Let me quote freely from this USA Todayblog post on the eve of the Microsoft Windows 7 launch that my colleague Bob Sutor Tweeted my way earlier today.
According to a survey conducted by Boston research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, of 145 IT pros, 51% plan to standardize on Windows 7 for laptops and desktops. Thirty-eight percent intend to do so with netbooks over the next couple of years.
But at what cost?
Opting out of Windows 7 can save the typical American business with 20 or fewer employees up to $40,000.
Government agencies crunched by budget shortfalls can save big by avoiding the switch to Windows 7; with 14.7 million state and local government employees and 2.5 million federal workers, saving up to $2,000 per employee would be a huge relief to government spending.
But as the story continues, rather than jump over Vista from XP to 7 (which in many cases will require significant hardware upgrades), why not leave the Windows merry-go-round, dump it altogether, and move towards a lower-cost alternative?
the only chance those of us from the pre-MS age of computing have at seeing a Linux platform supplanting MS Windows is if a bunch of us pools funds together, buys up MS and re-invents Windows into something I'll call Winux...
I think the generation just entering H.S. have a better chance of seeing a widespread adoption of some other OS platform for the Personal Computer.
Really a very "thought provoking" story. Given the fact that you do work for IBM, I tend to challenge validity of your story.
Ubuntu is great. My wife spends upto 3-4 hours in front of computer and is very computer proficient. But, she would not use Ubuntu that I load couple months ago to test it out. Not because Ubuntu is bad, because of familiarity with windows. If we implemented Ubuntu across all those american businesses with less than 20 employees, than the training cost, time wasted in productivity drop and retraining IT folks, upgrading system drivers and buying a support license so I can run my business peacefully would cost well over than 'so called' 40,000 USD.
Did I even mention anything about IBM distro of linux for desktop... I guess that does not need an explanation...
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