[vox] FWD: How Linux helps Microsoft

[Robert G. Scofield]

Shwaine wrote:

>
> This analogy is rather close to the likely marketting motivations of 
> Microsoft, particularly in elementary schools. However, I don't think 
> the spin is to hook the school, that's a rather limited customer base. 
> It's more likely they want to hook the home machines of all the 
> students. If the child's school has only WinXP computers, then the 
> parents will likely feel pressure to have the same thing at home. 
> Unless the parents (or others in the home environment) are tech saavy 
> enough to know how to set up a Linux (or Mac or BSD, etc) box such 
> that the child can easy use it and transfer documents and such between 
> school and home, this tactic is likely to work, particularly with the 
> younger grade levels where the children may not possess the skills or 
> maturity to easily switch between two different OSes in the home and 
> school environment.
> _______________________________________________

This may be true.  But I'll tell you what I think has happened 
historically.  At one time the schools all had Macs.  But schools are 
poor.  So what happened is that the Macs stayed around for years.  The 
schools can't afford to upgrade.  Eventually the students parents were 
buying Windows 98 machines.  By the time these machines came out, they 
were so much more fun than the outdated Macs in the schools that the 
students began hating the Mac.  This is how it was explained to me by my 
son when he was in junior high school.  The Mac developed a very poor 
image with kids.  So it turned out that the ubiquitous presence of the 
Mac in the school room paid off for Microsoft.

Bob