CNET + Microsoft In Bed

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»CNET + Microsoft In Bed

I'm sorry, but news sources such as CNET have really lost credibility when they post crap like <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-9989240-92.html">this</a>. The article compares service update system's uptime on the internet from Apple, Canonical (Ubuntu's maintainer), and Microsoft. Basically it is taking pings from a site like Windows Update and comparing which update service has better uptime.

Fine, it's a stupid metric, but whatever. Where the crap starts to spread is the title of the article: "Microsoft ahead of Apple, Ubuntu in OS update reliability." Right of the bat, it looks like Microsoft's updates are more reliable than the other two providers. So if you glance the title and not the meat (as most IT managers do since they are lazy), you take that Microsoft provides better support... That's the first point.

Here's the entire article:

Quote

A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.

Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.

"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, however.

The company tested the three services every five minutes.

Microsoft Windows Update was available 100 percent of the time, but at the end of the article, Pingdom noted that Ubuntu's service is available from mirror sites. So, I guess that Pingdom doesn't really care how the OS handles updates through the internet (Ubuntu's update service was never down due to the amount of mirror). They picked Canonical's mirror to judge this really useless statistic.

If you just glance over the article, you will see that Microsoft wins, hands down! CNET has really gone downhill recently. These "news stores" look more like paid posts. Even the comments on that story are saying the same thing. Sorry CNET, you keep losing credibility.

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