As an Aussie I concur, with the general summary of the so-called Free Trade Agreement (FTA) mentioned above. Our government has surrendered to basically the whole US patent-DMCA mess, in exchange for a few racks of lamb, and a few Pontiac GTO's that no one seems to want. One day, a future Australian Government will close this sorry episode down and either renegotiate it, or walk away from it.
It does have at least one amazing feature. It is the only non-IE browser that can enter the online sites I need to use for work. Firstly, they get past the 'only IE' check by masquerading as IE (which is not a big deal, I know), but then it shows the menu system correctly, which no other browser can do, even if you get past the IE sentryman.
However, some of the 'drop down' bars only work in Opera versions up (and including) 7.20. I have asked Opera support why this is so, but I never get an answer. You can download old versions from the archive. This feature allows me to access my work site at home using Opera/linux. For me this is important. Firebird, as good as it is, still cannot do this.
I disagree with a lot of the premises in this post. It is often assumed that linux is for nerds. I did an experiment with my mother-in-law (whom I am very fond of, by the way). She had NO computer experience, and I set her up with MDK10 and an HP printer. She has no troubles in finding her way around. After 4 months, she can: Start up the box connect to the net with ppp download her emails with KMail reply to emails. separate attachments to/home print emails write letters on OpenOffice save them in her/home/documents folder attach documents to an email and send print documents,including selections of pages. navigate to the floppy and Cd drive. open a browser and type a URL. Search google. She is trying to get a high score in card games.
My mother in law is 72 years of age. She isn't really interested in compiling applications from source. I doubt there will be a lot more she will want to do, but she may surprise me. She would now like a scanner.
Noone told her linux was for nerds. Noone told her it is unfriendly. She just did what she needed to do to a particular task.
She is a retired pensioner on a limited income. Her second hand computer cost $A450 (the price for no OS) and we gave her the printer for Christmas. Everything on her PC is fully licensed. She has a fully functioning firewall.
And finally, does anyone realy want to make comparisons between installing W2k and Mandrake 10??
What do I read out of all this? That in a competitive market, the value (as opposed to the price) of Windows is $US38 (and maybe less).
Let the competitive OS market roll on.....
After reading a lot about migration, I have finally had the opportunity to do it myself in two situations:
1. My mother-in law, who is 72 years of age and has no computer experience.
2. My two teenage daughters who are quite computer savvy.
Results?
1. My mother-in law loves it (Mandrake 10). She used it for emails and typing letters and other corro, and is learning to print off scanned family photos onto her new HP inkjet printer. She still makes basic mistakes (putting dates in the filenames as 3/12/2004,etc) but some of these these problems apply to any OS. I spend a bit of time with her each week and she is making steady progress. Noone told her that linux is supposed to be for nurds, so she had no preconceptions.
2. My daughters hated it for a long time. The reasons could be summed as "it isn't windows" Having kopete is a must for teenage girls, as the lingua franca for this group is MSN Messenger. They hated using OpenOfffice although gradually they got used to them. The trick is to tell them that you will install Office 2003 if they will go and buy it, 'cause I'm not going to. You know that the schoolbags of teenage kids are just full of pirated software, and I see all this as being part of responsible use of licensed software. I'm sure that MS would agree with me on this. No?
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As an Aussie I concur, with the general summary of the so-called Free Trade Agreement (FTA) mentioned above. Our government has surrendered to basically the whole US patent-DMCA mess, in exchange for a few racks of lamb, and a few Pontiac GTO's that no one seems to want. One day, a future Australian Government will close this sorry episode down and either renegotiate it, or walk away from it.
It does have at least one amazing feature. It is the only non-IE browser that can enter the online sites I need to use for work. Firstly, they get past the 'only IE' check by masquerading as IE (which is not a big deal, I know), but then it shows the menu system correctly, which no other browser can do, even if you get past the IE sentryman.
However, some of the 'drop down' bars only work in Opera versions up (and including) 7.20. I have asked Opera support why this is so, but I never get an answer. You can download old versions from the archive.
This feature allows me to access my work site at home using Opera/linux. For me this is important. Firebird, as good as it is, still cannot do this.
I disagree with a lot of the premises in this post. It is often assumed that linux is for nerds. I did an experiment with my mother-in-law (whom I am very fond of, by the way). She had NO computer experience, and I set her up with MDK10 and an HP printer. She has no troubles in finding her way around. After 4 months, she can: /home /home/documents folder
Start up the box
connect to the net with ppp
download her emails with KMail
reply to emails.
separate attachments to
print emails
write letters on OpenOffice
save them in her
attach documents to an email and send
print documents,including selections of pages.
navigate to the floppy and Cd drive.
open a browser and type a URL.
Search google.
She is trying to get a high score in card games.
My mother in law is 72 years of age. She isn't really interested in compiling applications from source. I doubt there will be a lot more she will want to do, but she may surprise me. She would now like a scanner.
Noone told her linux was for nerds. Noone told her it is unfriendly. She just did what she needed to do to a particular task.
She is a retired pensioner on a limited income. Her second hand computer cost $A450 (the price for no OS) and we gave her the printer for Christmas.
Everything on her PC is fully licensed. She has a fully functioning firewall.
And finally, does anyone realy want to make comparisons between installing W2k and Mandrake 10??
What do I read out of all this? That in a competitive market, the value (as opposed to the price) of Windows is $US38 (and maybe less). Let the competitive OS market roll on.....
After reading a lot about migration, I have finally had the opportunity to do it myself in two situations: 1. My mother-in law, who is 72 years of age and has no computer experience. 2. My two teenage daughters who are quite computer savvy. Results? 1. My mother-in law loves it (Mandrake 10). She used it for emails and typing letters and other corro, and is learning to print off scanned family photos onto her new HP inkjet printer. She still makes basic mistakes (putting dates in the filenames as 3/12/2004,etc) but some of these these problems apply to any OS. I spend a bit of time with her each week and she is making steady progress. Noone told her that linux is supposed to be for nurds, so she had no preconceptions. 2. My daughters hated it for a long time. The reasons could be summed as "it isn't windows" Having kopete is a must for teenage girls, as the lingua franca for this group is MSN Messenger. They hated using OpenOfffice although gradually they got used to them. The trick is to tell them that you will install Office 2003 if they will go and buy it, 'cause I'm not going to. You know that the schoolbags of teenage kids are just full of pirated software, and I see all this as being part of responsible use of licensed software. I'm sure that MS would agree with me on this. No?