or any of the other 'cool' companies asking whether or not they are cool right? Did the 'cool' kids in school ever ask if they were 'cool'? Make great products, hire great people and the coolness factor will come. In the end, it's just a trend anyways, I think Microsoft is past the point where it has to be cool to attract awesome talent.
James said:
Brandon has a point. As I started reading your post, Janelle, it hit me that Microsoft is as cool as IBM. (*ducks*) Seriously, IBM has people doing cool things, from building the company's name out of individual atoms with a new kind of microscope they invented for themselves, to the PowerPC/POWER CPU - which powers both the Xbox 360 on which Halo 3 runs, and the PS3 it competes against - to BlueGene/L (most powerful supercomputer on earth... but for all that, can you honestly tell me you think IBM is 'cool'? Individual bits may be - Don Estridge's team, for example, albeit nearly thirty years ago now, sounds like a setup I would love to be part of - but then we have the widely reported 'shutdown menu committee' from Vista's development: one small menu, developed by a committee two or more times the size of the team which developed the IBM PC itself. Somehow, it's hard to reconcile that with any notion of a 'cool' company I might have!
In some ways, perhaps it's inevitable that any large company will become rather 'faceless', bland and generic. I think Google's openness helps here, with official project/product blogs and the 'labs' projects open to the public - they do have some degree of coolness, despite their size, profile and success. They talk about the free food, scooters and ski trips; you've got ... towels. And a bus.
Chakkaradeep said:
I believe Microsoft is "cool" because of various reasons. I define "cool" as "innovative".
Ok, I can see many here yelling at me - "How does that fit Microsoft ! "
Fine here I go.....(beware-long post, lol)
I can see many people here quote Microsoft ripping off from Apple. Well, in that case, the history says that Apple ripped off from Xerox ! Its not about what you have, its how you deliver to people at the right time. I work, I earn, but still I am not able to buy a Mac system because its damn costly and I cant afford to spend that much on PC.
Ok, next controversial statement, is Vista that bad ? My answer to this is , its not. Vista is a major step forward for Microsoft and they have come out pretty well with the product. I do agree that it requires more resources, but which hi-fi operating system doesn't require high configuration ? Read the Apple configs, they all are high specs and people don't tend to complain because Apple supplies their own hardware and hardly people compare specs. Even for Linux, if you are going to use Beryl all the time, you need 512 MB RAM minimum. There has been so many "false" advertisements regarding Vista and somehow they got to put Vista down. I have seen people install Vista first time, work for first half hour and say its not worth ! Thats not how its meant to be for any system. I always tell people to work at least a month to get along with Vista and then give their feedback and I have succeeded in that as people say its good and not going back to XP. The same applies to me, now its been more than 6 months and been using Vista for my day-to-day activities and development activities.
People forget to read the Vista improvements and just complain. One of the finest examples I can cite is Vista UAC. One of my friend who is a Linux user (ubuntu) complained how irritating UAC is for him. I just asked one question, what is sudo in Linux (in ubuntu) and what you do to do system or administration tasks - he promptly replied that sudo prompts for user name and password if you want to do admin tasks and then I asked so what does UAC do - he didn't answer and went away !
There has been more negative remarks about Microsoft recently and the main reason is media(internet) and no one can be blamed for that.
Look for the products developed by Microsoft - each one has its future and lots of expectations. The latest Dreamscene Content Pack, Expression products etc., does prove that.
Been Microsoft Server Lead in my previous job, I have seen how strong/reliable Microsoft Windows Server 2003 are and our organization benefited a lot by deploying Windows Server. We did have Red Hat Servers but they weren't helpful for us. Best thing to compare is with Windows Group Policies.
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 has more good features and improvements and am sure thats gonna rock Server Industry unlike Vista(Vista here because of controversial statements given by many in the media).
I am also testing Vista SP1 beta and so far, I do like it.
Regarding Zune and iPod - I have never been a fan of both and don't own any of them. I dont like iPod because I need iTunes and I just cant upload music into my device unlike in Creative, iRiver devices. I dont know about Zune. I currently own a Creative MP3 player :D
Microsoft Development Platform - THE BEST. No other OS gives you such a strong development platform to work with and if you are not aware, Microsoft does release APIs for whatever they say its a new feature. The best example is the Remote Desktop APIs for Vista and also Aero API for bringing Aero Glass Effect into your applications.
According to me, to answer whether Microsoft is "cool" or not, one has to have good exposure to Microsoft and their development platform and unless one sees them all, he/she
said:
Ok... You asked the WRONG person.
Cool.
No. no. not at all.
There is no way I would want to work for a company that deals in new technology like Microsoft.
No way at all I would want to deal with people smart enough to try and stay ahead and work with the game in so many ways.
No. There's no reason to consider a company that listens to criticism and tries to work from it.
Good grief. "Cool".... Yeah, I think that's an understatement.
I'm being sarcastic again... :)
To me Microsoft is cool in ways you can't even conceive. The people are cool (I've yet to encounter an unhappy Microsoft employee), the bosses are Cool (They're geeks like the rest of us)
And oh GOD are they passionate! There is only a few people I've encountered with that kind of passion.
Have you ever seen videos of Mr. Ballmer talking about his work?
PASSION!
So if being passionate about what you do is Cool?
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING
Did I say my piece?
Microsoft is definitely cool to me.
Sean
MichaelDotNet said:
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yaskil said:
Hi All,
I want to share my thoughts about why Microsoft is cool from a developer perspective :)...
A few years ago when Java was newly popular, some of hardware vendors switched to Java platform such as cellular phones. At those time I had a cellular phone which supports Java runtime. So I decided to download SDK in order to build my custom software to my phone. I have downloaded a free and offical IDE. On installation phase I received a misterious error. I tried everything and didn't worked. I tried to install this IDE to other systems and got same error either. By the way as a result I gave up to solve the problem that belongs to development team :). So that I found that IDE very unsuccessful and uncool. Since then I never used Java on Mobile systems again.
