Good morning all, before rushing out the door to head butt a different type of cow, what a great thread.
And how good would it be if we had a permanent one to inform such as me about better ideas.
It is very true the very young know far more than some[ me] will ever know.
rstuart you should be bottled, your words help many thanks all.

Exactly RobP. And to extend on what you've added. Isn't it convenient that government continue to aid and abet this hegemony through our education system and its many online departments.

Why are we encouraging and paying extortion money to a huge external corporation that provides an inferior product, treats its customers like thieves and has been convicted of monopolistic crimes, when we have a perfectly viable, immensely superior product which is free of all shackles including fiscal ones.

Why aren't our education departments saving billions a year and rolling out Linux and associated free and open source software, enabling our young to learn without the constraints of a certain corporate culture and associated financial penalties.

The benefits afforded by linux or even the free BSD's are enormous compared to anything from the closed, hidden in secrecy, corporate world. Australia is a real backwater when acknowledging this. It's about time our illustrious Luddites in power grew a brain and gave our people and kids a fair suck of the source bottle! The future is here and now and the future is GNU/Linux.

I could rant on and on about the injustices perpetuated on society by the use of Microsoft/Apple products, there's just no good reason to be still using them.

*I could rant on and on about the injustices perpetuated on society by the use of Microsoft/Apple products, there's just no good reason to be still using them.*

RawMustard, it seems to me that you are committing the fatal flaw
of seeing the world through your narrow perpective. We all do it,
so you are not alone.

You and others might be tinkerers of software, prepared to spend
endless hours finding solutions. People like me and millions of
others, including Govt, simply arn't interested. Consumers today
don't want a product, they want a solution which works.

So if you want that solution in Govt, offer the service. When
Govt does a deal, they might pay 50$ for a Windows programme, for they are buying bulk. Given that it costs them well over 50$ an
hour to employ a teacher, its hardly worth their while, having
thousands of teachers tinkering with Linux, at 50$ plus an hour.

To me a computer is a means to an end, not a means that I want to
stuff around with. I have other interests. If a couple of hundred
$ worth of software can provide that solution efficiently, then
I am happy to pay it, which leaves me time to get on with more
interesting and important matters.

You're making an assumption Yabby.

>>You and others might be tinkerers of software, prepared to spend
endless hours finding solutions<<

Your assumption is that if you instal non-Microsoft/Apple software, you are required to "tinker". This is not necessarily the case.

I am profoundly non-technical, and have been running Linux systems for over a year, without any problems. I use no more computer-awareness than I needed to run a Windows system, the most complex task being the ability to download files from the internet.

Almost everything is "automatic". There are regular updates to the software components, the handling of which needs nothing more than clicking "yes" and entering your password. They rarely ask you to restart your computer. I've never had a blue screen of death, or its equivalent. It handles everything I need - even initiating a connection to the internet using a brand-new wireless broadband modem (that the supplier doesn't "support" under Linux) is simple - in fact vastly simpler than under Windows.

For those residual "Windows only" applications, I have installed Sun's VirtualBox. It quarantines an old Windows XP SP1, that is theoretically "out of date", but happily runs MYOB, Internet Explorer (insisted on by the Tax Office) and shares files with my main system.

I have a stable system. There are more recent versions of the operating system available, but I don't need to bother myself with them. Open Office does everything that I used to do in Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. And reads and writes in their format when you need to. I am increasingly using Google for diaries, email etc. The first time you receive an email containing the phrase "shall we meet at 10.30 on Tuesday", and notice that Google is already offering to put the meeting in your diary... that's when you know that being a geek is absolutely not a requirement any longer.

So, if you will allow me to quote:

>>it seems to me that you are committing the fatal flaw
of seeing the world through your narrow perpective. We all do it,
so you are not alone.<<

>>Isn't it convenient that government continue to aid and abet this hegemony through our education system and its many online departments.

Why are we encouraging and paying extortion money to a huge external corporation that provides an inferior product, treats its customers like thieves and has been convicted of monopolistic crimes, when we have a perfectly viable, immensely superior product which is free of all shackles including fiscal ones.<<

RawMustard,

We shouldn't automatically be buying MS products, I agree. But Government procurement is still steeped in the buy-in-bulk mentality. What's more important to them is maintaining continuity with their past policies than looking to the future. It's a big thing for them to change tack to open source although the idea has already been floated. The PS is also quite lazy, so there's another major impediment to positive change.

The truth is there are people in Government that are using open source products for their specialist needs. But the spine of the IT system is all Microsoft.

They say the Public Service moves at two speeds: glacially and like greased lightning. If history's any guide, when they finally do get out of the ice age, they'll move very fast. I hope.

Yabby,

It sounds more like you don't want to mess around with different software. You seem to have taken the Microsoft bait that their products are better because they say so. While I've not used Open Office, I've heard from a number of sources (now Pericles) that it's just as good as MS. Microsoft thieved other company's market share and ideas and open source is doing it back to them. Love it.

*it seems to me that you are committing the fatal flaw
of seeing the world through your narrow perpective. We all do it,
so you are not alone*

Pericles, those are indeed very wise words! :)

You are telling me about one single computer, used in the last
year.Yours. Should that kind of statistic give me the confidence to
agree that tens of thousands of Govt computers should all convert
tomorrow?

You might agree that conflicts in software can waste huge amounts
of time and money.

When I examined the idea of using various email programmes, the first
thing that I did was to go and do a bit of net surfing, to read what
many others had experienced with those programmes. Yes, some were
happy, but a great deal were frustrated by constant conflicts
and with nobody being paid, there was nobody to fix them.

So my point remains. That is the kind of service that a Govt dept
would need, before installing software that runs their computers
and I doubt if they will get it for free.