"Microsoft has been reprimanded over misleading advertising by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The UK watchdog upheld complaints about a magazine advert which claimed that the open-source operating system Linux was more expensive than Windows," reports the BBC.
"Referring to research, it read: 'Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows Server 2003'.
"A graph used in the advert compared the cost in US dollars per megabit per second of a Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs, with a Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900 MHz Intel Xeon CPUs."
Comment: What a stupid thing to claim, though I suppose they might have got away with the usual weasel, "up to 10 times more expensive". Of course, I'd also expect similar research to show that running Linux on an IBM mainframe was more than 10 times as expensive as running Linux on Intel chips: it's the move to Intel or AMD servers that is saving IT departments pots of money, rather than the move to either Windows Server or Linux.
