Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Donates Windows 8.1 To Nonprofit Organizations

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-get-a-copy-and-you-get-a-copy... dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with good news for Windows loving nonprofits and libraries. "Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows 8.1 for nonprofits. The move is an extension of the company's nod to the nonprofit community with the launch Windows 8. The announcement means eligible nonprofit organizations and public libraries can request Windows 8.1 through Microsoft's software donation program."

6 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. How white of Microsoft! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now those non-profits will not have to look towards free alternatives such as Linux! True humanitarians.

    1. Re:How white of Microsoft! by WaywardGeek · · Score: 5, Funny

      I am sure you just can't wait for the Windows 8.1 update! Just imagine how happy we'll all be! After all the outrage and frustration over Windows 8 losing it's "start" menu, Windows 8.1 is here to save the day! Now, that old start menu that used to do something useless... listing all of your applications so you could find them... has been replaced! Now it takes you directly to the Metro UI, where you can barf all over your keyboard! Happy day!

      --
      Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
  2. I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    will the FSF be signing up for this?

  3. In related news... by sarkeizen · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...rattlesnake ranchers donate dozens of specimens to local playgrounds.

  4. Re:Windows 8.x is horrible! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've used every single version of Microsoft OS since DOS 3.2 and Win 8.x is by far the worst of them all. I'd *much* rather run Vista, it's that bad. Vista was immature before SP1 and the drivers weren't ready at RTM but now it's not quite as bad. WinME was mostly pointless and short lived. Win95 was a huge leap forward from MS-DOS and Win 3.x. DOS probably wasn't the absolute best for its time but it was cheap, common, good enough, and mainly far superior to what most people were using on 8 bit computers of the time.

    Win 8.x is user hostile. It was the worst GUI of *any* operating system I've ever used in the last 15 years, literally. I'd rather use the UI from any previous version of Windows, or OS X, or GNOME/KDE/Unity... Hell, I'd even rather use iOS or Android over that! Nothing is anywhere near as bad, un-intuitive, nor gets in your way as much.

    All this because they decided that they're now a "devices" company with Apple envy. Too bad nobody wants of those devices I guess. Meanwhile, they've given the finger repeatedly to their established user base: desktop users, businesses, sysadmins, developers and all. Of course people will turn to iOS and Android even more now. Win7 is the best OS by far IMO but that's where it seems end... I really enjoyed the last 25 years of MS products but MS put an abrupt end to it.

  5. Re:FTFY by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yep.

    I'm at a university and we do this all the time. IBM gave us 'millions' in software, that was a burned CD with some stuff on it (not my research group so I'm not really sure what exactly, but something related to distributed computing).

    My group got a '4 million dollar' donation which was all of the source code for a project a small company had worked on for 10 years with 5 major versions.

    Whatever that MSRP headline number was is what they could claim as a tax break. Didn't matter if it was absurdly unrelated to the actual value or not.