Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
How you purchase Microsoft software varies depends, as do the rights you obtain when you make a purchase. You can opt to buy an OEM copy of Microsoft Office at the time you buy a new computer system. This is a reduced price, yet fully functional version. However, it is legally tied to the computer you just purchased; you are not permitted to re-use it on a different computer even if you stop using the first one.
You might buy a retail box set. If you are a student or educator you are possibly entitled to a lower-priced academic version. Often computer stores will offer to sell the academic version so you can save money, but if you are not a genuine student or educator your conscience should not be totally clear even though you still paid money and did not pirate the package.
A company may choose a volume licensing plan which allows the same activation code to be used on more than one computer; this simplifies making a standard operating environment which is mass-deployed to many computers at one time without having to worry about using different keys for each PC.
Depending on your requirements you may opt for one of several versions; there’s a basic edition with the essentials like Word and Excel. There’s a standard version which includes a bit more, and a professional version with more again, notably the Access database system.
Every single method of obtaining the software comes with its own price tag, and each option offers more or less freedoms on how you use it and on how many computers you may use it.
Repeat that for every application across all vendors – anti-virus tools, photographic applications, financial management systems, games – and the cost of computer ownership increases dramatically. Vendors like to joke that you wouldn’t buy a car and then be surprised when you have to pay for petrol, and therefore end-users should be fully prepared that the initial layout on computer hardware is just the beginning of a constant outflow of money.
This is where Linux comes in. It offers a totally different way of looking at things.
Just like Microsoft Windows and MacOS, Linux is an operating system. It makes your hardware work, and it provides a platform for running applications. Like the others, it too fundamentally doesn’t offer anything without programs to run on top of it.
It’s important to understand this; Linux is not some crazy different thing that will invalidate everything you know about computers. It won’t require years of re-learning. Instead, and simply put, it makes your hardware work and lets you run programs.
Best of all, though, Linux is free. And not just free as in there’s no charge, but free as in you can do with it whatever you want. You could even sell it if you liked (although anyone can get it for free, so this wouldn’t work well.)
Read on for more, including how you can wean yourself onto Linux and why you should.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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