Microsoft aims to double user base with $3 Windows and Office

IMO, a very strong sign that the Redmond beast is terrified, and that a cute little Penguin is on the road to world domination.

If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to send money to tux500. Now is surely the time to mount an assault on the evil empire.

I got $3.00. Sell me one.

IANAL. Isn't selling a product in a foreign country at a loss in order to gain market share called "dumping"? Isn't this considered a trade violation? Why shouldn't this apply to Microsoft?

IANAL

Let that be a lesson to all corporations, organizations and governments who spend millions of Dollars on licensing fees for MS products. MS is really in a big bind otherwise they wouldn't do that.

Keep in mind that the value of FOSS is not only in the free cost, but also in the software Freedoms users are granted, the quality of applications, the support of open standards, the robust security, the constant rapid developmenet, enhancements and openness of the technolog.

Let's see how MS can fool everyone all the time into this scheme!

Quoting:Isn't selling a product in a foreign country at a loss in order to gain market share called "dumping"? Isn't this considered a trade violation? Why shouldn't this apply to Microsoft?

Who says $3.00 is not profitable?

towards a GPL'd version of Windows.

Essentially giving the software away. You know, as a way to make money in other areas.

We just keep seeing the software industry evolving to more reasonable business models. Other distribution methods are better for the consumer, this is additional confirmation that Microsoft agrees.

No. It's yet another means of outflanking Linux. The Samsung patent deal is another, as is the Novell deal.

Outflanking?

These 'patent deals' merely reflect a vain attempt by M$ to legitimise its questionable claims about intellectual property they've been making since the the boy stopped crying wolf and went home.

I severely doubt if anyone takes them seriously. IIRC, the (5yr-only) Novell deal involved a substantial sum of net cash going to Novell who have since consistently - and vocally - maintained that Ron Hovsepien is not a Bag Man.

Get enough people to sign such cross patent deals and at the very least it looks like Microsoft has a case - perception is everything.

It's not difficult to get companies to sign up if you're the one paying out millions of dollars. That does create a perception, but probably not that Microsoft has a case. Rather than naming the patents and taking legal action to collect revenues from them, Microsoft is paying companies money to enter into an agreement.

> perception is everything.

Contrary to what Hollywood and PR flacks would have you think, perception is not everything.

Powerful, yes. Everything, no.

Perception is only good until reality presents itself. Think of movies that tank after strong openings because audiences didn't like the film.

It reminds me of "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_El...) by Philip Dick and the two competing drugs: Can-D and Chew-Z. The drug dealers from Redmond are distributing "trials" to "keep users in poorer nations hooked on Windows" (which is not much more than eye can-d anyway). On the other hand Linux is about choice, so we can chew-z our distribution - no need to be hooked on anything ;) Now, does anyone here have a robotic hand, artificial eyes and steel teeth?...

So here I am, sitting in Australia, looking at MS-Office priced (wholesale, ex-GST) at nearly $700, but in the next country over, it's available for $3. So I can download a “broken” copy of MS-Office for nothing. What's stopping me?

Two things.

First, there are no machines in this house running MS-Windows.

Second, I can download their arch enemy, OpenOffice, for free also, & legitimately keep it.

Thirdly, OpenOffice will spit out PDFs, and also does fairly reasonable HTML editing (unlike the cacophony spat out by MS-Word, of which O'Reilly reckon “the last thing you’d ever use is the ‘Save as Web Page…’ command in Word”), and can often recover broken MS-Office documents, oh, & isn't susceptible to macro viruses, runs on Linux (& Mac, & Solaris, etc), doesn't worsen Australia's balance of trade... what else...? I'm sure there must be something...

Well, if the urge takes me I can always download Firefox and Thunderbird as well... & there's this PuTTY thing, & XMing — why, you could build about a third of a decent Linux system equivalent out of the Win32-based FOSS that's kicking around...

I think that they won’t so much have piracy problems as wholesale desertion problems.

So now...the students get (limited) Winders/Office for $3 in school. Then they graduate and realize they need/want the full stuff for their job. Of course they think that means the full Winders/Office, since that's what they've been using. So they shop. But now they have a problem. They realize the full versions are more than their salary for a year.

So what do they do now? 1. They pirate it, thus losing MS a sale. 2. They somehow find out about Linux/OOo and switch, thus losing MS a sale.

MS just can't win...

"Thirdly, OpenOffice will spit out PDFs, and also does fairly reasonable HTML editing (unlike the cacophony spat out by MS-Word, of which O'Reilly reckon “the last thing you’d ever use is the ‘Save as Web Page…’ command in Word”), and can often recover broken MS-Office documents, oh, & isn't susceptible to macro viruses, runs on Linux (& Mac, & Solaris, etc), doesn't worsen Australia's balance of trade... what else...? I'm sure there must be something.."

One of many office products that support the ISO standard open document format - which to me is pretty important.

gee I wonder if this has anything to do with the ISO voting that is going to happen in a few months

one of the strongest objectors to the Open xml format from microsoft was africa if I remember.

I hope they can see through the shallowness of microsoft and vote no on the adoption of open xml -

gee you think if microsoft just gets there software everywhere in the next five months for 3 dollars then the common joe will think hey it is open and we can have everywhere for three dollars - then after the vote happens the hammer will fall and they will be owned.

a word to the nations that are voting against open xml - please keep voting against it - microsoft has shown no hint of changing their ways and if you want access to YOUR documents using any program of YOUR choice please vote no for open-xml as an ISO standard. do it for the world and tell microsoft we are done putting up with their shenanigans just so they can have a stellar bottom line.