John Smith get's to -insert your favorite computer store name here- and purchases a brand new computer, which comes preloaded with MS 2000, Office 2000 and IE. John gets home, installs his new pc, turns it on, and, using the MSN icon, reaches the internet, everything is ok, he doesn't have any compatibility issues with his neighbors or with the work computers. He can use his favourite games and carry his personal finances in his pc, even if his programs fails every few hours, he is used to it, since it happens just the same in his office, so rebooting his pc is no big deal. As time goes by, some two years after, John will suddenly realize his pc is too slow, and will go get another one, so he can keep using his games, etc. That's some 1000 every two years, and if we would propose John to purchase an additional program suite, such as Smartsuite or Wordperfect suite (sp?) for an additional amount of some $200 or $300, obviously he would tell us that he just doesn't need it, after all, he already has his MS office, which came preloaded, and he didn't have to pay anything for it!

And so the user is happy with his computer!, so... What's wrong with M$? or, as anyone might say: what! is there anything wrong???

1.- John is paying more that twice the real value of a state of the art PC.

Because of the constant need for updates required by the M$ software characteristics, John will be investing constantly to keep ahead of the multiple viruses, faults, bugs, by purchasing every new "hit of the moment" OS which promises to solve all the defects found in the previous ones. At the same time, he'll have to keep purchasing additional updates for his Office suite so he can stay at the same level as the other users, but here comes the worst, after a couple of this cycles, he's going to find out that his pc is running slower and slower day by day, and that's when he has to go get another one, after all, his old computer is worth nothing! Now picture this scenario at John's office, where IT personnel has to purchase not only software and hardware, but make great investments in security systems to solve, somehow, all the faults of the M$ software, hire people to keep around-the-clock surveilance and install every few days, or even hours new patches to cover for the security holes in the system supposed to protect your information, this all comes down to money, and every year each corporation is wasting some thousand dollars per computer, giving most of that money to M$.
And you wonder how Bill Gates got to be the richest man in the world?

2.- John is using software that puts his security at risk.

Each time he connects to the internet from home, his machine becomes wide open for any passerby to obtain full access, maybe John would smile and say, well, i have nothing to care for, so i don't worry, but what John is forgetting is that somewhere in his PC is all his finantial information, bank accounts, credit card numbers, passwords, his summer pictures and even the address of his kid's school. Of course the problem becomes worst in his office, starting with confidential information, contracts, contacts, sales quotes, everything is almost free to anyone to look at it, of course the cost of this is hardly predictable, but you can picture it by thinking how much would a sales quote worth to anyone of the competence.

3.- John is wasting his life.

For M$ it is very important that the user feels, after installing a new program, that this is better that the previous one (even while we all know it's the same), so it keeps adding new functions which may as well never be used, but they somehow justify the version change. Now, these new functions make the system slower, maybe wating a minute for Word to open is not too much, but, if we open it some 6 times a day, and some other Office program, such as Excel or Powerpoint, the minutes add, and if we count the time to turn the PC on, and the time to swith it off, and the five minutes that take every hour for the system to wake up, plus a 10 minute call to IT for support, or the time it takes to correct a Word file because the system prefers Times New Roman instead of the Tahoma font your boss requires, or patching the system against the new viruses of the week, etc. how about leaving one hour earlier every day? Ask yourself if that free software is so free after all...

Just imagine that your office buddies stop working with you if you don't purchase exactly the same car model as they have, wouldn't you tell them that every car works the same? That's exactly what's been going on in the computer industry.