17 companies sue Switzerland over Microsoft contract

[Soleron]

Squilliam said:

Soleron said:

kowenicki said:
Now... back in the real world, running a real company (not I.T.) and using real applications that my company uses all the time and are fully compatible with our OS and servers (SBS and exchange), and where our I.T. spend for hardware and software is less than 2% of our turnover (in a company with a 50% profit margin)... why would I bother again???

When XP expires for you, either because MS drops support or you can't physically buy it, I'm saying Linux requires less retraining and has lower costs than upgrading to Vista or later. Is that not important?

Linux isn't free though, its not like these companies were complaining because they didn't have the opportunity to give away something at absolutely no charge with no return to themselves.

It is free if you support it yourself. And governments have a large enough IT staff to be able to do it.

If you want professional support for Linux then you pay Red Hat probably about a tenth of what MS charges for XP and then you get more support than MS gives for that license. But it's entirely optional.