[clue-talk] saving money with Linux

[Louis Miller]

David L. Willson wrote:
> MS Windows $200
> MS Office   350
> (antivirus)  40
>
> Other applications as appropriate.  Most things are free (as in beer) on Linux and not free on Windows and other proprietary OSs.
>   
Thanks to all who wrote in. Those were great posts, argued with fire and 
enthusiasm! I don't know how so many people got onto the subject of 
netbooks. Maybe, if some more Clue members have that on their minds, 
they can start some more threads about it. It sounds like they have the 
functionality of a smartphone.

I understood David's argument, and his seems the most basic and what is 
on the mind of the average Windows user. His argument is fair and 
balanced. But, if I try to make those points to a Windows user, they 
will have arguments in return.

I think you can get an Anti-Virus program, off the shelf, at Costco or 
Micro-Center for $20, not $40. Many users get one for free from AVG. 
Unfortunately, CLAM is only for servers. With my limited computer 
skills, I just realized that.

I guess the average computer user has no conception that OpenOffice will 
write Microsoft doc files and also read them. It is a good argument for 
using OpenOffice, but OpenOffice has also been ported to Windows, so 
they could save that $350 (his price quote) without moving to Linux.

Then, there is the OS, itself. Many users don't pay for it. They get it 
pre-installed. His price of $200 is correct, if you get the full install 
version. I thought you could get an upgrade version of Windows  the 13th 
for about $50 or $60 at Costco.

I have heard the price of Adobe Photoshop quoted at $700, but I saw a 
guy in Wal-Mart with a copy in his hand with a price tag of $80. It 
seems that only for high-end video editing and running a server or other 
most-likely business applications will the cost savings really add up. 
If the user is regularly paying a tech-support professional to debug his 
computer in some way, then he may not have the time, expertise or even 
inclination to try to use Linux to have a more stable operating system. 
He is probably happy on some level throwing his money away.

Then, there is the software piracy factor. Some of the Windows users 
aren't paying for much of their software, or even their OSs. They are 
getting it for free, off file-sharing.

I think that with the cost savings from the free Office Suite, being 
able to use older hardware and for when people actually do buy new 
software licenses, that they should be able to save an average about 
$500 a year. Maybe, that would only be if they maintain two computers, a 
desktop and a laptop. I think that is significant, even though people 
might not take the time and energy to actually add it up.  I think that 
cost savings would be significant, even to a middle class person. It's 
almost enough for a good-sized Plasma TV, and that is just after the 
first year.

It is hard to put a price tag on how the computing experience is much 
more fun and productive when your OS responds, instead of taking 30 
seconds to several minutes to perform every task you ask of it. My new 
laptop has Vista on it. It is a screamingly fast PC, compared to the one 
I am writing this e-mail on. My desktop has 512MB of RAM with Ubuntu. My 
laptop has 2GB of DDR2 RAM, yet my desktop feels faster and more 
responsive. I think for Vista to feel as fast as my desktop, I would 
need about 8GB of RAM on my laptop. That is just crazy.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, this new 
OS, Windows the 13th, is about twice as responsive and doesn't use up a 
lot of memory, like Vista. And RAM is getting cheaper and more of it is 
being installed on new systems out-of-the-box. The Windoze experience 
with 4GB of RAM running Windows the 13th is going to be vastly more 
satisfying to the user than a system running Vista with 1GB of RAM. That 
would have been the best argument, in my opinion. The users get tired of 
how slow their machine runs, and then want not only to buy a new 
computer, but a mid-range to high-end computer. So, they don't have to 
sit around and wait for all their tasks.

Another crazy thing is how faster computers are some sort of status 
symbol. "I own a dual core."  "I own a Pentium." The Linux community has 
a different emphasis than on speed and power, and the numbers don't add 
up the same way with Linux.

Louis