I quote:
Ironically, the InfoWorld Test Center did not present any browser with a Product of the Year award, debating that even though the product niche dominated 1996, neither Navigator nor Microsoft Internet Explorer was so impressive as to warrant an award. Besides, some of our editors argued, browsers are on the verge of disappearing into the operating system, so surfing the World Wide Web soon won't be any more significant than surfing your hard drive. You weren't convinced and, in fact, chose Navigator by a large margin over Internet Explorer.
Basically, this is Infoworld admitting they were clueless. Therefore, how could they possibly conduct a scientific survey?
Also, as many posters to this forum have noted, this is much more a poll of what people use (read: stuck with at work because the higher-ups have dictated it) rather than what they prefer. Basically since most don't bother to find out about anything else. There is no choice in it. Call the darn poll by what it is: Reader's Usage Poll, or else conduct a real scientific survey where you poll only people who have used more than one product to the extent that they can truly respond with what their 'choice' would be.
And what is this crap mixing hardware and software? Since when is a Jaz drive a client? What if I have it on a server as a network drive? If it is a client, then what is it's server, a mousepad?
Also also, how can "Other (no clear winner)" be 4th place? I realize that any one of the individuals lumped into other would have had a percentage smaller than the accuracy of the poll (I won't bring up the issue of very small samples here), therefore couldn't be declared as a winner. However, it woiuld seem the proper thing to do would be to have NT be 4th and leave it at that with no clear place winners below it.
In regard to another posting mentioning that many "subscribers" are not what they claim to be on their subscription cards: very true. I think many, just so they can feel important or look smart or just to get something in the mailbox, subscribe. The ones with a real are here on the Web. I always get "have you seen this article in Infoworld?" from co-workers, to which I always respond, "oh yeah, weeks ago - old news - remember I tried to tell you about it, but..." Another Infowhirled 'choice' poll, polling people who, when one of the hard drives stops responding because the SCSI cable was knocked loose when the admin was poking around in the server last, and despite the fact that he can access the other drives, his e-mail and the rest of the Internet, declares "the network's down!", blames it on NetWare and asks, "when are we going to get NT Server?", since this will presumably solve his problem because many of the clients are NT Workstation, and somehow this will make his Mac's network connection more reliable.
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