Trish should encourage a move to Free/Open software if she is so concerned then.
Microsoft licensing hike sparks UK piracy, bankruptcy fears
Reseller NCI Technologies has urged Microsoft to shelve the planned pricing overhaul that could see UK customers paying between 20 to 35 per cent more for volume licences. Redmond will align volume licence pricing in the EU - except for academic programmes - to the euro currency from 1 July in a bid to drive some consistency …
-
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 16:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Yeah, right...
but it's a one-off expense. Nobody said you should migrate all your systems, just start with some of them until you get comfortable. You could also fire some of those who advised you to stay 100% Microsoft last time when licenses were renewed. As usual, if there is a will there is a way.
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 16:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Tom Chiverton 1 - I'm afraid it may be impossible
Reselling FOSS does not bring any money. On to the other hand, UK customers could try to fake an increased interest in FOSS. It has worked so nicely in the past so it might work again.
Anyway, as an advice to UK businesses: just before bankruptcy you may give FOSS a try. Heck, you have nothing left to lose!
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 21:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Tom Chiverton 1 - I'm afraid it may be impossible
RedHat $1BN per year is money missing from Microsoft's and Oracle's coffers. FOSS TCO has be shown to be slightly less than proprietary. http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/FOSS-the-Recession-and-the-Lower-TCO-Promise-67157.html?wlc=1243605820 tells of more growing Opensource companies.
-
-
-
Saturday 18th February 2012 01:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
You mean of course 'proper English' then why, pray, does.it keep reverting to American.
I still go and see films, wear trousers, my wife wears the suspenders and will never use that strange word aloooooominum.
I can also use a knife and fork correctly, do not drawl and we grow potatoes to fit out mouths over here. Fortunately Microsoft's has no control over this.
-
-
Friday 17th February 2012 04:07 GMT Qu Dawei
Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
I discovered recently that its worse than that: I had to buy a replacement Windows machine recently because my old one broke irretrievably. I had bought it in the UK, and all was fine with it. Since I am now in China, I had to quickly buy a Chinese PC. The only safe ones I could buy only had Windows 7 Basic on them, and I found that to change the language to English (any kind, I'm not fussy becauise it is a priority), I had to pay mega-bucks to first upgrade to the Windows Ultimate editon. Just another excuse to make money.
The interface is subtly different; in the Chines version, the position of some options are not the same compared with the English version (so I can't use memory to recall what meu item to choose). Also, the shortcut keys are not the same. They seem to have made it as difficult as possible to simply change languages so that they can squeeze more money out of you. Before, I was displeased with Microsoft; now I hate them. Furthermore, if I install software (freeware, shareware or licensed), it often uses as an interface language the settings it finds on the computer, so everything is set up using Chinese as well. The option to change to English is sometimes not there at all, and if it is, one needs to understand Chinese to be able to find out how easily. I used to be reasonably proficient using Windows, but because I cannot read many Chinese characters, I've sudenly become a functional 8 year old or worse when using it in Chinese.
On Linux, such language changes are done easily. The problem for me is that I must use Windows because of reasons completely outside my control. If I could, I'd ditch it tomorrow.
-
Friday 17th February 2012 09:48 GMT Allan George Dyer
Re: Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
I agree with your language frustrations. On the installation problems, it might help you to know that some developers choose the installation language based on the default character set in the Regional Settings, change to Traditional Chinese, and the installer starts in Chinese, change to Western Europe/US and the installer starts in English. There is also a command-line option for msi to force the language, something like:
msiexec /i A:\Example.msi ProductLanguage=1033
for US English, but YMMV.
-
Friday 17th February 2012 13:37 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
Re: Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
@Qu Dawei
I feel your pain and have a similar experience with German versions of Windows software. A lot of software gets this right and offers a language selection either for the installation or afterwards through the settings menu, but some doesn't and you are stuck with it. I'm pretty fluent in German, but when I'm supporting an English speaker I want to see the same screens and menu options that they do.
Apple gets this one right .- my OS X systems are set up for English yet I can still set my time zone and date, time and currency formats to my local variations without having random apps dive into German. On OS X I can select a different language either by user or at run time if I want to, and this is very handy when I have guests or for support.
