On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:23:50 +0100, Anne Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There's the rub - so many go along to PCWorld (or whatever the > equivalent is in other countries) and buy what they are given by > salesmen who may, just, have heard of macs, but nothing else.
A friend of mine demo'd Macs in PC World for Apple. No matter how bad you think the PC World employees are, the reality is worse. About Linux for real beginners, I think they need Lindows done right: Sell the hardware with Linux pre-installed, partly because this stops installs you don't control, and partly because you can limit the hardware options to a very few. Do support remotely. Supply a rescue CD so even a broken system can get online for support Control installs -- if the user does anything independantly, they lose cover. Have a script ask the user for a CD now and then for user data backup. Have the PC message back to base that it backed up (do this transparently, via email, and let the user know what's happening). Basically, you control the system closely, to get economies of scale, but "don't be evil", as Google says. Have thousands of oldsters/newbies paying every month for handholding on systems which pretty much run themselves. For their money, they get reliability, and a guarantee that someone will fix it if it goes wrong. There are many Windows PCs out there not being used because there is something trivial wrong with them, but the user doesn't know anyone who can help (and PC World will try to sell them �1500 of new PC). Richard -- "Get up and turn I loose"
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