Microsoft announced on Tuesday a program that will pay some transition costs for companies that want to move from Novell's NetWare operating system onto servers running Windows.
The software titan said it will offer up to $600 per server in professional-services credit to companies that agree to make the switch, up to a maximum of $15,000. In order to get the subsidy for third-party services, NetWare users have to switch to Windows and buy at least 50 client-access licenses per server. Microsoft sees the uncertainty surrounding NetWare's future as an opportunity to win more customers over to Windows Server 2003. Some Novell customers are concerned that the company's focus on Linux could result in the abandonment of NetWare.
The Microsoft program partly grew out of a discussion that Martin Taylor, the software behemoth's platform strategy general manager, had with Novell resellers at Microsoft's worldwide partner conference this summer in Toronto. The resellers said that Novell's forays into Linux are prompting even die-hard NetWare customers to consider a switch--either to Windows or Linux.
News source: C|Net News.com
The software titan said it will offer up to $600 per server in professional-services credit to companies that agree to make the switch, up to a maximum of $15,000. In order to get the subsidy for third-party services, NetWare users have to switch to Windows and buy at least 50 client-access licenses per server. Microsoft sees the uncertainty surrounding NetWare's future as an opportunity to win more customers over to Windows Server 2003. Some Novell customers are concerned that the company's focus on Linux could result in the abandonment of NetWare.
The Microsoft program partly grew out of a discussion that Martin Taylor, the software behemoth's platform strategy general manager, had with Novell resellers at Microsoft's worldwide partner conference this summer in Toronto. The resellers said that Novell's forays into Linux are prompting even die-hard NetWare customers to consider a switch--either to Windows or Linux.
The major problem of efficient web surfing is organizing favorites and managing links to the web sites we have visited and found to be of interest to us. It is a well known fact that finding the web site that meets our needs and re-visiting it is much more effective than searching the web each time. With growing number of high quality online services it becomes almost impossible to keep the link information well-organized and easy to use. Browser favorites and bookmarks in most cases are not enough to represent complex information exchange models of a human being.
At this point, many of us realize that an application capable of organizing, cataloguing, sorting and synchronizing web links may save the day. But where do we find the one and only solution that would take the browsing headaches away?
Introducing Link Commander by Resort Labs, the unique fully automated links management solution that allows you surf the web easily and visit the places you want to visit, exactly when you need to!
Link Commander integrates with your web browser(s), automatically importing all your current favorites and bookmarks into a links collection. Once this is done, you can organize your links into groups, sort them basing on extensive set of criteria, set individual link verification options and even browse the web right from the application!
The program features convenient classic two panel interface available in five different visual styles and localized to several languages.
Besides link management convenience, Link Commander is capable of password-protecting either entire collection or selected folders only. Another great feature of this application is collection backup and comparison of current and backup copies, which is very useful when you want to synchronize links on home and office PCs. You can also share your links collection with anyone who has an e-mail address.
So why wait any longer? Download FREE 30-days trial version today and see how convenient web browsing can be!

I didn't make the original post.
Eh, this is just plain MS business policy. Not many companies have the cash to pay customers just for switching software. But there's the catch: they have to buy _at least_ 50 CAL/server
Why in hell would they do that? It's to their benefit to make their product better than the competition, not help out a free competitor and lose all their money.
Your name says it all.
One in the tune of 'abusing their market position'
STV
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.