I used to deal in hardware and systems in the UK and I had a hell of a job to sell anything without Windows and Word on it.
As people have already discussed, there is both familiarity and compatibility (with other people's proprietary-format Word files) keeping people with Word.
The familiarity thing is powerful indeed. A relative of mine runs his own company with some 16 or so staff, and is painfully aware that they are haemorrhaging cash in the direction of Microsoft. Unfortunately, when he floated the idea of changing to OpenOffice, the reaction from some of his staff was vitriolic. To be fair, those staff couldn't have cared less how expensive Word is, they just didn't want to have to learn a new tool.
Fortunately, in NZ Word is rarely bundled with PCs.
On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 15:59 +1300, Nick Rout wrote:One ChCh retailer bundles the win32 version of the gimp on their machines.
But that sort of thing could work well. If a buyer saw a familiar application on a Linux box maybe he would be more prepared to try it.
Hear hear! I'd love to see all the major open-source apps pre-installed on PCs! It would quell most people's fears of a change to Linux.
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