Tech Blog

[#1]

A recent court decision could put a goodly **bleep** in the armor of Microsoft. The Quebec Superior Court ruled that the Provincial government should have considered other options than upgrading workstations to Windows Vista and Office 2007. Yes, it means they should have considered looking at Linux, Mac OS, and Open Office.

Now the judge did not order the Province of Quebec to pull the purchase of the new software, but he did order the costs of the court battle be paid by the province. The open source advocates won a serious victory here. The judge said, that although the tenders and purchases were made in good faith (that wasn't an issue), the province should have spent time considering other options as well.

Okay cynics, just go for it…in reality would the Province of Quebec really been able to justify switching masses of machines to Linux and Open Office? Would it have been a MacBook Pro on every desk? Realistically, no. Beyond the cost of re-training (which would have been huge), the cost of making sure specialize apps and systems would still work could have been epic. However, I think it's worth noting that with Google booting Windows off its campus, businesses and governments should take a hard look at whether having Windows as their OS of choice is a great idea. Maybe switching people to Macs or Ubuntu could make good, long term sense.

I don't miss having or using a PC. I use Parallels if I really need to check something in Windows, but day to day, I don't run into any barriers.

Do you think that governments should be required to check out (or be open to) alternatives to Windows?

A recent court decision could put a goodly **bleep** in the armor of Microsoft. The Quebec Superior Court ruled that the Provincial government should have considered other options than upgrading workstations to Windows Vista and Office 2007. Yes, it means they should have considered looking at Linux, Mac OS, and Open Office ( via CBC ).

Now the judge did not order the Province of Quebec to pull the purchase of the new software, but he did order the costs of the court battle be paid by the province. The open source advocates won a serious victory here. The judge said, that although the tenders and purchases were made in good faith (that wasn't an issue), the province should have spent time considering other options as well.

Okay cynics, just go for it…in reality would the Province of Quebec really been able to justify switching masses of machines to Linux and Open Office? Would it have been a MacBook Pro on every desk? Realistically, no. Beyond the cost of re-training (which would have been huge), the cost of making sure specialize apps and systems would still work could have been epic. However, I think it's worth noting that with Google booting Windows off its campus , businesses and governments should take a hard look at whether having Windows as their OS of choice is a great idea. Maybe switching people to Macs or Ubuntu could make good, long term sense.

I don't miss having or using a PC. I use Parallels if I really need to check something in Windows, but day to day, I don't run into any barriers.

Do you think that governments should be required to check out (or be open to) alternatives to Windows?

[#2]

I just think that the Government should learn how to update their software with the rest of the world.  My workplace still uses WIndows XP and IE6!

JB

[#3]

Yes, there is that. I think we'd be a whole lot better off is they just switched to Ubuntu and Firefox!

Of course I have XP running in my Parallels install for the rare times I need to work in Windows.