I normally use the term "commercial" as opposed to not earning money.
I believe Compaq has big interests in deploying Windows 2000, since it generates sales, but they also need to have credibility in a market that buys more NT machines than Windows 2000 machines.
But maybe things change, when Windows 2000 service pack 1 gets out over here. Microsoft just put out the "I love you" virus update for Outlook, so the Windows 2000 service pack will probably make it this year or early 2001.
Right now the situation over here is this:
- MS Word 2000 is not 100% compatible with MS Word 97, so everybody uses Word 97.
- We cannot get Windows NT Server or Windows 2000 Server in danish, but Linux is available in danish. Microsoft has no plans to localize their server software.
- Security updates from Microsoft are extremely delayed, sometimes non-existent. Security updates for Linux are there as quickly as in the U.S.
- Windows 2000 is not widely used, mainly because nobody wants to be the first to implement it.
- Most danes wouldn't be able to mention just one Microsoft owned web-site except microsoft.com.
- The press is very anti-Microsoft.
Denmark is not the only european country, that has it this way. Germany and France is better off, because a german and french version of Windows NT Server exist, but Italy, Poland, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Russia, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland etc. all have the same problems with Microsoft that we have, and we are talking a market of more than 400 million people, that Microsoft has at stake.
I don't know much about asia - it would be nice to hear some japanese talk about Japan - it's also a big market and, as far as I know, there is no japanese version of NT Server or Windows 2000 Server. Am I right?
Just imagine the chinese market: I would guess that Linux GUI system administration tools are already translated to chinese, and if not, I would be surprised if there isn't an server-appliance vendor that has translated the web-interface for server administration to chinese. |
