DWUTKA at marlow.com
DWUTKA at marlow.com
Wed Apr 7 12:07:57 CDT 2004
Kind of staying out of this, but wanted to comment about the college students. Microsoft sells their software to students at an incredible discount. A co-worker going to UT, was able to get the entire Visual Studio 6, for $5, a few years ago. Microsoft does this, because they know if the college students use it, they'll be bringing their knowledge (and preferences) into the business world. Drew -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Francisco H Tapia Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 5:52 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: open source Bryan Carbonnell said the following on 4/6/2004 2:46 PM: >As for the actual Desktop operating system, that is further out. 5-7 >years would be my guess. Linux needs a few things to become more >competitive with Windows. It *needs* to become less "geek-friendly" and >more "user friendly". It also *NEEDS* to have a "standard" GUI, or at >least a standard layout. > While I agree with you I also have to guess that a Linux convertion may be closer than we all guess. There have been leaps and bounds in which the various distros have improved their desktop products. I also must concur that a standardized GUI would be the killer blow that would/will ultimately drive hords of users away from Microsoft. I base my opinion off such distros like RedHat or even the newest one I've seen (Knopixx). Wich is an OS bootable completely off the CD. It is Linux, and what makes this even more cool is that you could theoretically put out a distro that would make it so that end users "couldn't" break thier installations. Just always boot from the CD. With High end products such as ThunderBird and FireFox and even some of the OpenOffice products, Open Source products are reaching maturity levels that are acceptable to a wider population. Some of the greatest leaps have been "custom installers" for such products. This improves delivery to end users who are wanting to try a simpler to use OPEN SOURCE community. A greater risk than vulnerabilities in MS software is not so much the security holes, but the COST of the software. You have many college students that simply can't afford to go w/ MS Office so they use OpenOffice. While not all do, the trend is steadily climing, and w/ the avalability getting better and the quaility reaching acceptace from the general public, this will help push more OpenSource software into the main stream. -- -Francisco -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com