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This
week I am up in Canada making sure our Canadian launch goes well. For
the first time, shoppers can go into one of more than 50 stores and walk out
with a pre-installed Linux computer. What a great milestone and an important
day for widespread Linux adoption!
Last
weekend I found myself helping work a Lindows.com booth at a technology conference.
What surprised me was that I kept getting asked the same three questions
over and over again. The great news is that I had positive answers for all
three, since the planets are now aligned for Linux on the Desktop.
Question
1: How much money can I save using LindowsOS instead of Microsoft products?
I could confidently answer "Hundreds or even thousands of dollars." Pick
up any mail order catalog
and take a look at the price of Microsoft Office XP and you
are looking at something around $450.
Next, contrast that with the price of a fully-configured LindowsOS
computer plus the Click-N-Run Warehouse. You can get LindowsOS on a 1 GHz
computer with 128 MB RAM, a 10 GB hard drive, a CDRW drive, AND a great
Office Suite - StarOffice 6.0 (not to mention another 1700+ applications)
for less than Microsoft Office XP (with no operating system, no computer
and no other software). If you own two computers, you'll save twice as much
because you can copy LindowsOS programs onto more than one computer, but
Microsoft requires you to buy two copies.
Question
2: I'm used to a certain Microsoft Windows program, is there comparable software
for LindowsOS?
There are hundreds of great Linux programs for just about any task that
you might have. You can buy some of them individually, or for just $99
buy an entire library.
Best of all, they all install with a single click, using Click-N-Run.
We've
devised a great list of comparable Linux applications for many of the most
popular Microsoft Windows programs, you can check it out here.
Question
3: Can I work with documents I already have or that other people send to
me?
Absolutely. When we first started providing
StarOffice in
the Click-N-Run Warehouse,
we asked anyone that was skeptical to e-mail us a document they made in
Microsoft Office. We would then open the documents (whether they were in
.doc -Word, .xls -Excel, or .ppt -PowerPoint) and we'd add the words "edited
in StarOffice" to the top of the document and e-mail it back to them. We
received hundreds of documents from cautious users everywhere, who were
amazed when they got their documents back that had been modified without
any Microsoft products at all.
You can play MP3's perfectly, view Flash-enhanced web pages, watch movies,
etc. You can even import your QIF files from Quicken to continue controlling
your finances. From .avi to .zip, you will find that you can share your
files with people running Microsoft Windows and they can share their files
with you. The only difference is that you are doing it at a fraction of the cost. For a longer
list of filetypes that are used widely on both Microsoft Windows and LindowsOS,
click here.
The experience at last week's conference really opened my eyes to how
many others are totally unaware that there is a real choice. So, if you
have any friends who would be interested in saving lots of money --hit
the forward button and let them know that choice has finally come back
to the desktop, and if they want to take a quick tour of LindowsOS all
they need to do is check out www.lindows.com/demo,
or buy and install LindowsOS for just
$49.
For anybody that lives in Canada, you can now pick up a pre-configured LindowsOS
computer at The Brick, which
is the largest home electronics store in Canada. When you're there, if
you see a potential customer looking at a LindowsOS computer, be sure to
give them the answers to the 3 questions.
~Michael
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