Nowadays I have pda which runs Windows Mobile OS. I am developing applications using .Net or native C. I have never faced mysterious errors. I can successfully install and uninstall IDE. I am able to debug the applications on mobile phone, I can easily track memory leaks on mobile phone. I can convert my previous win32 codes to mobile etc. Isn't that cool? Windows Mobile uses same winapi as Win32 does. That is cool either. Also .Net framework has mobile version, I think that is cool also. I am very happy that Microsoft spends time and money on mobile systems, and broughts their unique quality to these platforms. That is a big gain for software industry.
Think of the situation. You have received an assignment from one of your customers which costs millions of dollars. Which system do you prefer to use? The one who fires mysterious errors, even in development phase, all the time, or the one which works fine on all configurations?
This is one simple sample which I can share to show why ms is cool for me. Is Microsoft cool? Yes absolutely :))... As Steve Ballmer said "Developer Developer Developer Developer" :)))
Yahya said:
I second Vincent on "Microsoft needs more technologies that concentrate on high school and college kids" - 'cool' has always been their dominion.
Also a lot of things that Microsoft does are cool but its hard to get traction in the cool domain with so many anti-microsoft people against you punishing you even where its not due.
But the coolest thing about Microsoft is that it has a lot of talented 'cool' people that are taking notice of this and trying hard to improve. As long as Microsoft stays sensitive about its public image (consumers) even when a lot of its business is from corporate sales, things will improve!
Chakkaradeep said:
Vincent, for schools and colleges and universities Microsoft has Student Partners and currently am a Student Partner for University Of Otago, New Zealand and we do get most of the Microsoft software for free for students through their MSDN Academic Alliance Program. If your school is not signed to that program, I think you could request them to sign up.
I think Microsoft is ready to help as I have seen here, but Schools, Colleges, Universities need to have that mindset and approach.
Its better to checkout with your local Microsoft Center. We do have students portal for NZ - <a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://microsoftnzstudents.co.nz/">http://microsoftnzstudents.co.nz/</a>
Hope that helps :)
Amit said:
The top 3 coolest things out of microsoft are :
1- .NET Platform
2- Microsoft Robotics
3- IPTV Initiative
yaskil said:
4- Microsoft Surface, greatest interaction with computers ever.
5- Windows Mobile
6- MSDN (documentation, documentation, documentation :)))
Aaron Brottman said:
I think you have to remember that we're talking about Facebook, here. Many people will tell you that facebook was awesome 3 years ago / 5 years ago / whenever it was that they joined, and that it's *so much worse* now. Sometimes, it's a tempting argument to make-- many of the new features are very, very annoying. So, there's a kind of Facebook culture that is very, very resistant to any change being introduced to the system.
... said:
Is Microsoft cool. No. Absolutuly not. (and I love reading all the cheerleading "I believe - please give me a job", or "I'm so stoked at getting a job at MSFT - where to I start with the kool-aid" going on above).
You know the answer - if you have to ask if you are "cool", by definition you aren't.
However, should Microsoft be cool. No.
Microsoft, like it or not, is not a consumer company. Most of it's profits come from business, and to them you dont have to be cool - in fact, it's the opposite you want. Businesses out there (for good or bad) are conservative and want quality, realiability, steadfastness, longevity. Don't get me wrong, MSFT is a great company, but it's talent is engineering and not "being cool". Google is "cool", but it has only one (extreemly fragile) revenue stream, and have you seen the number of vulnerabilities released about them *just this week*
Play to your strengths. Leave the cool to the cool kids to take the risks (coolness is often fleeting, and changes very quickly), and if you *really* want them use the pot-o-money to invest, but please leave them alone after to continue to do what they do is "cool" (just like MSFT did with Bungie).
Vincent said:
To Chakkaradeep, I don't know what happen outside of US. But most of my friends who are in college use more Open Source technology or online related (Google APIs, now Facebook platform). I think I would say Microsoft should show the consumer usage of their technologies rather than saying concentrate more. For examples, Windows Live SDK is cool. ASP.Net with AJAX is cool. But you don't see them get pick up so fast (I'm leaning toward college kids right now). I would like to see more recruiting effort to show the consumer benefits of Microsoft technologies. And, no. I don’t want some quick one hour Tech Talk like how Microsoft does in most schools. Microsoft shows and ‘marketing’ more free complete tutorial online classes or even school classes (hey Stanford use Facebook platform for their course). And please, ‘complete the scenario’ not just a look up of APIs like MSDN, show more examples to finish a flow from end to end.
I agree that being cool is relative concept. Rather arguing or asking if Microsoft is cool or not, Microsoft tries to be more appealing to as many people as possible.
James said:
Chakkaradeep: sudo is very different from UAC - most notably, it works with command line apps and it doesn't pop up getting in the way for every single operation. As for Group Policies, between the double and triple negatives involved and the conflicting or overlapping settings, I suspect that's the leading cause of baldness among Windows sysadmins! (That, or Backup's fun habit of stopping doing backups - without giving any indication it has done so, until I noticed by chance that the timestamps on the backup files weren't changing, so our backups had been silently failing for months...)
MSDN AA sounds nice - sadly, my University department isn't able to enroll, because the IT department refuses to tell us the Campus Enrollment Number! At the very least, getting that would cut down on the number of student laptops which fail WGA and can't get Windows Defender or most updates...
Yaskil: Eclipse = download, unzip, double-click EXE file. Not even an installer to click through. Now try building Win32 apps under Visual Studio C++ Express and the Platform SDK - including running both installers, editing the configuration files by hand, changing the file paths...
Needless to say, *everyone* has SDKs for their stuff - with the Mac and Linux, it isn't even a separate download, it's an optional installation alongside the platform itself. They have the 'man' command to give the manual page for any command or function call; with Win32, I'm left to Google for function names in MSDN!
Sean: I don't think it's 'passion' which makes something cool or not - and so far, almost all the 'new' stuff cited, from the backlit keyboards mentioned on someone's blog (i.e. the same as the backlit keyboard I'm typing on right now - on my Mac), to entering the PDA and MP3 player markets - if you hadn't mentioned applying, I'd think your sarcasm was about MS's 'new technology' rather than not wanting to work there :-)
Vincent: You have a point, that 'cool' isn't what sells Office and Windows Server to corporate clients - but it IS what's needed to sell technology to developers, the company as an employment path to students...
