On Saturday, June 16, 2001 12:42 AM, Michael [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
wrote:
> Does anyone know where you can lease machines and get service contracts
with
> Linux installed?
>
Could be a business opportunity out there...
Linux does need more support than Windoze, but not much; if you were to
offer small and medium size businesses a turnkey Linux solution, it should
be competitive with Windoze with the additional support costs being met
from savings on Windoze licence fees (these are only going to get more
punitive with XP and Microsoft's move to becoming an application service
provider). Key to making such a business work would seem to be hardware
standardisation; the main obstacle at the moment is file and UI
compatibility. (Businesses need to exchange files with clients and
suppliers so they need a de facto standard format which is at present
Office97; they need to get staff productive as soon as possible so MSOffice
"skills" are standard in the employment market). But both of these
obstacles can be overcome. OpenOffice will produce O97-compatible files,
and even MS is moving towards open xml-based file formats; and "intuitive"
interfaces are standardising around the WIMP-style GUIs pioneered by Xerox
a quarter of a century ago at PARC.
[Mind you I think that those interfaces have now reached an unsustainable
level of complexity and are no longer as ergonomic as they were when
conceived, but that is another story]
