Sunday, June 24, 2007
Microsoft strips Office from charity PC scheme
22 Jun 2007: App-free Windows coming to a poor community near you...
IT professionals wishing to do their bit for charity – could install Windows XP, Works 7.0, or Office XP Standard as one bundled package on old computers. Installed machines would then be donated to an "eligible charitable organisation" or an "MS specifically approved recipient". Hospitals, schools, and other community groups across the world have benefited from the scheme since its inception, while Bill Gates satisfied his altruistic itch.
Microsoft decided to scrap Office as of 27 June 2007, citing "legal reasons", and had already announced plans to remove Works 7.0 back in April this year and had requested that refurbishers send back all stock by 31 July at the latest.
Allegedly this could leave "lots of small charities high and dry and poor users are being excluded from the system and computers are losing a valid second life".
IMO: That sounds like Microsoft, all right. Give a little and then charge like there is no tomorrow. But surely OpenOffice is better than those applications and is totally free, also it is nonMicrosoft. Also, lots of people use Ubuntu, which apparently derives from Debian Linux, is said to be tolerably user-friendly and is actually used by Michael Dell for his personal use, which perhaps says it all. I do not favor Linux much yet, but it is now the norm in many Indian schools, for example in Kerala, where modern mathematics was invented, though I should think that Europeans want to believe everything was invented in the Holy Roman Empire.
IT professionals wishing to do their bit for charity – could install Windows XP, Works 7.0, or Office XP Standard as one bundled package on old computers. Installed machines would then be donated to an "eligible charitable organisation" or an "MS specifically approved recipient". Hospitals, schools, and other community groups across the world have benefited from the scheme since its inception, while Bill Gates satisfied his altruistic itch.
Microsoft decided to scrap Office as of 27 June 2007, citing "legal reasons", and had already announced plans to remove Works 7.0 back in April this year and had requested that refurbishers send back all stock by 31 July at the latest.
Allegedly this could leave "lots of small charities high and dry and poor users are being excluded from the system and computers are losing a valid second life".
IMO: That sounds like Microsoft, all right. Give a little and then charge like there is no tomorrow. But surely OpenOffice is better than those applications and is totally free, also it is nonMicrosoft. Also, lots of people use Ubuntu, which apparently derives from Debian Linux, is said to be tolerably user-friendly and is actually used by Michael Dell for his personal use, which perhaps says it all. I do not favor Linux much yet, but it is now the norm in many Indian schools, for example in Kerala, where modern mathematics was invented, though I should think that Europeans want to believe everything was invented in the Holy Roman Empire.
# posted by uv : 7:50 AM
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