Don't Show Me the Money

Microsoft is an enterprise. They exist to make money for their stock holders. (Windows accounts for 60% of Microsoft's income.) One way they make money is to sell access to their core code so that the company buying the access can write security software. These companies then sell the security software to you! Microsoft sells you non-secure software then allows other companies to be able to sell you software to plug the holes! Everyone makes money off of you. That's economics and there is nothing illegal with that. The question is why should you give them money if you don't have to? If you had the choice of getting something for free just like you did with all the other software on this site, would you do it?

We mentioned at the beginning of this page that the three operating systems we would discuss were Windows 2000, Linux and BSD. You may have valid reasons to want or need another OS, but if you want to stick with Microsoft, think about getting Windows 2000 when it comes time to spend some cash.

Now, for the free

There is free as in not spending cash to buy a license and free as in freedom from private ownership. Programs like Firefox and Thunderbird are free both ways. The world at large owns them and they don't charge for it. This second kind of free is known as "Open Source". Open Source software has a maintainer who acts as a central clearing house to keep track of feature upgrades and generally manage the project. The owner is every one of us, but the maintainer has the brains and ambition to make it continually evolve and grow. Firefox is a good example of this. All the little bits and pieces that make up Firefox were created by thousands of programmers, free of charge. They donated their work to the project where it was assembled into a functioning web browser.

What do you actually use your computer for? The most common tasks are web surfing, email checking, word processing and simple record keeping. You do not need Windows to do any of this. You don't need it to do hundreds of other tasks either. The fact is the only thing you absolutely need Windows for is some games that can't be run any other way. Apart from this one item, there is no reason you can't use an Apple computer with OSX or a PC that is running Linux.

Choices!

There is free software that replaces Windows. It can be in an Apple Macintosh which is OSX (created from BSD) or Linux which is similar to BSD and usable on your home computer. If you are looking for a new computer, you owe it to yourself to look at the Apple Mac. Feature for feature, they smoke a Vista based computer but have so much more in security and usability. If you have a good computer but have continuing problems with Windows, try Linux.

← Embrace the Penguin (p2)                      Try It →