For one thing, it’s getting too expensive.  With the advent of ubiquitous cell phones and free nationwide long-distance, the traditional phone companies have to get very creative in finding ways to tack on more fees to compensate for the lost revenue from people dropping their phone lines and long distance service.  With less people installing and maintaining wireline phones, that cost must be spread over less people, with more costs per line. Most of my small business retail clients have 4-5 phone lines, which average over $300 per month.  That’s getting pretty expensive for a small business.

What is VoiP?  It’s a way of making a traditional phone call over a computer network (like the one in your office or over the internet).  Why is it important?  Most people have intra-office computer networks and most offices are connected to the internet, so you really don’t need a whole separate setup (phone lines and separate wired phones) to use VoiP.  That saves lots of money.  Also, most internet connections are not data-limited, so you’re not paying extra for the extra data traffic for your phone calls.

VoiP also provides a lot more flexibility.  Want an office phone extension at your house?  No problem, as long as you have a decent internet connection.  Want to dial another office coworker in a different city by dialing an internal extension (and not be charged long distance)?  Again, no problem.  Want a complex automated attendant script with IVR prompts?  Easy with the right VoiP setup.  All these features were available previously with the wireline phone network, but they were so expensive that only large companies had them.  Now, any SMB with an internet connection can have the same features as large enterprise companies.

What is the downside?  Well there are a couple.  One, since the internet (and your internet connection) is not as reliable as the good old PSTN, your phone will only be as reliable as your data connection.  My home DSL has only gone down a couple of times this year that I can tell, and not for very long, so this problem is getting much better.  Second, there are a few legacy devices that don’t work as well over VoiP as they did over analog telephone lines.  Namely old fax machines and POS modems.  If you’re still using dial-up credit card validation, then you’re probably going to need at least one analog line  (I really wish AmEx would move into the 20th century and go to IP validation!).  On the other side of that, I have one customer that relies entirely on IP validation and doesn’t even have a back-up analog modem, and they have been operating without a problem for over a year.

The bottom line.  If you have multiple analog phone lines or you use lots of long distance or you need those big-office features (automated attendant, remote extension dialing), you can save a bunch of money by considering VoiP. 

VoiP is coming on strong, and it is here to stay.  I predict that half of all analog phone lines will gone in 10 years and most will be gone in 20. Are you ready for the new generation of telephone?�

Reason One: Vista requires significantly more processor horsepower and memory to operate (in the “normal” mode with the jazzy graphics).  Many people have older computers with two or three year old CPUs that don’t really have the horsepower that is a good fit for Vista.  So for those computers, it makes sense to keep XP until the hardware needs replacing, but in most cases the machine (with XP) is just fine for what people need it for, so no upgrades here.

Reason Two: Vista in some cases uses a completely different programming model than did XP.  So in a lot of cases, software that ran fine on XP is broken on Vista.  Microsoft claims that the new model was implemented in the interest of security (and it probably was, since XP was VERY insecure to start with).  But with Service Pack 2 and the hotfix updates (and a decent IT staff), most XP desktops are reasonably secure for most business purposes.  Many businesses don’t want to risk having something critical break, just for the sake of the upgrade.

Many people in IT circles have hoped (and even petitioned) for Microsoft to keep selling XP, and they did extend sales for a few months (Microsoft typically sells the old OS for up to 24 months after the introduction of the new version).  But we’re only at Vista + 18 months.  Another truism: Only adopt the latest Microsoft product after the first “Service Pack” is issued (assumingly to fix all the major bugs that weren’t caught prior to the release).  So Microsoft rushed Vista Service Pack 1 to the masses in hopes of adoption after that milestone.  However, with the monthly “patch tuesday” updates, the SP1 is really a moot exercise (since most, if not all, of the updates in SP1 had already been pushed as part of the monthlies.

The real reason to stop selling  XP: Money (I know you’re shocked!).  Most people are just fine with XP, and most PCs sold in the last 2-3 years (with XP) have far more capabilities that are needed by 99% of the working public.  XP works just fine, and it’s (reasonably) secure for most purposes.  Moreover, it’s like an old friend - familiar and convenient.  We know how to make it work and find things.  We’re productive on it.

