This article on Yahoo news, entitled, “Used PCs Sought For Windows XP” pretty much tells the story of sad Microsoft customers who find that software they’ve depended on for years A) won’t run on Vista, and 2) either can’t be updated (e.g. the vendor is out of business, or no longer makes/supports the product in question) or is far too expensive to update (e.g. many specialty and/or niche applications are very expensive and companies make significant capital investments to use the software. To then have to turn around and re-invest, just because the platform vendor (Microsift) has decided to leave them in the cold is often unmanageable and/or impractical.).
The Microsoft Windows OEM EULA restricts the licensee to use the software to the machine it was originally installed on. The license is not transferable to other hardware. This means that if you buy a Dell or HP or Compaq with MS Windows installed on it, and that machine dies, you can’t legally use the install media for the machine on another machine you built from spare/COTS parts. When you discard the machine, the Windows license legally must go with it.
Of course if you had built a machine from standardized parts, you could replace everything but the case and be OK, but with an OEM machine, the most critical, complex and failure-prone parts are usually specially designed for that machine, meaning you can’t just go to TigerDirect and get another. The only place to get such replacement parts if the original manufacturer (or marketer).
Once again, the answer seems to be Linux.
I know, there are many specialty/niche applications which are not available for Linux. The good news is that there are plenty of developers out there looking for an interesting problem. While you may not be able to get an exact copy of the commercial package you’re used to, you should be able to get a functional replacement. For graphics, there’s GIMP and Inkscape (among others). OpenOffice.org has the office productivity suite pretty well pinned down.. there are others, too…
Sure, Linux and its halo of applications aren’t perfect, but they offer a freedom that Microsoft can’t match, and still generate the obscene profits its shareholders expect. With Linux, if you want to setup a webserver for some arbitrary, ad hoc project, it’s as simple as downloading and installing Apache. What? You want to write a C++ application to do some specialized thing that no ISVs will cover… Fine. Install g++ (chances are it’s already there) and an IDE (if you feel you need one). Java, PHP, perl, C, Ruby.. it’s all there. Free. Sure, if you decide to go down the “in-house software development” road, you’re going to be paying for it, but you can get exactly what you want, and it’s yours, in perpetuity, if you like… or you can offer it under the GPL (or some other OpenSource license), as a thank-you to the F/OSS community for enabling your new-found freedom and flexibility.
I’ve been running Linux for a decade now, and I can say with no equivocations that any negatives I’ve encountered have been more than outweighed by the positives. The overwhelming majority of the negatives I’ve encountered result from hardware vendors not supporting Linux directly. The fact that this has been a minor hiccup rather than a deal-breaker, I think, is a testament to the dedication of the F/OSS developers.
Your mileage may vary, but I strongly urge everyone to at least give Linux a chance on simple machines, like the family internet machine, or “knowledge worker” office systems. Linux runs on a huge spectrum of modern hardware (PC-compatible and otherwise), and has a huge halo of F/OSS applications, from IM clients to office suites to drafting applications available, and a growing list of ISVs offer Linux versions of their applications.
Part of the problem, from what I’ve seen is that the average computer user is ignorant of the legal restrictions imposed by the license agreements they give their assent to by using commercial software. They blithely click “I Agree”, and run the software without reading the agreements in full. Further, many “lay computer users” operate under the misguided impression that when they “buy” commercial software, they own it, and can do whatever they want with it. No true. In virtually every case, they are actually buying a license to use the software in accordance with a very specific set of terms. Ignorance of the terms of that license does not excuse a user’s violation of it. It is true that many people willfully duplicate, distribute and install multiple copies of commercial software, completely disregarding the terms of the licenses under which they are to use the software. These people will likely never be caught, and will likely never have to pay and consequences. That doesn’t mean what they’re doing isn’t wrong. If the entirety of the user population actually read and understood the license agreements before clicking “I Agree”, and and complied with them thereafter, the Microsofts of the world would be wealthier still… or people would get fed up, and bail out.
You can, of course do what you want. If you like running MS Windows, and being locked in to their paradigm with all its warts and profit motivations, then you’re free to stick with it. No skin off my nose… but if you feel frustrated by the restrictions placed on you by Microsoft and its ilk, you really should give an alternative a try… and with Linux “live CDs”, you really have a no-cost, consequence-free way to try one out with no restrictions on your use of it. Whee!