I know there are good, talented people behind the wall at MS, and their blogs now help to make that a bit more public, but in that respect I'd say it's still a long way behind Yahoo and Google. MS does some cool stuff behind the scenes, just like IBM, but somehow that doesn't propagate into the corporate image well.
Chakkaradeep said:
James - I do agree there are many differences between sudo and UAC. But why does a normal user need to open a tool which performs some administrative tasks ? For example, I don't want my children to open Computer Management and see whats there even if the options are disabled. In Linux, the program will open with current user rights and you can see whatever you can do, but they wont function. In a way, I dont the necessity for that. Regarding Group Policies, We have deployed nearly 200 systems using Windows Server 2003 and Group Policies successfully with Windows Server 2003 clients and XP Professional clients. As far as we have configured group policies, we never encountered any kinda overlapping settings. I do agree there are some settings with a parent-child relationship where if you had enabled the parent policy, even if you enable/disable child policy, it doesn't matter.
And I dont agree with your SDK comment. The Windows SDK and .NET Framework makes the developer job so easy and comes with all options. With the latest WCF,WPF and .NET 3.5,Live SDK, a developer now can do things and just use his creativity in developing the next generation applications. Hats off to Microsoft for providing such a powerful platform for developing applications.
said:
For me?
My answer is simple. Cool is different to different people.
Car guys think a piston is cool. Some people think developing is cool. Some think pretty colours are cool. Some people are very jazzed by a pretty bed of flowers growing their front lawn.
You know what I think is cool?
That despite ALL of our different opinions on what is good or bad in technology.
No matter what ANY of us thinks is the best or the worst in computers? Linux Mac Windows CP/M whatever!
We ALL seem to be really jazzed about technology in general. All computer people, from the little to the big.
And the small fact that such a LARGE group worldwide has something cool and common in thought. It has to give the world hope in something better than ourselves in general.
There.
THAT is Cool.
James said:
Chakkaradeep: you can prevent kids (or any other user) from running any program you like - or, unlike Windows, give them the ability to run a specific program with root (=Administrator) privileges but not any other. At last count, I only had around a hundred XP clients using group policies, another hundred without (no Windows Server 2003 clients though!) - and if you look, you will find several settings where one option blocks or impairs another in a different section. (The 'Active Desktop' stuff, for an obvious example.) The fact I'm having to override mandatory profiles provided by someone else does complicate matters, of course - all part of supporting 200 users within a system of 5,000, with literally dozens of independent sysadmins controlling different aspects.
Which bit of my SDK comment are you disagreeing with - the inconvenience of integrating the Platform SDK with Visual C++ Express? Have you tried it yourself? (I've done it twice in the last week or so.) Yes, there's lots of stuff in the SDK - but it's still a pig to install compared to header/library packages under Linux - despite the latter covering third party libraries as well. (Meanwhile, Microsoft's protocol and interoperability documentation has now been found insufficient by two different courts - so much for being "good" - it didn't even meet the legal minimum requirements!) I don't use .Net things, so the things you seem to like about it aren't relevant to me
Now I've said that, for all the "innovation" waved around which consists of copying other people, often years later (PDAs, MP3 players, backlit keyboards, a bytecode virtual machine), there are genuine advances as well: transactional file system and registry functionality in Vista, for example, and the 'self-healing' feature of MSIs is nice too. Those are pretty cool features to me; folder redirection, too, if only I could get it in WinXP!
PS said:
Microsoft is cool.....no doubt about it....it has a bunch of very cool and good people. My only request...can u please please please ....make zune look more cooler.
Janelle said:
there are some great comments here-- let me take a crack at some:
Brandon-- congrats on your accept-- im sorry its not as fun to tell people you have a job with us as you'd hoped- i do appreciate your honesty though. I do have to comment on the Zune thing--- i too rock with a Zune, and I really like it much more than i ever liked my i-pod.. but my friends think i say that only because I work at MS-- when really i think its a better product-- but they do say its a copy of the ipod... such is life.
Robert- thanks for the comments--- so you are going against the grain and saying facebook isn't cool?? I like that about you Robert.
Yi--- interesting point--- how do you know that those companies don't ask that question? Maybe they don't ask using the term "cool" but a good company should always be questioning their relavance... i hope those companies ask themseleves "are we cool, are we impactful, are we well respected" --
James- IBM, really??? :) Yowza!! You bring up Google--- do you think their "coolness" has gone down with the amount that they are growing? Weren't they even cooler just a few years ago? I am curious if you think this happens to even the coolest of companies-- as the bigger you get, the less hip you seem to the public eye.
More comments later- my parents are in town and Im going to go hang out with them - (I guess that makes me not cool)
:) Janelle
James said:
I was wondering if the IBM reference might touch a nerve - I know it's the first name to spring to mind when I think of *un*cool computer companies, because - despite working on both the Xbox and PS3 innards, as well as all kinds of high-tech geek goodies - it's pretty much the poster-boy for giant suit-filled companies. So, it thoroughly skewers the 'company does cool things -> company is cool' assumption, I think!
On Google, I'm torn: in general, I'd say that yes, the bigger you get, the less hip you seem, but they seem to be escaping that so far. Irritatingly, I can't quite work out how; right now, my best guess is the way it still *seems* like a small company - just a search engine (albeit a really popular one!) and some related gadgets, rather than everything from mice and joysticks through games consoles to server software. The two websites seem to embody this pretty well, both visually and technically - Microsoft's not only fills my screen, but requires scrolling to see much of the content, including 21 background images and seven different files of Javascript pulled from six different servers, against Google's one HTML file and one image, both from the same system!
Now, have a great evening with your parents, and remember: there's more to life than seeming cool! :-)
yaskil said:
James it has been so long since I haven't used Java. I remember when java is not released. I remember the first release of Eclipse. You forced me to think about those days. I am remembering that I could not come to screen where I can create new projects on Eclipse because of a repetable bug. So it can be because of installation (!), or it can be because of some kind of weird bug i don't remember maybe you are right there is no setup, may me you are wrong when eclipse released on those days comes with setup file, i don't remember ;). But I remember the fact that I could not create and compile my two lines of code. I have never faced that type of things in the Microsoft's development environments (I have been developing since 1994. I have compiled codes on Basic which runs on DOS platform. I used first releases of Visual Studio, I used Whidbey, Orcas etc).
