He'd an adult, a professional, with many years in the workforce.

I'll assume he's literate - he certainly can rip apart my poor prose and run around the web, finding definitions to match what he wants.

The alternative software is almost all free, the equipment required to run it cheap, and it's not like he spends a lot of time keeping up on the latest trends in MS networking software. Something tells me he's got plenty of chance to learn, and it is in the news on tech sites for the last (hmm...) 8 years (or so).

So he's either capable of learning about the alternatives which he's chosen to either simply ignore or actively fight against, or he's incompetent, which means it really doesn't matter what he has to say on the matter.

Almost every pro-MS person I've known for the last 10 years, who spent a little bit of time comparing the open source alternatives, came to understand that while they may not find the answers to their prayers in open source, they should always at least try to educate themselves about it and keep an open mind. Whew. Breathe.

The very few who didn't were deeply embedded consultants who would lose their cash cows if open source was utlitized.

The remaining ones "who couldn't be bothered" were idiot PHBs who failed upward and thought they knew tech. But they didn't. They were usually being manipulated by the embedded consultants.