Get the Facts is a Microsoft site I just stumbled upon through a Digg post, and I just can’t believe it. From the site:
This site is dedicated to helping IT professionals compare Windows and Linux on key platform considerations such as reliability, security, and total cost of ownership.
Honestly, do you really expect a company (any company, and any kind of company) to give an impartial, unbiased comparison of itself with one of its competitors? Would you trust a comparative review of Cingular’s cell phone service with T-Mobile’s if Cingular were the author, for example? What about a printer comparison, written by Hewlett Packard, of Hewlett Packard’s printers versus Lexmark’s? Even someone whose head is completely filled and accepting of Microsoft propaganda has got to admit that this sort of thing is likely to carry a heavy slant in favor of Microsoft’s products. Any reviews or articles quoted on this site will have been hand selected for their Microsoft-favoring attitudes.
If you want a comparison between how Linux and Windows will work for your situation, there is plenty of data out there by people with less bias than Microsoft itself. In the best-case scenario, you could educate yourself about the ins and outs of both systems and then give them both a try. But for the love of pizza, don’t go basing your decision to drop Linux or take up Windows as a result of something the creators and marketers of Windows said.
As Todd put it, “There’s some dumbasses out there that would believe that [the site]. It’s worth it to them [Microsoft] somehow, honey, or they wouldn’t have done it.” That’s got to be true. Either Microsoft has seen benefits from this site, directly or indirectly, or it’s being real hopeful. My guess is that the former is true because, as Albert Einstein said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”