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Comment by cmdrfred | Hacker News Reader

"We can't afford it" is the mating call of the business owner/MBA. I've worked for ten companies over the course of my life (small business to mid size), none of them could ever afford anything (unless it was a vacation or a luxury vehicle). The fact is they don't want to spend any money and expect Microsoft to honor their $120 office purchase with free updates for the next few centuries. Fuck em, they can pay or get there data stolen by Chinese teenagers.

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Some are small businesses that cannot afford to upgrade their PCs and are barely getting by.

I've done tech support for people still on XP, 2000, and Vista. I think if they run Vista they got a good chance to buy Windows 10 Pro for $164 but it will break compatibility with their Office Software and force them to do a fresh install.

A lot of business software is written for older versions of Office.

I tried to make a Virtual Machine creating service if a company has the licenses I can make a Virtual Box or QEMU virtual machine with the old version of Windows and Office in it if they give me their license keys and pay me for their labor. But nobody wants to do that yet.

I plan on running Linux on my main box at home and run Windows in virtual machines if Windows 10 ends up being buggy as all heck.

They will go out of business in a few years because they failed to adapt, and we won't really miss them. If they 'can't afford' $164 once a decade what are they paying their employees? Certainly not a living wage. So they have high churn and nobody working there really cares about the business, its just another low paying job and unemployment is falling. These companies are mismanaged, they didn't budget when times were good for when things go south. I feel no pity when someone has to adjust their standard of living to a level that the majority of the planet would die for. Don't fall for the sob stories, its there so they take home more of the profits that you generated. Instead build a start up and blow their antiquated business model out of the water.

Related Protip: If you go to a bank/doctors office or anywhere else that wants a large amount of personal data from you, don't give it to them if they are still running XP. (If enough people did this all of the sudden it would become affordable)

Sometimes the hardware won't support it.

I always had a plan of staying behind one current version on everything and buying it used. A Windows 7 Pro PC used would cost $150 and an Office 2010 Pro license disk would cost $100 used. If they went with that plan, they'd get the free Windows 10 upgrade.

A used Windows 8 PC costs $300 and there are cheap Windows 8 tablets for $100 but limited to 32 bits.

I'm trying to convince people on XP to switch to Linux and use WINE to run their old legacy Windows apps on it. But nobody wants to do that for some reason.

They find WINE inconvenient/difficult to use, so basically they want the convenience of being a paid in full customer of Microsoft without paying for it. Again, no pity from me.

I used to run a PC Repair shop.

Most people want something for nothing. Will write bad checks and do chargebacks on their credit card to get free PCs and free repairs. Then we get forced to cash only, and then they go to the Big Box stores that are open Sundays and take in store credit cards.

I got a lot of friends and family members running an old Pentium 4 with XP and some upgraded to Windows 7 somehow. From time to time I fix their systems for free or a low cost.

PC Repair Shop had a deal, we'd install Linux for free but tech support was extra. A few took us up on the offer and had a good time using FOSS alternatives. We even set up Linux with SAMBA on Windows PC networks to share files and printers. But there was no money in it because 99% of the people and businesses wanted Windows.

Geeksquad refuses to support old Windows versions, so I get people with Windows 98 etc from time to time. You'd be amazed at the number of people out there still running old Windows and Office versions. Some even use old versions of Wordperfect. My wife volunteers and sometimes someone emails her a Wordperfect file and I use Libreoffice to open them.

I found in doing charity work, that a lot of charities still use old hardware and software that is no longer supported. Some of the old stuff is donated to third world nations where they still use it instead of recycling the materials for scrap.

I think you've got it all wrong.

If they can't keep up with the Microsoft treadmill, they couldn't afford Microsoft software in the first place - and yet they did it, and it's biting them now.

Working in the Microsoft or Apple ecosystems mean that you are committing to keep spending money in their direction for as long as you are in that ecosystem. It might be worth your while, or it might not - as these business you talk about are finding out.

And if you say "oh, but these businesses must run Office because of their customers/providers/governments/contracts" - well then, those businesses are not making enough money, and are thus unsustainable -- not any different that doing anything else at loss.

If a business cannot afford 2000$ every 3 years pr machine they have running, they either have too many useless machines running, or they should not not exist. It's akin to rely on a car, but complain that it require maintenance.

2000? Try sub 300. (you won't be running autocad on this but for someone answering email and writing up reports in excel this is decent enough) Microsoft products are really affordable if you break it down to a per day usage.

    Inspiron 3646 - $259.00

    Microsoft Office 365 small business (5 machines/1 year) - $97.98 / 5 = $19.60 (5 cents a day)

    Total: $278.6 per machine

1:http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInv...

2:http://www.mychoicesoftware.com/products/microsoft-office-36...

That is.... far less than expected. Does that include a monitor and peripherals as well?

Or they could migrate to Linux, or if that's a massive stretch just get LibreOffice. Sure, it has downsides, but they are already running on the smell of an oily rag, at least this way they save costs in totality, not just because they have hopped off the software upgrade treadmill.

You have to spend far more time keeping a Linux machine running, especially when something breaks - I have yet to experience otherwise. A Business that seriously run linux usually run one of the paid version anyway.

I didn't say it would be easier, only cheaper.

Ease of use is a main factor in any business trying to buy software for their employees. Most employees are not computer savvy and could not figure out Linux. Even if they learned the GUI, if it had a problem and dropped down to the shell, they would be lost.

Most System Administrators and Technicians know only Windows and don't know how to support Linux.

Some companies use Linux as a server to save money, but not as a desktop.

That's the original post I was responding to. In the context of the discussion, I was referring to a business that made so little money they couldn't afford to buy software licenses. The original poster said one option was that they shouldn't exist as a business. I merely said that one possible option for a business in this situation is to use Linux on the desktop. Apparently the alternative is that, much like a dead parrot, they cease to exist.

Obviously, I wasn't referring to an ordinary business, nor am I advocating this approach normally.

I do understand your logic, but my statement was akin to a mechanic buying the cheapest tools, slightly out of tolerance, and and a diagnosticstool that don't quite give them all the correct error codes.

In the long run that descision will cost them more, than buying the correct tools in the first place - so if they cannot afford it, it's hard to justify the existince of that business. Perhaps it's a telling sign of a manager that doesn't understand the implication of that decision, or a dying business.

     buy Windows 10 Pro for $164 but it will break compatibility with their Office Software

How so?

Office 2003 and under won't run on Windows 10, they'd have to buy a new copy of Office. It won't work on 8.1 so 10 is out of the question:

http://www.keynotesupport.com/windows/microsoft-windows-offi...

It actually does work, though not officially supported and there is no way to get the Office Assistant working properly for example.

That sounds more like an added feature than a problem.

It's 12 years old! Isn't it reasonable that support is phased out?

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