For me its cool that you can trust your development environment which is your best friend :)))... And it is cool to see that a company supplies this trust for decades ;)
Chakkaradeep said:
James - Have you looked into Windows Vista Parental Controls and setup a few accounts to test them ?
And regarding your group policies, thats what I explained as Parent-Child relationship. I would give you an example, you could restrict what menu options could be shown in the IE Menus, but if you disable all menus in some other location, the whole menu is going to be not shown. Same applies to many stuffs and that is needed because Group Policies go the granular level of setting policies.
I think we are going off the topic and if you want to continue the discussion , please email me at chakkaradeepcc{at}hotmail{dot}com
Chakkaradeep said:
To Vincent - I agree with you. In some schools/universities its just a showcase of products rather than going deep into how to accomplish things.
I had addressed this issue with our MS Academic Advisors and we Student Partners did take sessions on C#, .NET, WPF and atleast my sessions had practical examples during the sessions and I did go on how to come with a solution by taking some scenarios.
I have also heard from other Student Partners here that they have organised an event from their session , that is, they have announced a free MS Office 2007 to the student who comes out with a good application based on that session :D and the prize would be given during their next session :)
said:
Actually this is cool. I fixed the drawers in my kitchen without an FAQ or Calling in a "Lumber Diagnostic Technician"... :)
I even managed to line up the rails up correctly.
The "Debugging sequence" of opening and closing went well too...
Oh yeah... and Microsoft is oool.... Keeping it on topic (sort of!)
said:
Janelle....
Sarcasm. Nope. Just not in me...
Enthusiasm however is my Forte... ;)
said:
"Saved"?
Do you mean like "Glory glory Saved!"
Like "Praise Microsoft Saved?"
As in "Dancing in the aisles juggling laptops while doing a jig?"
THAT I've got to see! THAT would be cool! (and by proxy so is Microsoft).
Microsoft(SteveBalmer)
SteveBalmer==COOL
return SteveBalmer;
(probably coded incorrectly on SO many levels... :) )
Jeff Cochran said:
Cool? I certainly hope not. As a consumer, I don't need cool. I need products that do the job reliably at a price I can afford. Those aren't XBoxes, Zunes or Facebook sites. Those are things like Office Pro, Windows Servers, SQL Server, Exchange and Windows XP. Note the XP, not Vista.
Vista exemplifies the urge to be cool. And it is. But it doesn't add any functionality or reliability I don't have in XP, it just adds cool that requires more resources and risks more failures. No, as a consumer I certainly don't need cool.
Now, Is Microsoft a cool place to work? Certainly. And it's not the Facebook acquisitions that make it that way. It's the thousands of scary-smart people working there. Many are young, quite a few fresh out of college, but youth doesn't make for cool, or require cool. Getting those scary-smart people, whomever and wherever they may be, requires a certain cool factor.
But what's really cool about Microsoft? Those scary-smart people aren't all working as developers. Or even beautiful, talented and vivacious recruiters. Or project managers, dev leads or even sales staff. They're working as bus drivers. And cafeteria employees. And receptionists. And camera operators, accountants and janitors. And when even the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder are populated by smart, friendly and genuinely happy workers -- that's cool.
Ahmad said:
I would never agree to James comments about API. Microsoft is well know for documenting every aspect and providing examples for any and everything in MSDN. Be it writing a OS or creating a web site, you got code and samples for it. No one on earth has such an extensive, well structured documented API. Common merely giving out header files aint gonna help. You need samples and documentation. Why do you call Installing PSDK and VS as a headache. Ive done it tonnes of times on varied platforms and it works just as great. Fine going by your comments. You want VS and PSDK integrated into Windows. Hmmm so are you ready to face the next series of Legal suits. And I guess Windows since it moved into the Optical Media age has been on a single Disk. But look at silly Linux you have disks 1-6 LOL!!! Please guys lets be rational and not comment for the sake of commenting!!!!
yaskil said:
James
Have you ever thought why linux is 46 MB and Windows XP is nearly one CD (~800 MB)?
I am using Linux and also Windows. My copy of Fedora (Core 4 and 5) does not functionate my wifi card. Windows XP released earlier than releases of Linux that I have but successfully runs my wifi card. I did it work on Fedora but it cost me so much valuable time ;)
So Microsoft is cool. You install Windows and it functionates all hardware you have. That is cool, really coooll :))))
James said:
Yaskil: Could you please remind the Windows XP laptop I'm using now of that, then? :-) (Seriously, I've spent at least an hour tonight trying to get the sound working; in the past, I've hit serious issues getting Windows talking to the WiFi network at work, including different encryption algorithms, password exchange mechanisms - and the fact that, until a month or so ago, it simply wasn't compatible with Vista at all.)
The difference in size is mostly because that's apples v oranges (much like Ahmad's 'disks 1-6 LOL'): the source code to a kernel only, versus the binaries of an OS, basic applications and assorted supporting bits.
Yes, Windows generally works nicely with most hardware, just as Linux does these days - but sadly, neither is perfect. Mac OS X beats this by being much more restrictive on hardware support - in this respect at least, Windows and Linux are both much cooler :-)
Janelle said:
This is a great discussion on the site-- i think there are some really valid points here. I love the passion-- keep it up!
-Janelle
yaskil said:
James
I am not saying that Windows is perfect. There isn't any perfect software exists in this planet ;). Potentially each software has bugs. But the point is this. When you encounter a bug on open systems, there is nobody officially you can keep in touch to make problem solved. Does open systems have official technical support? (some may have but not all of them, and this service is not free, if I will pay for something why I won't buy a better one :)). Also open systems are tested and programmed with different people located in different areas of the world (exception, some of official releases). That is very major problem. That is the biggest point why Microsoft's or other commercial company's software products are better then open ones. Because they all tested and developed under the same management, that is big point for software development. Consider the support of Sun to Java.
