>>My brother works for a Govt dept and he dislikes MS. But it sounds
like the way they make decisions about computers, has more to do with
annual budgets. If there is money left in the budget at the end
of the year, the computers are replaced, wether they need them or
not!<<

Govt departments go through this routine with any expenditure, IT or not. The problem is that departments are given a fixed block of funding on an annual basis. In the context of the operational complexity that some agencies face, it's actually very hard to spend exactly what's been allocated in their annual budget. The biggest threat to an agency is a big underspend in a slow year where it is entirely possible the Government will permanently reduce the allocation for the next year. So agencies do things like put people through training courses, make renovations and change PCs (things they can organise very quickly) in the month or two before the end of the financial year when they can see they're on track for an underspend. It can lead to some perverse outcomes. But, OTOH, it does force a certain budgeting discipline on the agencies. Swings and roundabouts.

I know that you are sincere, Yabby. But it is pretty amazing that you trot out the lines from the Microsoft playbook quite so easily. It shows how deeply they have managed to entrench their message in the minds of the masses.

From "Linux equals tinkering", via "software conflicts waste huge amounts of time and money" through "cost of software is peanuts, compared to the cost of labour", right down to the "Bill Gates is a great bloke, so buying his products must be a Good Thing"

>>Given that [Gates] is the world's largest doner to charitable causes... at least the money I spend on MS products will eventually land up spent on a good cause<<

Like many of the excuses they promulgate, this one is weak on logic.

i) Bill's fortune is in Microsoft stock. So the money he is spending is shareholder money, not Microsoft profits.

ii) If you or your business is keen on providing money to charity, wouldn't you prefer to choose the destination of those donations rather than simply pay the Microsoft tax?

You said this without moving your lips.

>>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 must be that rare bird who doesn't have to spend many frustrating hours whenever the system decides to die on you.

And I had to chuckle over this.

>>So I am all for competition, the more the better.<<

If you mean it, then you and Microsoft are poles apart. They hate competition, and will do anything to eliminate it.

But you are right, all of that is irrelevant. Microsoft achieved their control over the PC operating system many years ago, and they aren't going to give up without a fight.

One thing is for certain, though. The battle is no longer about product, or product performance, or product security, or product features, or product stability.

It is about how far you can stretch market control before it snaps.

Pericles, I went through the "I hate Microsoft" phase, then one day
it dawned on me that emotion had overtaken reason and I was the loser,
not them. So I will endevour to explain it to you, but it might
take a couple of posts, not all written right now, as I need to get
going soon.

I'll also separate what I've spent on operating system, the net etc
and business software.

I refused to own a computer which ran on MS-Dos, I loved those early
Apples in the early 90s, but refused to join the Apple mononopoly,
for if you bought one, everything HAD to be Apple.

So in 94, when Windows 3 was released I bought my first computer.
I had to buy Windows 3 separately for that, it cost 46.50 $.

The next thing that I upgraded to was Windows 98, about 5 years
later, again when I upgraded computers. I went through my " I
hate Microsoft" phase and refused to upgrade, until 4 years ago,
when I bought an Acer with Windows XP. It truly was a huge
improvement over Windows 98.

I was told that manufacturers only pay around 50$ for a license,
but lets say its 100$. 3 operating systems have lasted me 15
years, so about 5 years each. That's 20$ a year. Then Windows
Explorer and Outlook Express were all thrown in for free.

Given that a cup of coffee now costs 4$ in many places, I
don't think that 20$ a year for my computer operating system, is
that unreasonable.

When I eventually upgraded to XP, I had to frankly admit that it
was far superior to the old 98 and yes, I had been a stubborn mug
not to upgrade earlier.

tbc

Yabby: "or your list of examples would be longer then just the French police and Brazil."

The list of examples could have filled the entire post, but two were enough to provide counter examples to your claim "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."

They were also my attempt at balance: one that was a wild success, and one that is on a rocky path. I did omit another kind entirely. And that are the ones that don't occur at all. They are usually very large organisations nosily threatening to go down the open source path, but then end up staying with Microsoft. Apparently it is a great way to beat down the price.

You are also wrong in saying large organisations aren't suitable for open source. If you do your computing "in house", you will have dedicated IT staff. These people have come up through universities, comfortable with Unix. Thus you find these large organisations tend to use Unix heavily. Not that they have much choice. Any computer bigger than a PC, from Sun pizza boxes to IBM mainframes and Hitachi supercomputers, don't run Windows. It is some variant of Unix or nothing. Thus for example, large financial organisations are usually Unix shops. Places like the New York Stock Exchange, for example.

Microsoft's primary market is people like you. Not so small that their computing support is in some sense outsourced, not big enough to employ professional computer people to develop their own computer systems in house. The relatively small amounts Microsoft charges means it simply isn't worth the effort to discover if something available for free might do the same job, because even if it did the change over would be hugely expensive.

That in itself is perfectly reasonable. But you seem unhappy with that justification, and want to defend Microsoft by saying its products or support are somehow better that open source. That hasn't been true for a while now.

I wasn't going to reply to Yabby's post after I wrote mine, well, because it just isn't worth debating the arguments put forward by windows drones. (Sorry Yabby, but it's the most correct way to describe most windows users who are locked into a mind frame of ignorance.) After reading his reply's I felt perhaps I should.

Now lets look at the tinkering aspect of computers between Linux and Windows which is Yabby's biggest gripe it would seem. It was the main reason I switched all those years ago.

Let's take Yabby's request for an alternative mail program to Outlook.
A Windows user needs to first research an alternative, this include ease of use, ease of installation, ongoing costs, initial pricing and licensing terms.
Once a program is decided upon, the user will either have to download the program from the internet or purchase the program from a traditional bricks and mortar store. Upon purchase the user will then proceed to attempt installation of the chosen program. Before the user can complete the installation of said program, the user will be required to answer a myriad of confusing questions they are usually ill-equipped to answer, the most daunting of which is the agreement to a Eula written by lawyers simply to confuse and remove rights from the user. In my experience 75% of computer users fail to reach this point due to the complexity(or as Yabby calls it, Tinkering) of installing commercial software on a Windows machine.

Time taken to legally install an alternative mail program in windows? Well, hours in my experience.

Continued...

Now lets take the same situation on my child's computer running Debian Linux, the Parent of Ubuntu Linux.

My child decides to change email programs from the standard Evolution program to something else. Her first step is to type into a run input "aptitude search email" a window pops up listing several available free as in beer and free as in freedom programs. Thunderbird catches her curiosity. She then types "aptitude show thunderbird" into the same window which gives a detailed description of the said program for her perusal. She decides she likes the sound of this program and decides to install it. She types "aptitude install thunderbird", she is then asked for an administrator password; she types this password and in approximately sixty seconds her program is installed with no further input from her.

Installing a complete operating system in linux is not much more complex and only needs to be done once in your lifetime.
My current operating system is seven years old and is current and up to date, it's been host to several new computers in that time. That's right, I've changed computers every year for the last seven years and still use the same installed system I installed seven years ago. This is not even possible using windows or Apple.

Continued...