[Wolves] RE: Sick of M$

[Chris Fox]

the.lock.keeper at ukonline.co.uk wrote:
> Maybe you miss the point.  If we leave it as a matter of choice and do nothing
> but improve the OS hoping that it will get noticed, our tax money will continue
> to be spent on Microsoft Licenses and children will be unaware of an
> alternative.  I wasn't bashing Microsoft for everything they do - just the sly
> way they market their products to children (maybe some parallel here with
> MacDonalds, Coke etc.).

> Just merely pointing out that there isn't a level playing field and likely won't
> be for many years to come.  I haven't referred to Microsoft as the enemy - even
> though senior figures at that company have referred to Linux with much stronger
> language than that!  Just sick of their underhand tactics.

But why don't the likes of Redhat, Novell and Canonical start giving 
away cheap hardware with Linux preinstalled and free support in the same 
way? Let's not pretend that they can't afford it.

(Also, why no mention of Apple's courting of the education market in the 
US? It doesn't seem to be a donation, but when they're selling 23,000 
laptops to one county's schools I bet there's a substantial discount 
involved. I'm sure that's detracting from getting Linux into schools 
too, but Apple don't seem to attract the same vitriol from some people.)

I really don't see what's so unethical or "underhand" about MS creating 
goodwill by donating computers to schools.

I'd love to see kids going to school and having a real choice about 
their OS, or at least an understanding that they have that choice. But 
at the end of the day, the schools are going to use what they want to 
use and overwhelmingly they seem to want to use Windows.(1)

I think that these are the minds we have to change, and it's not just a 
matter of price. Hence, we're back to demonstrating that switching to 
Linux is a worthwhile exercise, and these people need a lot of convincing!

Chris

(1) When I was at high school (this was about 1999), they rolled out 
Windows NT running through Citrix on old Acorn hardware. I know RiscOS 
was dull, but that's  what I call desparation!