Another thing that Microsoft gets wrong here is that even if you buy a multilingual version of their software, the license will tell you that you are only allowed to use the language used on the first installation. Bang go your rights to select one of the other languages in that pack if you decide to pass your computer on to someone who speaks another language.
P.S. I also hate websites that decide which language I want for downloaded software based on my IP address, but that's a story for another day...
-
Friday 17th February 2012 14:21 GMT Mitch Kent
Re: Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
I don't think you can have several languages at once, but you can reinstall from a disk and choose english. That's what I did when I bought my laptop in Germany. Takes a while to get used to the character keys being in different places but you'll be an expert touch typist in no time!
-
Friday 17th February 2012 21:08 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
@Mitch Kent
I managed to skip Vista, but under 7 Ultimate once you have got Windows Update working, you are presented with 35 or so optional updates which cover all the languages you will probably need.
Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, you need to log out and in again after selecting another language.
I'm well used to switching keyboard languages. Swiss German keyboards really slow you down for programming though, so I bought a US keyboard for my main Apple system.
But I use a Swiss German keyboard for writing correspondence in German because it has the accented characters.
-
-
Friday 17th February 2012 09:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: DEAR MICROSOFT...
Oh for goodness sake, do you really want a lecture on how local economies work? How about:
a) Because you really don't want prices changing every single day
b) Because you want some stability in your pricing so you can forecast what your sales revenue will be without have to second guess currency fluctuations
c) Because your staff you employ (directly or indirectly) in each country to support those sales won't want their salaries fluctuating on daily basis according to exchange rates
d) Because those staff have different cost-of-living expenses in different countries
e) Because taxes are not the same in each country (import, sales, employment, corporation, etc.)
f) Because costs of sales (excluding taxes mentioned above) are different in each country (think translation costs, advertising costs, etc.)
I could go on...
-
Friday 17th February 2012 12:35 GMT big_D
@LarsG
That is what MS are trying to do... The problem is, the Pound has bombed and is worth a lot less than it was, the pound is worth around 45% less than when I left the UK, so a price hike for harmonisation isn't "excessive".
I'd like it, if they sank the Euro prices to reflect the UK prices, but that isn't going to happen.
Still, at least they aren't as bad as Adobe...
-
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 19:45 GMT Nuke
She ???
RTFA again, it is >>Andy<< Trish. Yes, I had to look back when he was referred to later as "Trish", which is usually a nickname for "Patricia".
Unless of course you are RMS, who has a peculiar manner of refering to everyone in general as "she", despite looking extremely unshe-like himself.
-
-
-
-
Friday 17th February 2012 05:01 GMT Goat Jam
Re: Especially...
True
Where I work we have 4 server admins who are responsible for about 20 servers and 1 unix guy looking after about 60.
Recently they were working out the "Licensing" budget. It took one of those windows guys about two months to figure out that we needed to pay MS about a million dollars for this year.
I cannot understand why companies continue to do business like that.
-
Friday 17th February 2012 06:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re: Especially...
'..Where I work we have 4 server admins who are responsible for about 20 servers and 1 unix guy looking after about 60..'
And I *used* to be like your Unix guy, oh, on top of that, hello bloody mission creep...also ended up doing the damn'd Windows stuff as well (server *and* desktop) as I was more 'available' than the Windows 'team'.
One day though, life's too fscking short.
Bailed.
Now laugh at all these stories (and the ones about the shortage of Linux bods..my mortgage is paid off, I'm not going back)
-
Friday 17th February 2012 11:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re: Re: Especially...
Yes, funnily enough I too was that Unix guy, until I got jack of it and asked to be moved.
I can't recall how many times I overheard the Windows guys discussing the latest problem de jour and having to bite my lip and refrain from telling them that the problem could be solved trivially by using a *nix box and a cron job (or whatever). Truth is they get sick of hearing about non windows solutions because they all have MS certificates that they have heavily invested in so they are therefore not prepared to listen to anything that does not reinforce their existing training investments.
Everything seems so much more complicated on Windows (as long as you don't suffer from command line phobia of course) and problems invariably need to be solved by purchasing yet another commercial software product which usually doesn't work as advertised and sometimes makes things worse.