In my opinion open systems are good alternatives. Linux is good alternative of Windows. Yes you may encounter bugs in your windows releases but why don't you use windowsupdate.com. Check out your hardware vendor's web sites for further device drivers. As an alternative (for now) I will not consider using Linux on client machines of the systems that I designed. It is alternative, if it was not so most of the end-users would have been using it instead of windows.
Also Linux is good technical playground for tech newbies, but not for end-users. Using Linux is difficult than Windows for someone who doesn't used computers before. If your systems faults because of the environment you are using. Your end-user doesn't understand this (consider that most of the open systems are not fully unicode compliant, if you are in America this is not problem. But if you are in mid-east or far-east, that is very very big problem). End-users want the system they bought is running on all conditions as you did for Windows. So as I stated above, I am using Microsoft products more than 13 years. I trust Microsoft environment and I beleive they won't leave me on the half of the way as others does ;). So, that is cool for me :)))
said:
Actually I believe Microsoft is extremely cool, I think they have some Canadian locations.
Isn't it always "cool" in Canada? Especially some of the REALLY northern bits?
You know, 10 months of snow, 2 months of bad skiing... :)
I've heard Winnipeg has some really nice weather... B)
James said:
Yaskil: if you encounter a bug in open source software, you can report it directly to the developers, free of charge, just by firing off an e-mail to the right address. (In theory, Windows Error Reporting reports any crashes you experience; I've never had any feedback from it, though, even from an unexplained BugCheck in NTFS.SYS.) As for 'support', with Linux I would at least have developer mailing lists and web sites to help me - with Windows, I have nothing official at all. (It's an OEM version, so MS don't support it - but the OEM went out of business, hence don't support anything at all.) My systems are all fully patched from MS Update - my second Vista machine is just rebooting from one as I type this - but that doesn't help my sound problem; I'm using the latest drivers from the manufacturer, which indicate they're loaded OK - but offer no sound facilities. ATI are even worse, *refusing* to allow driver downloads for this laptop graphics chipset, saying you must contact the laptop manufacturer instead - which, of course, no longer exists. (If you like getting support, or even just being allowed to download the necessary drivers, never even consider buying an ATI product: for graphics drivers, nVidia blow them away.)
I seem to recall various MS people complaining about drivers being Windows' Achilles heel - usually developed by third parties, outside Microsoft's control, but still causing "Windows" to crash (looking like Microsoft's fault) whenever they malfunction. There are some shockingly poor drivers out there, causing problems which tend to get blamed - wrongly - on Microsoft. On the other hand, Linux's approach of developing and including device drivers as part of the kernel with very few exceptions does avoid this, by ensuring the drivers aren't entirely third-party products: they're bona fide parts of the kernel, maintained by the same team.
Your complaint about open systems being developed in multiple locations is quite funny, being posted on the same blog which announced Microsoft moving some development activity to Vancouver :-) As I recall, Windows alone, never mind other MS products, is developed in part in China, India and Israel in addition to Redmond, not to mention having formed from the OS/2 project - a joint MS-IBM development, obviously also involving multiple sites; the IPv6 stack was first developed by Microsoft Research, at least part of that work in Cambridge. Then there are the parts which weren't even developed within Microsoft, like the defragmenter code and elements of the NTFS implementation, which were jointly developed with Executive Software... If you look back through history, the only point at which a Microsoft OS *hasn't* been developed in multiple locations is back before they bought in the predecessor of MS-DOS - i.e. the point before Microsoft *had* an operating system on the market!
(This, actually, is one thing I do find 'cool' about Microsoft: far from Yaskil's impression of a single point at which everything gets written in isolation, it's a distributed company with huge resources which can move pretty quickly when it needs to, as the quick creation of the Vancouver office as a workaround to the US visa problem. Janelle's own top 10 reasons appeal to me as well, except the hot pink office of course, but the combination of being part of a company with such huge resources yet still being able to make a difference - very nice! The recent reports of the year-long committee process which developed the shutdown menu for Vista did detract from that a bit, though...)
I've been using Microsoft software since Windows 3.0, not to mention MS-DOS, DOSSHELL (remember that, anyone?) and OS/2 (remember, that was a joint MS-IBM development, parts of which went into Windows NT: yet another nail in Yaskil's single-site theory!), as well as RISC OS, MOS, GEM, GEOS and CP/M, not to mention quite a few Unix variants; I typed part of this post on a machi
yaskil said:
James, you can use msdn forums, I believe you will solve your sound problem eventually ;)...
I want to distinct "development under the same authority" and "development in different locations with different people". I think you are missing the point which I touched. I wanted to mean that if there are several teams developing same environment loosly coupled-way, you cannot achive well tested and documented software product. For a successfull development you need to thightly coupled with other teams. Yes MS has different development centres but there are all managed from the same HQ. Which is the part of a pre-designed development process. Also consider that there is only one Windows, but dozens of Linux distributions. I have used different distributions of Linux, all perform different on the same hardware (some works some hardware, some doesn't etc). You may have problem on your sound device. But beleive me there are so many people who has suffered from missing device drivers on different systems ;). So that doesn't shows that ms is uncool or has bad products.
Also the single point I am writing here is that I find MS cool cuz it has very wide-range of rich development environments. That is because I am a developer. You have written that VC++ and SDK are not integrated well together. I am agree that it is difficult to configure projects on VC++ express editions. But it is developers' responsibility to configure a project ;) you have to know what you are doing when writing codes. VC++ is for experienced developers cuz low-level API gets into action such as WinAPI, MFC etc. ;). But it is not fair to punish whole SDK and whole environment for some part of solveable situation. As I have mentioned above I have faced much worse conditions on open systems. Also please note that I can make things work on open systems (which I did, solved and recompiled whole system). But the main point I am asking is why?. Why should I spend time to solve unknown issues on a software, if there are a better alternatives? I find MS cool because MS supports me as developer and I support MS platform on my software which very fair :))). Also MS products comes with as less bug as possible which increases my trust to tools that I am using.
I am using visual studio and I love it and I find it cool :)))...
James said:
Yaskil, they aren't even all in the same *company*, let alone a single unified team!
(In addition to which, with a well-defined modular design you don't need, or even want such a structure. Otherwise, you end up with a team of two dozen people spending a year designing a single menu with eleven entries on it, all doing very similar things while details bounce backwards and forwards between different bits...)
