RE: [Fsfe-uk] Explaining GPL to a Windows user

[ian]

On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 18:47, Andrew Atkinson wrote:
> >
> 
> Ian wrote
> 
> > We could build a decent quality basic GNU Linux PC which would be fine
> > for Office, web browsing and similar apps for about £300 ex VAT. The big
> > question is whether or not we could sell a few hundred in order to
> > justify the advertising costs.
> >
> Problem is that the above does not really compete. 

You are going to save around £80-90 on XP OEM, You will get OO.org
rather than Works at a saving of at least another £10 or so and you are
saving a lot over a machine with MS Office on it Then you get things
like GIMP, no need for anti-virus software etc. So I think it could be
made competitive on price comparing like with like. As far as the price
quoted, I don't do the pricing, it could be £250 now. I'm pretty sure we
can match anyone on price on like for like components. Smaller system
builders get components from the same distributors so the build cost for
hardware is pretty much the same and we have no advertising overheads
and we have built thousands of PCs for schools. There are variables such
as delivery charges, service and so on. I know Time charge £50 to
deliver! In this type of discussion there are too many variables to do
anything other than talk about ball park figures.

> We are just about to buy
> AMD 2.4G with 512 Mb and card readers instead of the CD for £325 ex VAT from
> a trusted company, 

As in trusted computing :-)

> should be able to run most things on that. 

You can run most things on the lowest spec PC available as long as it
has sufficient RAM.

> Granted we
> only buy win95 but with the MS schools agreement that's all we need. (which
> I suppose is why the OFT are investigating)

I should think your £325 with Windows 95 is pretty similar to my bare
machine at £300. You can't buy a PC from PC World or the high street
with anything other than XP. XP Pro if you want networking costs about
80 odd quid from the distributors to OEM. The MS official line is that
you can't legally buy Win '95 but there are copies floating about. The
thing is you can't compare prices for PCs bought for a school operating
schools agreement with machines sold retail in PCW.What do PCW do for
Office suite, graphics etc?

The OFT thing is I think a different thing specific to the way M$ count
eligible machines - well that is the complaint. They may of course
decide to take a wider view and say low pricing to schools is
anti-competitive and that would affect academic pricing in general. In
the schools market GNU/Linux is strongest for thin client use in schools
not on MSSA so that's where we target the effort. 

-- 
ian <address@hidden>