It is hard to get away from Windows. It has been imprinted on people's
consciousness for generations now.They know that here are other OSes but
could not name them save maybe to mention Mac which is not an OS. When it
comes to servers they transfer their prejudice even though Linux rules when
it comes to servers. They want easy. They are familiar with Windows and
know that they can at least converse a bit with the tech people about it.

The biggest selling points for Linux right now are Red Hat which became a
billion dollar company in 2012, Android which everybody has heard about and
supercomputers where Linux has ruled for a long time. Of the top 500
fastest computers in the world 457 run on Linux, 30 run on Unix, 11 run
mixed OSes, and Windows runs on only 4 and those are sponsored by
Microsoft. This shows its popularity, power and scalability. Many large
companies are Linux shops from Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, eBay on the net
to IBM, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers
Squibb, NTT, Deutsche Bank, DreamWorks, ADP, Bank of New York, NYSE, NASDAQ
QMX, Goodrich, MetLife, Panasonic, Cisco and AIG which are all Fortune 500.
It is estimated that at least 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies deploy
Linux at least in part.

Two reasons most cited for why organizations select Linux over alternative
server operating systems is cost and technical superiority. The three
recent trends that are further driving the demand of Linux are cloud
computing, virtualization and Big Data.

Next time go armed with information:

http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/147:high-performance/511680:top500-list\
-of-supercomputers-released

www.linuxfoundation.org/.../Linux_in_New_Econom\
y.pdf

www.whoishostingthis.com/.../

www.comparebusinessproducts.com/.../50-places-linux-running-you-might-not\
-expect

Good luck trying to change minds. Sometimes they are closed and do not want
to be opened.

It's not uncommon for industry-specific software to be available only for the
Windows platform. That's certainly the case in the finance industry.

People are focussed on brands .
Microsoft is a brand ,Linux is not.
Another ´problem' with wholesale adoption of Linux is that it is FREE
(unless when an organisation requires paid-for support)
Many people perceive that if something is free ,it can´t be as good as
something you have to pay for.

The same perception relates to generic drugs ......which as many
feel/believe cannot be as effective as branded drugs.

Am I reading that line below correctly ? Their browser based software
is pre-WinXP ??? Are these guys still running Win98 ???????

> ... support ONLY works with Windows - but not Windows 8, XP, Vista
> or Mac.

Sounds to me like it's Windows 7 specific.

If the upgrade is also for the whole workstations and their software
isn't Windows 8 compatible then they may have another problem getting
Win7 workstations too. There are still Win7 systems around but
disappearing fast.

We just ordered tablets, laptops and desktops - all Windows 7.

If I could have done it another way - I would have put them on Ubuntu.

Know what you mean about not being able so switch them to Ubuntu but
their software needs pretty much locks them into Windows :-(

it is NOT browser based - at least not yet - and they only support
Windows 7.

may i ask do you know the name of the health care software the
company is using?

Amazing Charts is the main software.
I learned yesterday their board approved a new purchase for Quickbooks,
and that the lab they use, their software is also windows based.

http://amazingcharts.com/

When it comes to healthcare systems these are very heavily Windows
based and to be able to integrate with other systems everyone has to
be using compatible software. Suspect that this is an area where Linux
will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to gain a foothold. It
would take a major healthcare software provider to decide to support
both Windows and Linux in parallel - lot of work for not much benefit
on their side as they already have a captive market based on Windows.

The reason why I asked what software they were using, Is because I work for
a software company the develops financial software for hospitial and doctor
offices. I work for the SSI Group, Inc and our main product is called
ClickOn which does mostly billing of patient claims. Most of our products
now have gone browser based but the back end server are still Windows
based.

Support finally emailed me back and said they are not going browser based.
So its Windows 7 for all devices.
They use SQL Server 8 so the server has to be windows.
On the desktop is a link to open directly to the server.
Oh well. I tried.
The facility was totally open to trying - it was just ME trying to meet
their
requirements.

Me personally do not like Web based servers or programs. My employer runs a web
based Oracle program called Red Prairie. Good for this, but since most of the
hand held devices are web based. It can blow trying to put data in. Besides MS
is losing a big chunk of the market.

Oh how I miss the AS400 WMS system.