Incidentally, there is only a single Linux, with a single group of people working on it. There are many different bundles containing Linux and some other software to suit different user needs - but they all contain the same Linux ABI and will run the same software, unless that software has additional third-party dependencies (in just the same way Windows apps can depend on other DLLs etc). Yes, they'll often look different, depending on how they're configured and what is included - but then, my Vista system upstairs looks completely different depending on whether I'm at the console (the full Aero Glass), using the Remote Desktop client on my Mac (no Glass) or on an XP laptop (which makes it revert to the Win2k/2003 desktop)!
Configuring the projects is fine, it's installing the Platform SDK into the VC++ system which bugs me. It's not *difficult* - I build a lot of my software under the *DDK* using batch files, writing to the NT Native API, the level *below* the APIs you mention (which is also where the documentation becomes somewhat sparse) - in fact, it's the opposite, which is what irritates me: it forces me to work through tedious but simple manual steps which could easily have been automated with a tiny bit of extra effort on MS's part!
said:
Fur fight fur fight fur fight!
Actually a VERY interesting debate from two VERY intelligent sides.
yaskil said:
I do not agree there is only a single Linux. Name may be single but there are so many different releaseses which may be very confusing. You have given example of dependency of DLLs in Windows. I do not think version changes in Linux are that much easy ;)
Your Vista system may completely different while you are using Remote Desktop connection. That is because while you logon using remote desktop, I am not sure but that is my oppinion, Windows minimizes UI requirements in order to speed up connection, and minimize cpu usage on the machine you are connecting. I think Remote Desktop connection is much more fast and much more secure than any other third party software. Also from another point Remote Desktop connection is for advanced users. The users who are aware of IP Adress, who are able to solve connection related problems (NAT, Firwall etc.) to make things work. So for that type of users, it might not be weird using Windows 2K/2003.
Lastly, If I were you, I would have used project template or plugin features of Visual Studio, if I don't want to configure a project over and over again. That would automate some configurations. I haven't searched, but I bet there are some kind of project templates for VC++ Express Editions. That is why I love it and find it very cool ;)...
James said:
The point is that there is indeed a single Linux, at kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel - what changes is the set of libraries and tools bundled with that kernel. As I said, the ABI remains constant and backwards compatible, which is why I can grab a binary of, say, Netscape Communicator 4.8 for Linux (note, for "Linux", not for Red Hat Linux, Debian GNU/Linux or any other bundle thereof) and run it on *any* Linux installation with at least version 2.2 of the kernel, in exactly the same way I could take the corresponding Windows .exe file and run it on Windows 95, 98, NT 4 or anything else since the version it was compiled against originally. The window borders etc may look different on different installations, just as they do between different Windows versions or configurations (that was my point about Vista looking different too) - but it's the same application running the same way.
If project templates or plugin features could automate the setup, why do the official MS instructions talk you through doing it all manually? It isn't a 'project' I'm configuring, it's the Visual Studio C++ installation itself!
Sean - thanks - I'd rather be classed as an entree though :-)
yaskil said:
Yeah with different releases I mean Suse, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, Pardus, Mandrake, Bianca, Mint etc. May be I can dispacth my version yaskil linux :))). As you see there so many of them. And you are saying every of them thightly coupled? Each of these teams knows what other teams do? Each device driver designed for one of these systems works nice on other system?
"Development in different locations with different people" I think you are missing the point why I wrote that type of sentence.
Templates and plugins are for make our lives easier. If you are not having problem on configuring a project, what so. Did I miss something :)). Have you post any entry about your situation elsewhere (i.e. msdn forums) if so I would love to read details of the problem you have faced.
James said:
"And you are saying every of them thightly coupled? Each of these teams knows what other teams do? Each device driver designed for one of these systems works nice on other system?"
Yes, they are tightly coupled: almost every single file on one will be the same as the corresponding file on another, because they're written by the same people! Device drivers in particular: there's no such thing as "Red Hat Linux drivers" or "SuSE drivers", because you *don't* design drivers for one or the other - just for Linux. The drivers are all developed by the same people and released in the same way, whichever bundle you happen to be using. Likewise the applications: SuSE will give you a copy of Firefox with their own sites bookmarked, just like Dell will bookmark their own site in the copy of IE you get on their PCs, but it's still just Firefox for Linux: no more SuSE-specific than IE is Dell-specific. The web browser in SuSE is the very same product as that in Debian, Red Hat etc. (OK, they all have multiple browsers, but it's the same set: Firefox, Opera...)
If you want, yes, you can create 'Yaskil Linux': grab a copy of Debian, do a quick search & replace, compile the result and there you are! Maybe add in some extra software, to make your version usefully different: a bunch of web design utilities, perhaps. Now, do you think your version will need special device drivers different from the ones you started with? Or different applications? Why would it?
You missed the problem I was actually describing: installing and configuring Visual C++ Express Edition and the Platform SDK to work together (in order to create Win32, as opposed to .Net, applications). No plugins or projects in sight: this all happens before you create your first project or open a single file of your own.
said:
Sorry I have to agree on the loose coupling. I work in the field with all operating systems. I have seen situations where software or drivers written for one version of Linux do not always work with another.
There are some preferred versions when you get to Enterprise class environments. There was one particular runtime environment (very expensive) that would run on almost all Unix environments. Only Redhat and Suse (very specific versions) were on the list.
I don't dislike Linux myself but I have noticed that myself.
Sorry.
James said:
Hm. I'd say 'most of the bits being identical, built by the same people at the same time' is pretty tightly coupled, at least in the sense Yaskil seemed to mean it. Like the coupling between the "Windows XP Pro" developers and the "Windows XP Home" developers: they are the same people (give or take a handful of people who work on the little difference between the two), which is about as tight a coupling as you could get!
Incidentally, Yaskil, how do you feel about the five or six different 'distributions' of Vista?
You have a point that the development of drivers isn't coupled to a specific distribution, which could be described as a loose coupling there, but I think that's another aspect entirely.
said:
Boy did we all ever get off the "Is Microsoft Cool" topic... :)
I would have to say that is the most accurate statement. That there are a lot of badly written applications out there (both Windows, Linux AND Mac). I would hazard a guess that if some of the Linux apps were written the way the original developers of the O/S had intended them to be, it would just "drop in and go".
