Hi Shaun, Actually that has been one of the major factors in our switch from Windos to Linux here. I am one of those people who purchases a computer every three to five years and as a result my wife and I have a number of older computers sitting around. Some I referb and sell, and others I keep around as backup computers in case something happens to one of the main systems. Thing is most of them can't handle Windows 7 without a massive hardware upgrade, and the cost of licensing a copy of Windows for every system is pprohibatively expensive anyway. Add to it the fact that a lot of software developers, accessible game developers included, have gone to this stupid hardware based licensing system which means i have to grab a new license key for every single computer I own. When you add up the cost of hardware and software upgrades to run the latest Windows software it is clearly not practical for my family's needs. Linux, however, is relatively inexpensive, comes with a decent screen reader built in, and it runs fairly well on all of our computers. Our family desktop is roughly five years old and Ubuntu 10 has no problems running on it where I'd have to buy more memory, upgrade the processor speed, etc to get Windows 7 to run remotely well on the same system. Weather Microsoft realises it or not here in the U.S.A. people are in a financial crunch and I see no need to go out and buy all new hardware to upgrade to Windows 7 when I can install and run the latest Linux OS on my existing hardware. Plus the gaming libraries like SFML are mature enough to create fairly decent games for the platform. Even 10 years ago Loki Games created a number of high profile games for Linux like Civilization, Quake, Doom, etc using the SDL API proving Linux can certainly compete with Windows as a gaming platform if we can just draw more developers to the platform. However, as far as Microsoft in general goes they lost me a long time ago. Windows Vista was the straw that broke the elifants back. I purchased a copy of it right after it was released and it did absolutely nothing but constantly crash and ran slower than a turtle with three broken legs until they released some updates/service packs to try and fix the majority of the problems. Then, they screwed me when my motherboard died and they wanted me to pay for a brand new copy. Screw them and the horse they rode in on!
Cheers! On 10/27/10, shaun everiss <[email protected]> wrote: > yeah that is quite awesome. > Its also true that ms has lost loads with newer systems. > Right now they are probably close to losing me again at least for a while. > it all boils down to a decision on the replacement or outfitting of > the main box which has been running for the last 10 years. > Its been used as a print server, file server, pc and workhorse for > the entire family. > Many things have been replaced and a few things are on the way out. > I am planning right now to try to source another xp licence, if I can. > ofcause if the system is varified as junk that will not be a problem. > If I do replace things with win7 I will have to decide on access > software which has been the main reason I have not bothered with upgrading. > Ok, ok, jaws mainly hal is cheapish I can handle that easy enough. > But unless my computer requirements improve, well. > So I can say ms will be losing me. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
