A company from Newcastle has publicised a new venture where you pay £39.95/month for two years and get a laptop running Ubuntu, a broadband connection and some cloud-based services. The BBC has a piece here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/02/can_alex_bring_linux_to_the_ma.html Most of the comments are anti on the grounds of cost, but this is targeted at people who don't have a computer already, so I reckon a laptop + broadband access for two years for less than £1k isn't that bad. I appreciate that I can buy a netbook for around £250 and get broadband access for around £5.95/month, but that doesn't give me any cloud based services and anyone doing that who isn't already computer literate needs a tame techy to keep things going. As with everything else, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I like the CTO's reasoning for choosing Linux: "The biggest problem with Microsoft is badly-written software - the operating system allows you to write software badly unlike Mac or Linux." I'm not sure that is entirely true, but it's certainly easier to write bad software for Windows (that appears to work). -- Terry Coles 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux -- Next meeting: Dorchester, Tue 2010-03-02 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
