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On 12/10/06 19:35:13, Rob Beard wrote:
Neil Williams wrote: > On 12/10/06 17:02:25, Rob Beard wrote: >> though. There was one company (I can't recall their name) who just delt with Windows 2003. The guy I spoke to was friendly enough but said that they make money from Microsoft products because they go >> wrong. > > Nothing wrong with that - after all, if their customers can't see > the problem . . . . True, I guess Microsoft get away with it.
I wasn't commenting on M$ - I was commenting that the customers of these support companies who use M$ products don't seem to care that paying out more money to fix problems in software that they purchased at exorbitant fees is just putting good money after bad.
At least with free software, they would have a choice of fixing the problems themselves, waiting shorter periods of time for fixes to be made upstream or paying someone to help fix the problems so that everyone else benefits. Whichever method, it's got to be cheaper than paying for the software AND all the support. When you add in the benefits of publicising the fixes to help others, it is pretty daft for the customers of these support companies NOT to at least consider if some (all?) of their problems can be solved with free software.
For the cost of a few hundred M$ licences and the annual support contract they could have free software and send some of the savings to something like the Google Summer of Code and get the software they need to fill the gaps in what is not already available. Instead of paying a fixed fee up front, pay for results.
When faced with the hardware upgrade costs of Vista, it gets even more ridiculous. Hardware + licence + support = a bad deal for the customers of these support companies.
-- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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