windows vista

Recession and Windows . Time to shun it?

During this time of recession, when people are struggling to keep expenses at check , lets see how linux can cut down household expenses.For a normal home user … Prices you incur when you buy a windows pc…( please feel free to convert the currency according to ur country)

Normal services: Windows

Vista home premium: £63 (upgrade price min £100)
Kaspersky antivirus: £20 (renewal price min £15 per year)

Ms Office 2007 home and student edition: £ 54 (upgrade fees may vary, min £40)

Total: £134 excluding the laptop/desktop price

Premium Services: Windows
For users who want vista ultimate: £157
For users who want office 2007 standard (word, PowerPoint, excel & outlook): price is £ 187
for office 2007 professional : £ 342
For users who want Internet security (which includes spyware and firewall): £40 (Norton) renewal (£40/year)

Total expense: a min of £394 excluding the laptop/desktop price

Users who want professional phone support from Microsoft for windows and office 2007: $79 “per” incident (WAY TOO EXPENSIVE)
Other companies provide professional support for installation and troubleshooting of windows OS and its programs at almost the same price.

Added worries: virus attacks every now and then.
Added woes: slow computer. Long installation times for installing OS, soft wares and hardware drivers. OS taking too much space

Plus points: very good OS if u r a game freak, a heavy user of Google chrome and googlemail voice and video chat service( a lot of pc games and google chrome can be run in linux using wine though)

Prices you incur when you buy a Linux pc

Normal Services
No virus attacks! So, no antivirus needed. £0
Linux OS (Ubuntu, OpenSuse, RedHat): £0 (support available online for free from community forums).
Firewall: £0
Open office (word, PowerPoint, excel, database): £0 (support available online for free from community forums).
Wine: An application which enables to run a lot of windows applications and pc games in Linux : £0
Take a look at WineHQ for the list of compatible windows programs.

Premium Services

Codeweavers: Wine with professional support. £ 26 for standard and £45 for professional(special support for games, includes 1 year level 2 support)
Cedega: professional support for running windows games in linux
Users who want professional support from canonical (Ubuntu OS): $250 per year (9×5), $900(24×7)
Users who want professional support from sun for openoffice : $20 per incident (9×6)

Myths abt Linux: does not support much hardware. It’s free, so it’s not good.

The truth: Linux is easy to use, stable and free of virus infection and support a huge number of devices. Most software companies are releasing Linux versions of their application lately.
You pay only for your hardware. You own every copy of your operating system, office suite and email management software and dont have to pay a license fee or an upgrade fee.-ves:

  • may need some command line usage while installing extra programs.
  • Linux versions of Google chrome, Google mail voice and video chat service not yet available (users can call to other googletalk users via empathy, supports video as well) Linux version of google chrome expected in mid 2009.

Recommended linux distribution for out-of-the-box functionality is Ultimate Edition which is based on ubuntu.

So in short, if you are switching to linux you save a minimum of GBP£ 134 or US$ 186 or
Rs. 9100(India). Thats quite a lot of money in most countries . Isnt it?

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