Company sponsored studies are by their very nature completely unreliable. It’s like trusting the medical advice the tobacco companies spun in the 70s.

So, take this latest ‘analysis‘ with a grain of salt. In it Microsoft finds that (amazingly!) it aint cheaper to use Linux than it is to use Microsoft (at least over a 5 year time span). Skills shortage is the main reason attributed (p7) with Linux professionals earning 12.5% more than equivalently experienced Microsoft professionals. Mary-Jo has the rundown.

Of course the numbers only apply to large deployments, so don’t go thinking it impacts any home consumer environment.

When it comes to deploying large numbers of computers to emerging markets (ie poor countries who desperately need to be given access to the right tools for internet-izing their people) why you’d want to go for Linux anyway is beyond us, surely you’d want an operating system that has all the cool Aero graphic capabilities.