And the same with Vista. I've run into enough programs so far that were written badly in the FIRST place that in a proper environment, they start to fall apart. A certain piece of accounting software starting with Q and ending in books is a good example... :)
At any rate I will offer a "cheers" to both sides of the debate and a virtual "ColdEnFrosty" to calm the nashing of the teeth... :)
Sean
The 'puter guy
"I still miss my Commodore!"
James said:
It would indeed be much simpler; the pain-in-the-assware I'm thinking of comes on a box of CDs, two for each platform (one software, one documentation - the documentation being HTML, identical for all platforms - but wrapped in its own platform-specific web server!). The software itself works fine; the only hurdle is that it comes wrapped in its own proprietary installer. Which is written in Java, so it comes with its own - very old - JVM. Which in turn needs an installer to install, use then uninstall that JVM...
Since a simple copy command would have sufficed - indeed, done the job more reliably and efficiently, while causing fewer irritating problems - I think we can safely say that Rube Goldberg didn't actually die in 1970, he just started writing installers. (It's quite widespread; I spent half an hour yesterday downloading and installing a 30-odd Mb HP printer driver which could easily have been an order of magnitude smaller and two orders faster to install! Then there's the Acrobat Reader...)
Mark Russinovich has the right idea: why even HAVE an installer? Make your application a single .exe file. To 'install', download/copy that file. To run it ... run that file. To 'uninstall', delete it. The end.
There's a pattern here: working for a university spinout company means wearing many hats, including that of accountant. My half-day of training in using another piece of accounting software beginning with Q; part of that training included "when making backups, don't tick the 'backup all data' box - there's a bug which means it *doesn't* then backup all the data. Tick everything else instead, because then it *does* back everything up, despite being told not to."
Dan said:
If you had asked me to describe Microsoft a couple of months ago, "Cool" wouldn't have been one of the words I would have used. However after being brought over to the Sydney, Australia offices for a recruiting trip at the start of the month, "cool" would now definately be in the top 5. The offices are fantastic and just radiate awesomeness (see my synonym for cool there). The people really are like those cool nerds that are starting to become more popular at school. The interviewers also added to the fun factor, which of course is a major component in the cool factor.
In an age where knowing "computer stuff" helps to make people cool, Microsoft has to be seen as fairly cool. I know if I told me friends that I got a job at Microsoft I would be considered fairly cool.
However if you really want to start appealing to a younger generation of cool kids, just change some of the letters around in your name like: M1cR0sophT!!1!
Fusahiro said:
Is Microsoft cool? No, the new hotness is open source. Sorry but all the hype about Ubuntu is because Linux IS cool. No amount of advertising sub par over hyped games like Halo is going to make your company cool.
Ballmer throwing chairs around, Apple bricking unlocked iPhones, DRM. None of this is cool. The consumers are starting to realize this. Sorry, but Microsoft is considered far from cool from a consumer stand point.
Also, Facebook is not cool. Myspace IS cool. Just like MS conceiving the 2nd rate Zune to the 1st rate, but now uncool iPod. MS has chosen to endorse yet another 2nd rate idea.
Are you following me?
apu said:
No.
Halo is cool. Xbox is cool. But 'Microsoft' Is very uncool. beacause most people do not think halo when you say microsoft. they think windows. And windows is pretty much *the* definition of not cool - especially vista.
A bad product (vista) takes the sheen of other good ones (office 12, xbox) - Microsoft needs to become a holding company and not couple its products so much. So each can bee cool or uncool on merit and not have the big 'Microsoft' name drag them down.
Mohammad Omer Nasir said:
Hi Janelle,
Sorry to say, I think first we need to discuss on word 'cool'. what is the meaning of cool things??? and how we can define any thing is 'cool' or 'uncool' (in general meaning)??
Then we need to map things on our industry. what is cool thing around us and how?? and can we say selected things as 'cool' or not??
After get all answers then we can conclude, Microsoft is cool or uncool.
I think difference of opinion will be appreciate and no one mind it.
Take Care!
- aimslife
.
said:
Ice is cool!
Winnipeg is REALLY cool (to understate the temperature)
Job said:
Microsoft is cool. It makes wonders listed withing the Employers on your CV. Wonders! Seriously. Globaly.
Anonymouse said:
Is MS Cool? If you have to ask ... NO
Do some cool people work at MS? Definitely.. tons
Is everyone at MS cool? Hell no
Can MS be Cool? Yes
How? Listen to your cool employees and customers.
Make your employees happy and customers euphoric.
oh and Build a Zune that makes people drool.. and make products that would make even Mac users want to switch.
Vista was just meh.. You dont see Mac users downgrading from Tiger to Panther they way Vista users prefer XP..
Vista Ultimate Extras = Most Uncool
Dont brag about features, let your customers do it for you.
Look at BioShock and Halo3.. now that was cool :-)
The iPhone... now that was cool.. Make something cooler.. WMobile must bring it!
Firefox extensions = SuperCool
Youtube = Cool
Video of if MS made the ipod by MS = Cool
Google = Sometimes cool, sometimes creepy, however they do have the best food served on campus.. trust me.
Google Free lunch = Super Duper Cool
Xbox 360 = Cool
Sep HD-DVD drive = So Uncool
Peace!
Heres a killer suggestion.. just post a question for your readers..
What should MS do to become the Cool Kid of Tech?
Call it MS Cool Fool Contest not MS Cool Live Cloud Fantasy 2008.Net Questionaire. That would be Uncool
Vincent said:
I want to share my thought too.
Is Microsoft cool?
I've heard this question so many times at school and blogosphere. And the answer is uncool.
I think one of the reasons is because Microsoft is so big now. Whenever people say about Microsoft as uncool, they compare one thing that Microsoft did worse than competitors and conclude the uncoolness. And yet Microsoft competitors do get a ‘free-ride’ in many cases (I don’t want to name them. Hope you know who I’m talking about). Another thing is people have high expectation. This doesn’t count those who are anti-Microsoft. It’s kind of pointless to talk to them. More people say Microsoft is uncool now rather before because of two reasons. First, Microsoft is at its turning point in many of its core business. But when these things are over, it will get better. Second, enterprise is the main market for Microsoft not consumer. You can’t generate the coolness as much as consumer companies.
