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Recently, at a computer users group, made up mostly of small business owners, during the informal session I asked the question "How many were using Windows XP that they were able to download from the internet?" Approximately 30% admitted to doing so, but I noted that quite a few people that I knew for a fact had interenet copies hadn't admitted this fact. My next question was "How many that had paid for one copy of XP, was running that copy on more than one system?" Of those that paid for XP, nearly 80% had installed it on one more than one machine in their business, "bending" the license agreement. The most repeated justification was that M$ was already cheating the business community and that they were just getting reasonable value for their money to "even out the playing field".
Right or wrong, M$'s sins probably isn't real justification for bending the license agreement; but, most everyday business people are obviously fed up with M$'s business practices. In case you haven't noticed because your own paycheck just keeps on rolling in and you don't have to worry about such mundane details like meeting payrolls, paying bills, etc.; the economy is in the ditch and the near term outlook is not good at all. To have a small business that has 5 to 25 inhouse systems; and to have to pay what most view as intolerable fees to upgrade to XP, seems to be the "straw that broke the camel's back".
I also noted that only a very small percentage of Windows 2000 users had any plans to upgrade to XP; most of the "upgraders" previously had Windows 98 or Me. Also, a surprising number had purchased small Linux based servers to grow their systems - something that a year ago was simply unthinkable.
Sign of the times it seems............
Last edited by Woogieman at Sep 26 2002, 06:22 AM
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