As you say, life's too short.
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 15:50 GMT TeeCee
I'm not surprised the resellers are hacked off.
They must be doing a roaring trade in exports to the rest of the EU at the moment.
You have to remember that when some spokesdroid stands on his hind legs and moans about how bad XYZ is for everyone, you need to remember that what they actually mean is that it's bad for them.
-
Friday 17th February 2012 15:08 GMT xyz
Re: I'm not surprised the resellers are hacked off.
Oi!
>>>You have to remember that when some spokesdroid stands on his hind legs and moans about how bad XYZ is for everyone,
Did I used to go out with you or something? I know most people don't like me, but the above is a bit off. Enough of the name calling already
-
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 17th February 2012 11:48 GMT Piloti
Re: Re: Re: Charming...
Actually, I am sorry to say, you arewrong.
This is from the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] :
aluminium (United States aluminum )
n noun a strong, light, corrosion-resistant silvery-grey metal, the chemical element of atomic number 13. (Symbol: Al)
DERIVATIVES
aluminize or aluminise verb
aluminous adjective
ORIGIN
C19: from alumina + -ium.
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 20:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re: Charming...
Nice try, but it wasn't a fashion, it's due to English evolving along with a French speaking Norman invasion. Many many French words were absorbed into the language. Pretty much anything that ends in "tion" is French.
I think if you want to define true English, a country called England might have more than a head start as the home for it ;-)
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Friday 17th February 2012 13:11 GMT expat jan
Re: Re: Re: Re: Charming...
"he result of Old French impacting on Old English"
Well, it seems that the sloppy ex-colony across the Pond has yet again made an impact upon elegant and perfectly adequate grammatical construction and style. Or are you AC because you dare not admit publicly to such wanton destruction of Real English?
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 17:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
"...secondly it will "promote piracy""
Probably will, a bit, but I doubt that that will be the most significant impact. I would have thought that any company willing to pirate volume licenses would already be doing it and not worry about this change.
I think the real impact will be as suggested by others above - a significant shove in the direction of non-microsoft products, mainly Free/Open. MS licensing is a nightmare to understand as it is, and this insult (ie "fuck you customer, we don't really care about you") piled on top will be, for many, the last straw (at least I hope so).
-
Friday 17th February 2012 13:38 GMT mhenriday
«I think the real impact will be as suggested by others above -
a significant shove in the direction of non-microsoft products, mainly Free/Open. ...» In a perfectly rational world, JustaKOS, that would certainly be the case, but given the fact that the main qualification held by so many technical personnel is a Microsoft Certificate, there will inevitably be a great deal of internal resistance to such a change. FOSS won't have a sporting chance until IT workers receive a broader education/training in computer science - which, of course, is one of the reasons that Microsoft exerts such efforts to monopolise such education and training....
Henri
-
Friday 17th February 2012 14:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
@mhenriday - MS Certification
Depressing though your words are, I have to agree that FOSS won't have a real chance until the obsession with certification in products ends. It might also give us old farts a sporting chance as well : skill and experience count for naught these days as most job reqs include a list of certifications. Often the certs are there to provide a filter which selects for those who've sat exams, rather than those who have actual experience and ability.
-
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 18:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
@AC 17:05
You don't make sense. As I understand you, you seem to think the GBP price in the UK is higher than the Euro price in the rest of Europe so if they are normalizing prices to the euro then the eventual UK price would be less. However, I think you'll find the complaint is that the UK will start paying the same higher price as mainlain Europe, 20-35% according to the article. So your rant about the UK already paying higher prices is unwarranted.
But never mind, I constantly hear that the Euro is dead and worth less than tuppence so when this is implemented UK customers will be able to buy a licence for the entire MS catolog for three and six.
-
-
Thursday 16th February 2012 19:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Then there's the VAT
You might buy from MS in GBP but you will pay the IRISH VAT rate of 23%.
Then you have t ospend more time reclaiming it.
Last year it took HMRC 8 months to get their act together as they were'nt clued up on the Irish VAT change.
Dealing with MS is like trying to climb a pole covered in oil, snake oil.