I don’t think the ‘uncoolness’ right now will affect Microsoft in the way it does business. The problem is lying at how it attracts talent people. I do see some improvements like channel9, channel8, codeplex,… However, it’s not enough. In order to get more coolness, Microsoft needs more technologies that concentrate on high school and college kids. And yet make them free.
A bigger problem that I see though is the way Microsoft tries to show their image now. Microsoft shows too much the work life balance in many places. It’s good to get more talents in some senses, like those who have family. But Microsoft is losing those top talent people who just come straight out of school. What they really want is how big differences they can make to change the world (not just the enterprise world) and at the end the big reward they will get.
Damien Guard said:
Microsoft have some cool products and some very cool people working for them but I think part of the problem is they have become so large and monolithic they appear, at least to the outside, of not being flexible and responsive enough to keep up with the front runners.
[)amien
Janelle said:
Alright- taking another crack at these comments--- going in order.
Chakka- thanks for that post- you went into great detail and I think that many of the blog readers will love to pick your statement apart. I do think that cool is the same as innovative-- i think that many times people think of microsoft as the one product they don't like (ie Windows, or office) and then assume the rest of the company is a mirror image of that innovation-- when really as you pointed out there is so much more that people need to think of.
Sean---my favorite sarcastic blogger--- i agree with your points about watching Steve Balmer talk--- if you watch him you will be "saved"--- he is an amazing speaker-- i wish that all people at Microsoft shared his passion.
Yaskil-- thanks for putting in an employee perspective. Like Balmer said, Developers are key to this company. I as a recruiter often don't know whats going on day in and day out, and its great to be backed up in my thinking MS is cool by someone who makes it cool for us.
-Janelle
Anthony Ramos said:
IMO, MS has lost its edge in the consumer sphere b/c of an inability to leverage R&D there.
Case-in-point, the last time MS unleashed in-house R&D into the consumer sphere was when they took tech out of Bill Gates home and offered it to the market. The result was Media Center, X-Box, IPTV, and a strong MS stab at taking over the living room and creating the connected home.
MS has also never had a penchant for naming and branding. Window's system restore feature is known as "System Restore." The new Apple OS release labels essentially the same feature "Time Machine." Which name lends itself most naturally to customer interest? The examples of bad MS names go on and on: Internet Explorer vs. Safari / Firefox; Windows Task Switching vs. Expose, Zune vs. iPod... The Zune packaging does not even prominently include the word Zune. How can you build emotional brand value if the technology sounds ho-hum?
You guys still have great new technology coming, Surface, Unified Communications. There as no tech company that does as many things as MS, but MS needs better marketing. When you unleash a product, it needs to strike like lightning.
James said:
Jeff: with the exception of Windows XP and possibly (parts of) Office, none of the things you list has ever been targeted at consumers! Rather, it's the products you dismiss which are: the Zune, Xbox, Windows Media Center... You have a point that *businesses* are interested in other things, but not consumers. How many 'consumers' do you think actually use SQL Server or Windows Server - or even know what 'SQL' is?! (There's a reason Windows Home Server isn't being sold as a product directly, but 'behind the scenes' as part of third party appliances...)
Ahmad: even if you don't believe the courts and experts, Microsoft itself admits otherwise regarding documentation, with everything from their own Mark Russinovich producing a list a few years ago of 240 functions in the Native API, just 50 of which are documented (25 of those only under NDA, leaving a mere 10% with public documentation!) to Windows Server 2008 documents referring to specific functions as being undocumented. It's a different picture with the high level APIs, and the low-level stuff has improved since then, but it's still far from fully documented.
No, I don't want the SDK and VC++ integrated into Windows, just better integrated with each other, at least to the point of not needing to go hand-editing configuration files to get them working! (This is for Express Edition; I seem to recall it's easier with other versions, but Express is the one I have for now.) Since they're both free downloads anyway, I can't imagine better integration causing a single lawsuit.
Finally, Linux is 46 Mb in source form, smaller when compiled, and has never had 'disks 1-6 LOL' except perhaps on floppy disks. Yes, there are third parties who bundle it with vast amounts of software, sometimes spanning multiple CDs - nobody's allowed to do that with Windows, AFAIK - but I have plenty of single-CD Linux systems, many smaller than a Windows XP installation.
Ahmad, we should indeed be rational: blindly denying even the faults Microsoft itself admits to is just silly, as is attacking 'Linux' for the fact it's available bundled with lots of software as well as in very compact forms. One of Linux's biggest hurdles to popularity is the prevalence of Slashdot-types, ranting about "evil M$", or "MICROS~1": I don't think their Microsoft counterpart is any better, except perhaps by being rarer.
said:
"Yes, they are tightly coupled: almost every single file on one will be the same as the corresponding file on another... because you *don't* design drivers for one or the other - just for Linux...."
James, what you described is *loose* coupling.
James said:
Sean: I have some similar software here, which is only officially supported/approved on one or two particular (rather old) Linux distributions. It took a bit of effort to install, thanks to a brain-dead installer which made faulty assumptions (and wanted to install its own web server, among other things!) - but no harder to work around than some of the equivalent Windows apps I have to wrestle with regularly. Indeed, the VIA drivers I mentioned earlier have very similar problems on some of the dozens of different "distributions" of Windows (they put some important things in a folder named 'Program Files' - which, of course, doesn't exist on German or other foreign language versions).
As usual, badly written (and expensive) software which makes dumb assumptions causes a lot of problems, whether you're on Windows or Linux; likewise, properly written software is fine on either.
said:
Ah but most importantly, DO backup those darn books (which may a nice NTbackup?) on a habitual basis. Shadow copy is REALLY nice there. Windows Home Server as an alternate device is a nice second line of defence. Data Protection Manager REALLY kicks butt.
Any ONE of these will overwrite the "Repair the database" cost that a certain provider charges.
Actually any ONE of these will overwrite the cost of almost any database recovery. Data Recovery is general is expensive! YUCK!