MA Dept. of Revenue consider Linux

hansroy writes "Massachusetts Department of Revenue is still using Windows 95 on the desktop. Faced with upgrade costs of $500-600 per user, they're considering Linux at about one-third the cost. This comes at a very good time, as the new governor of MA is making significant budget cuts this year."

Comments

Re:Win95 no longer working?

[BWJones]

I don't understand this "we must upgrade" mindset.

The problem is that Microsoft is no longer supporting older releases thus "forcing" many users to upgrade regardless of their satisfaction with the current OS. This is what happens when your business model relys on folks constantly upgrading and is a problem with the PC market. Apple appears to buck the trend in many ways in that while they do not officially support really old versions of their MacOS Classic OS, you can still download it from Apple's servers for computers that cannot support more modern versions of the OS. This is one of the many reasons why I purchase Macs. They simply are functional machines for a lot longer than Wintel stuff, they hold their value longer, and they run lots of commonly used software making my return on investment much higher with Macintosh than with Wintel.