Hammer said:
Take this seemingly simple thing, emailing: There's this large
"network" of development NGOs here which sends MS-Word.8 attachments
to its "partners" in Africa - those there who got any 'puters and
even a working telephone line would run Word-5 (and many would have WP
for DOS) and promtly cannot read it if they don't "upgrade". Sure too
they are overwhelmed of the joy to pay enormous connection fees to
download 180KB of formatting crap instead of the 3.5 K text content of
a message.
Heimo:
Did you give your "sales staff" this "new sales lead" and have them
contact that NGO and try selling your DOS based shareware? I am not
being a wise guy. I am simply giving an example of the difficulty of a
non-technical oriented organization using something other than M$ -
especially shareware products...
Heimo, you know I support shareware. But I also know that there is a
place for commercial versions of products that are offered as shareware.
I am all in favor of a freeware demo version that "doesn't save" - a
shareware version for the technically competent to work with (minus docs
except a FAQ) and then commercial software versions that are supported
my full docs, full tech support and maintained by a local system
integrator - contractor if needed.
Re: M$ bashing
I am in the middle on this one.
I think that if you don't hold Microsoft's products and policies to the
scrutiny of the world-widecomputer user community they Microsft has the
marketing knowledge to lead the vast majority of computer users into
believing that they offer the "only standard solutions". Which is a pile
of cow droppings.
By the same token if our clients will pay us for installing and
maintaining Microsoft products - and they still want them after I have
offered what I think is an alternative - we will sell 'em, and install
'em, and get paid for maintaining Micro$oft too. That sort of work makes
our banker happy when we write checks on his bank :)
At one time I made a living working on British cars and Italian cars -
in America in the '60's and 70's that is sorta like working on GNU UNIX
stuff today. I was looked upon as if I had lost my mind. However, my
bills were paid and I enjoyed what I did, in spite of the comments of
other automotive mechanics.
Also we should remember size of a company is not automatically equated
with right - nor is it automatically equated with wrong.
For those who are technically curious about future trends - go look at
what IBM is doing to license their patented technology and the new way
they are partnering with non-IBM companies.
FYI - IBM owns more high-tech patents than any other company in the
world.
So, Heimo:
When are you going to find a local Brussels computer integrator to go
sell and install your products at that NGO :)
John O
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