Technet going bye bye
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Don't know if you guys heard the news but TechNet is going bye bye as of these year. No new subscriptions past September 30th,2013 and no renewals of existing members. I know that this is not a Windows forum but I'm sure a lot of people on here are TechNet members. What do you guys think? What are your plans when the service goes away? I looked at MSDN $699 but it only includes Windows and Windows Server Operating Systems no Office ect.
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I think it is great news, TechNet has been one of the best things Microsoft had going for supporting individuals, small companies and small IT shops. With TechNet they could put together and test a design before spending big bucks on licensing really reducing the risk level for deploying Microsoft technology. They could also put together a home lab that let them experiment and learn the Microsoft technology rather than poaying a fortune for certification classes with their limited benefit. That assistance and cost reduction was a huge handicap for the BSDs and Linux, it let folks stick with what they knew or knew about at little risk and dampened any enthusiasm for learning and migrating to another platform.
Without TechNet a lot of smaller shops are going to be looking at alternatives that don't require them to take a big financial risk and they will hopefully find it in BSD or Linux.
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Never thought of it like that, although it still saddens me. I love Microsoft. I just getting to know bsd. There are too many flavors of Linux for me and no driver support across similar kernels.
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There is really only one flavor of Linux, https://www.kernel.org/ but many currently supported releases/versions. Don't confuse Linux with the distributions like OpenSuse and RedHat that include it but add all kinds of stuff to it.
As far as I can tell has very good driver support and newer versions of Linux add more hardware while rarely dropping older stuff that isn't really out of date. If you switch distributions you may find they are running older kernels that lack some drivers you are seeing in newer releases. Depending on your distribution getting a newer kernel can vary from easy to frustrating.
I used to do a lot with Windows both at work and as a hobby but the costs for Windows and the tools I needed to be productive got to be too much once I retired. Heck just keeping a current version of Windows and a couple servers up to date on my dozen or so computers was expensive. I switched to fooling with Linux and either a RedHat clone (Whitebox or CENTOS) for servers and OpenSuse for desktops and cut my costs back to nearly zero. I'm still using XP on everything and facing the drop-dead date next April, tried Windows 7 on a couple of my machines and it just won't perform well enough to use, heck it took six hours to load and do the initial updates, mostly with the CPU at 100%. The same boxes run OpenSuse and a KDE desktop with no issues.
For my development activities I do like the GPL type licenses more than the BSD type but for daily use either a Linux distribution or one of the BSDs do just fine and I don't pay much attention to which is behind the scenes.
If I was still working I can assure you neither Linux or BSD would ever pass my lips! Windows put food on the table for many years and giving customers a Linux or BSD solution would have had me on beans and meatloaf instead of retiring early. Now that I'm paying for my toys my attitude is a bit different and I tweak a few old friends with my e-mail sig…
First rule of computer consulting:
Sell a customer a Linux computer and you'll eat for a day.
Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll eat for a lifetime. -
First rule of computer consulting:
Sell a customer a Linux computer and you'll eat for a day.
Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll eat for a lifetime.Wasn't it:
Sell a customer a Linux computer and he'll throw up.
Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll throw up for a lifetime. -
The only thing better than getting a virus is paying extra for the capability to get them :-[
Its a feature.
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Sell the right customer the right Linux computer and they will be happy with it. Sadly happy customers don't call at 2 AM for a double-time rescue from a computer-cootie.
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More good for Linux news, no more Small Business Serve:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/death_of_microsoft_small_business_server/
Small Business Server from Microsoft is "going off the air." With Dell's announcement of unavailability access to the last remaining copies will prove ever more scarce.
If you are a managed service provider that specializes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) I recommend you shake down your suppliers and build up reserves for the hard times ahead.
Microsoft's official replacement for the excellent Small Business Server line is Windows Server 2012 Essentials. It is unworthy of being mentioned as a successor. More to the point, it represents an unwelcome attempt to herd SMEs onto Microsoft's cloud.
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OMG - Where can people go to replace the "excellent" functionality of that Microsoft product? :D
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Well, that blows my plans to catch up with my MS certs, no wonder I couldnt find a discount code for the UK technet site this last 8 months!
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MS stuff isn't all that bad. I was a Linux Zealot during the earlier days of my adolescence, but have since begun to see the balance.
I work for an all-Windows company, and I've started to see the pros and the cons.
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If your a partner you could always sign up to Microsoft Action Pack… MAPS?
