Re: [LUG] Advocating Linux was: Computer Shops and Linux (and variousother s as well).

[Simon Waters <Simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brough, Tom wrote:
> I know I'm going to get flamed about this, but then that's part of advocacy
> :-)

;)

> 1. Its NOT the job of any particular shop to promote one "brand"  of
> technology over another. True, better shops will retain more informed staff
> who will be able to give Joe Punter (JP) an idea of what to expect and which
> way to go, but ultimately JP makes the decision as to what he buys and the
> reasons for buying (and rightly so).

Quite a lot of businesses look to their "computer shop" to provide
support, and a service, rather than just hardware/software.

As such it is the shops job to deliver a system that works, and the
business customers will buy it if they like it. Joe Corporate doesn't
care what is inside - any company choosing technology on philosophical
grounds is losing the plot (unless that philosophy can be expected to
bring clear business benefits) - similarly any company rejecting free
software because they "don't know about it", or "don't understand it",
better learn how to make purchasing decisions.

I know Shabir at Titan was keen on anything that would get him email and
file servers in the field that;

a) Go wrong less often.
b) Need less on-site visits.

He was interested in Linux for this, but I'm confident he'd equally be
interested in Open BSD, or MacOSX, or Windows add-ons. What matters to
him is keeping customers happy and coming back to buy the next lot of
computers or consumables. His main problem with Linux was I suspect
finding a supplier to provide a turn-key solution for small businesses.

I was looking at these turn-key solutions - but I ran out of energy/time
to pursue it. Also the market is quite competitive (there are a lot of
small suppliers of Linux mail/file servers), but there is room for
someone providing a hybred 'distributor/VAR' service for some of these
products locally I'm sure, as log as you can market them effectively.

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