Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

There's a big empty spot in the garage now. It used to be filled with eight monitors, half a dozen computers, and a few miscellaneous bits and pieces of hardware that I'd been meaning to build into firewalls and other machines for friends and family. But finally I realised that I wasn't actually inspired to get a bunch of decrepit Pentium Is and IIs working, and Kate convinced me that it was better to take them to a Computer Charity (called, coincidentally, Charity Computers) and let them (with their boxes full of RAM and racks full of hard disks and their volunteer labour) take care of it.

I came away relatively unscathed. It only cost me $75 for them to take the four non-working monitors to a Better Place; the rest was gratis. That's OK, I can take that $75 out of Trevor's hide since he was the one who dumped them on me in the first place ("I've been keeping them in my garage for the last three years - do you want them?"). Of course, what do they put on them? Microsoft Windows 2000. They've got a special 'distributor' license or something.

It's the Microsoft Standard. Everyone uses it, so everyone has to learn it. Charity Computers are dealing with people on unemployment cards who need to learn modern computing skills to get into the workplace. Since half of these people are still at the "Why is turning it on so difficult?" stage, making them learn another operating system for work versus the one they have at home is allegedly doing them no favours. It's what everyone's familiar with, after all.

I can't deny that it's popular. Pity that that popularity is because of strong- arm business tactics and dirty dealings, rather than being technically and operationally superior (i.e. easier to use). Pity that that Windows 2000 interface is quite different from the Windows XP that the big businesses are now using at work. Pity that Windows 2000 support is being phased out. Pity that they're probably not supplied with firewalls or anti-virus software - they're probably lucky to be up-to-date with patches. (I think they said they installed OpenOffice, but who knows? Maybe the poor unfortunates get Microsoft Works.) Pity that all the latest games and software probably won't run on their old OS, even if they pay the $450 or so to get a modern machine - so they're still going to have to pay the Microsoft Tax sooner or later...

So, overall, I don't think they're doing as many favours as they think they are. Do they offer any training on how to use these new computers? What about support and maintenance, when they get a virus or have a breakdown? At least the people there are learning how to repair computers. But I have this fear that, like many Christian projects (of which this is one), they're going more for good intentions and less for full plans and consequences taken care of.

And I still don't see what the big problem with Linux in that environment is. It still won't be able to play all their favourite games, and it'll look and feel a bit different compared to the operating system that they'll probably be using at work. But it'll have an industry-proven firewall, pretty much no virus susceptibility, a whole range of free software just waiting to be installed on it, and it comes with no hidden Microsoft Taxes. How can you say no?