Windows is a lot more expensive to run than Linux, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has finally confessed. Despite Redmond's heroic efforts to defeat common knowledge with elaborately-rigged total cost of ownership 'studies', innuendo, FUD and outright distortions, the rhetorical power of common experience has become too powerful, even for a marketing behemoth like MS.

According to an article by VARBusiness, Ballmer now concedes that MS execs "haven't figured out how to be lower-priced than Linux. For us as a company, we're going through a whole new world of thinking."

Interestingly, an old page on the MS Web site claiming that the lower costs of Linux are "a myth" has been removed. In its place is a more reasonable item cheerfully touting the many wonderful features in Windows which Linux, it's said, lacks.

So it seems MS is going to stop defying common sense and take an approach we could sum up as, 'it costs more because it's worth more'. This too will probably not survive informed criticism or daily experience, but it's certainly easier for the company's flacks and salesmen to say with a straight face. ®