How to increase the value of a $100 PC to $250 and make it unaffordable

[Colin McGregor]

--- Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Peter P. wrote:
> > I once said that Linux could be the foot in the
> door for some businesses who do
> > not really want to switch (why they do not want to
> I will not discuss here -
> > everyone has the right to be pointy headed at some
> time or another), allowing
> > them to negotiate lower license fees for other
> types of software. Now I have
> > lived to be sorry for having said that:
>
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc
> > 
> > Peter
> 
> I think MS is terrified of having a generation of
> kids in emerging 
> markets growing up learning *nix skills. Scared
> enough that they'd 
> likely rather give MS Windows away on these machines
> if they have to.
> 
> Call me crazy...

Not crazy. But while the emerging markets I am sure
scares MS (but then MS does scare easy, because they
know there someone can do to them what they did to
IBM), what I expect is getting MS crapping their pants
is stuff like the states of Maine and Massachusetts
have expressed formal (from the state governments)
interest in the OLPC. Combine this with say the state
of Indiana switching over 20,000 educational PCs to
Linux:

www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=192201386

and you may have a serious problem for MS in the
educational sector which would carry over elsewhere.
In the day Apple sold a LOT of Apple IIs to parents
who wanted their kids to have the same sort of
computers at home as they were using at school... In
other words if MS looses the education market, they
instantly loose a measurable share of the home market.
A few years after a loss in the education market, as
students come out of school they loose a measurable
share of the business market.

I don't doubt that MS wants to see the OLPC project at
best running some sort of MS operating system, or
baring that stopped...

Colin McGregor
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