You only have to lose one Novell deal on price to understand how bad the situation is. And then when or if this happens to the small VAR, they make sure it will never happen again. I had a quote on a large groupwise opportunity to a customer who got a competitive price from an online retailer. If I were to have matched the online retailers price, I stood to make $180 on an $18,000 deal, and this customer was a slow pay. I called Ingram, they couldn’t help. I called Novell, they couldn’t help. I went ahead and took the order from the customer, and sat on it long enough to where I was able to softsell them into evaluating other comparable products and never looked back.

Fortunately they went with another email platform, so I didn’t have to worry about losing money on the Novell deal. In summation, I never lost a Novell deal to another vendor within my customerbase, and did the things I needed to do to minimize my reliance on Novell going forward.

We know this is best for everyone, when all I need is a browser to run my mission-critical business application. This is a selling point for any app. What is the backend? Mysql/php or SQL/.NET? This is another selling opportunity for the Systems Integrator/VAR (SI/VAR). Where is the most margin? Of course: SQL/.NET.

‘And some consumers are actually going to consider alternatives — Mac OS X and yes, even Linux netbooks — before they make a buying decision.’ Some consumers are influenced by what they read, like buying PCWeek for the plane-ride home from a business trip and deciding that Apple will meet their corporate needs and we will always love and revere Steve Jobs, or WOW! – I can get this stuff for nothing and saunter into a retail store and buy the lowest common denominator and plug it into my corporate network, and everything works. Sorry, Windows Vista Home Premium doesn’t cut it for the office network… Can I return the stuff, to the retailer? ‘No. but I can sell you the right stuff!’ Says a local systems integrator/VAR. Game over, Microsoft wins. The salesman will ALWAYS get paid. Right?

VARs Rule and so does theVARguy.com!

The compelling part I’m struggling with. I’ve followed all the hype in the on-line press and all the derogatory remarks. The only compelling feature about Windows 7 requires an expensive hardware upgrade that doesn’t really exist yet. That’s a large robust consumer level touch screen.

I’ve searched high and low all over the net and I just can’t find them. There are touch screens out there. But they aren’t large and they aren’t pretty. Which has left me wondering exactly why did Microsoft bundle the touch UI into Windows 7? Unless you have a tablet, there’s no way to use it to it’s full potential. It’s essentially a pointless gimmick.

Windows 7 doesn’t offer anything compelling that Windows XP doesn’t have. At the end of the day if customers, corporate clients and consumers alike, don’t upgrade? Microsoft will simply bring XP back from the dead and everybody will be happy.

Microsoft is on the downward slide. But Windows 7 isn’t “the” make or break moment. Microsoft still has options.

For goodness sake, the Amiga and Atari brands are still doing the rounds. Palm have had more comebacks than Elvis and Apple has had more image changes than Madonna. Companies like Microsoft don’t really die. They become zombieficated. Then get past around like cheap crack whores by IP pimps.

I would agree with the Office issue, but I assume that people will need to run a new OS as Microsoft stops supporting XP and doesn’t fix the myriad of security holes that crop up.

I am very sceptical as to whether Win 7 can be that much faster than Vista as it has been rushed out so quickly and is apparently only really a version up of Vista with a (slightly?) more lightweight desktop manager. *If* that is the case, it might well mean people in industry seriously look at Linux.

The company I work for could quite happily have a large percentage of its PCs running Linux and run Office with Crossweavers, thus saving a fortune. The only other programs most people need are the Sales system, email and a browser. I actually think most could even use Open Office. If it were my company I would already be implementing this, but the IT department is lazy and I rather suspect there are backhanders going on when you listen to some of the bull**** reasons they come out with for not changing!