> OEM licenses may be legitimately cheaper because they may represent lower > support costs, plus being, closer to wholesale.
Support? What's that? I am serious. It's been a long time since I looked at Microsoft's support policies. I know you don't get support from MS for an OEM version, they tell you to get support from the computer manufacturer for that. Which of course, is a roundabout way of saying there is no support. But do you get any support for the boxed retail versions of MS software? Or is a pay-per-incident-get-your-credit-card-ready-and-have-those-serial-numbers-re ady type support? Years ago (1995) I got some support for a problem I was having with Excel on a Sharp Win 3.1 laptop (circa 1995). At that time, MS phone support was free for the first 3 calls, I think. And the help I got was very good, it solved my problem in one phone call. But that was then, how is it now? I have used MS Knowledge Base support ever since I knew of it, and can usually get what I need from it. It's good that the MS KB exists and is free to use. But it takes a great deal of patience to wade through the search results to find your actual problem and solution. And sometimes it isn't there. My point is that if the only support you get for boxed retail MS products is pay-per-incident, then that does not represent a higher support cost to MS. Just more profit for them. > I'm sure. You can save a lot of money, but at a certain point, and with > some of those "economies," you are wasting much more time than money if you > consider your time to have value. This was for business, where your time > usually has very concrete value. I think this was an example of wasting > more time than saving money.... Wasting time is an unfortunate consequence of experimentation. I experiment with Linux every now and then, to see what is practical and what isn't. So, yeah, I wasted time (about 6 hours). But I also learned something. I learned that Wine is still not to the point where it can run Windows apps without lots of tinkering and configuration. This is not the first project I wasted time on, and it won't be the last. Oh, did I mention this is now the Abdul & Ivan List, and we also dabble in Protel? ;-) Sorry for the verbosity, folks. This is the last message I'll post on this topic for awhile. I'll let Abdul have the last word if he wants to. Take it away, Abdul... Best regards, Ivan Baggett Bagotronix Inc. website: www.bagotronix.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 6:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] Open source SP7 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