Microsoft (in a fit of Apple-related paranoia), had to “improve” the user interface of Vista - make it pretty, shiny and flashy - the “ohhh, ahhh” factor.  The problem is that scares off lots of marginally computer-literate people.  If Microsoft had just re-engineered under the hood (for security) and left the user interface the same, then it might have been a great product.  But the problem is that people wouldn’t have “seen” any changes to identify as “Vista”.  The best alternative (for the users) would have been a “XP Service Pack 4″ that fixed several things under the hood, but left the UI alone.  Unfortunately, Microsoft couldn’t charge for that, since they have set the precedent that Service Packs are free.  No more money for Microsoft.

So we’re collectively stuck with an upgrade that we didn’t really ask for, we don’t really need, and we don’t want - just for the sake of Microsoft product cycle revenues.  If you need a new computer, Vista will work just fine, but you’ll be spending more that you really need for processor and memory (did I mention that the PC vendors like this too, for the same reason?).  You’ll have to learn the different parts of Vista (and the annoying “Are you sure you wanted to do that?” pop-up messages), but it will work.  But do you need it?  No, not really.

The real pain is the businesses that will be forced to operate in mixed-mode for the next several years, since there is no business case to upgrade their current PCs and yet there is no alternative to keep everything on XP until there is.  It just means more time, cost, and headaches for your freindly IT staff, who wish that we really had a choice in the matter.

FireFox is another Open Source development effort (part of mozilla.org).  Interestingly, the very first web browser (Mosaic) was also open source.  It eventually was reincarnated as Netscape Navigator, the first widely available and used browser.  After Microsoft effectively killed off Netscape, the mozilla project was reborn from the proverbial ashes, and thankfully lives again.

I switched to FireFox when I got frustrated with Internet Explorer 6, which is arguably one of the worst browsers ever.  When IE7 came out (it’s amazing what a little competition will do to Microsoft), it was a significant improvement, but it still lacked the standards compliance and extensions model of FF2.  And there was a lot of standards non-compliance to get rid of.  Having been bitten by the DHTML/CSS web standards bug several years ago, most everything I develop is developed to current web standards.  I am continually amazed about how many things render differently in IE7 and more standards-accurate browsers (like FF), and consequently how much time I waste trying to make everything work correctly in both browsers.  But FF2 had its problems too - It had a significant memory leak and would slow down if left open for multiple days.

After 2+ years, FireFox 3 is here.  It’s significantly faster that its predecessor (GMail is almost tolerable in FF3) and hasn’t lost any of the rendering compliance of FF2.  What’s more, I found myself checking the extensions catalog for compatibility to see if my favorites had been upgraded to support FF3 before I pulled the trigger on the upgrade.  I wasn’t going to upgrade to FF3 without AdBlock or the Web Development toolbar!  Extensions are a big part of the overall FireFox allure.

Like I said earlier, it’s amazing what a little competition can do.  Microsoft has announced they are working on Internet Explorer 8.  While I’m sure they will ram it down everyone’s throat (through Windows Update), they better get busy - there’s a lot of ground to make up to catch the current leader!

What does this mean for you? It usually means that the software is : 1) more robust (due to the larger number of community developers), 2) free (since no one company is profiting off the development), and 3) less platform-specific (since many developers mean many different preferences for platforms).  For most people, Linux (an open source variant of Unix) is synonomous with the open source “movement”.  But there are open source packages for many different applications.  For example,  this blog is powered by WordPress, an open source blogging package.  The “LAMP stack” (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) is a popular web and application server that is all open source.  I also use OpenVPN as a way to connect back to my network (and pretty much do anything I need to do!) when I am out of my physical office.  There is also Nagios, an open source network and host monitoring system, and SugarCRM, an open source competitor to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and salesforce.com.  And these are just the ones that I have used!  There are hundreds more.

Coming from a predominantly Microsoft-based corporate environment, I embraced most Microsoft products as inevitabilities.  But lately, I’ve discovered that there ARE viable alternatives that are just as capable (and sometimes moreso, since Microsoft tends to intimidate market share rather than to lead with innovation).  There is even a very capable alternative to the 800 pound gorilla that is Microsoft Office (Open Office).

Open Source software is not always free to end users and customers, since most require some effort to install, implement and customize, as well as support.  One of the penalties (if you choose to see it that way) is that open source software doesn’t come with a “one-click” installer (like a lot of commercial software) - that’s usually because installers are usually very limiting and open source packages are usually very flexible.  Also, there are business models where companies have grown around enhancing and selling services around open source software.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because many of these open source model companies have products and services that are stellar in comparison to their commercial equivalents, for a fraction of the price.

I encourage you to embrace Open Source - I sure have!