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| Dear Craig,
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Welcome to
CN Consulting's "Cocktail
Talk".
Cocktail Talk is a casual monthly newsletter intended
to arm you with amusing bits and bytes of information on whats
happening in the computer world. Topics sure to break the ice
and capture an audience at many a social or business event.
There are buttons below to do things including
unsubscribe. If you unsubscribe you will be immediately removed from
our email list and may end up hanging around a soggy fruit tray
sipping warm beer, alone, at your next Cocktail
Party.
But that's your call, and that's
Cocktail
Talk.
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Shareware
|
 Sanibonani (Hello in Zulu*).
Hey
Boss! I have an idea. Let's run our company's mission critical
applications on Shareware. You'd most likely be put off the fast
track.
The term Shareware has an association with games and
toys. But you may be surprised just how much Shareware you already
use and how much you rely on it. You may be surprised what big
business Shareware is, and who's accepting it as
mainstream.
Internet Explorer (IE) is reportedly the
result of stolen Mozilla code. You use that don't you? Mozilla was
the code name for AOL Netscape and that was Shareware. The Mozilla
Foundation puts out Firefox and you may be using that as an
alternative to IE. Google is Shareware, GOOG on the NYSE @ $392 a
share and was as high as $747 this year.
Odds are the
websites you visit are running on Linux, Shareware, instead of
Microsoft. Apache Server is way more popular than Microsoft's IIS.
The name Apache came from the fact that the software was a
collaborative effort of people worldwide that added "patches" to the
product. So many patches that it became known as "a patchy"
software. Apache.
Shareware website development software is
popular too. Adobe software is about $2,000, Mambo is free. www.dragonboat.9zero.us
is a Mambo site. Yebo (Yes in Zulu) people are billing for sites
they develop in Shareware. Yebo, I am steering the boat in both
pictures.
Shareware's alot easier to digest if you call it
Collaborative Software or Open Source Software. Wikipedia is
Collaborative. Anyone can add their input to Wikipedia. Wiki means
quick in Hawaiian which isn't Zulu but I don't know why.
Big
names are going Open Source. Dell and HP both offer mini-book PCs
for about $375 that come with Open Source software instead of
Windows. Ubuntu (ooboontoo, Zulu for Humanity) is a Linux derivative
thats popular on mini-books across the board. You can get
Vista Home for an additional $75. You'd need to upgrade to Vista
Business in most cases and that gets you to about $475 for the $375
mini-book.
You'd probably need to have an office suite on
your mini-book for it to be useful. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, email,
maybe even Access or Publisher. Add $499 for Microsoft Office 2007
Professional. Or, take a look at Open Office. Open Office has Word
Processing, Spreadsheet, Database and Presentation software in its
suite. Its free, Shareware, Open Source.
So you've got $375
mini-book with Ubuntu and the Open Source Office Suite vs. a $975
mini-book after adding Microsoft. You can see an overview of Ubuntu,
with Open Office, with pictures, at www.ubuntu.com. Kulula
(its easy, in Zulu).
What about compatibility? I can't
do a matchup of everything you're using Microsoft for against Open
Source software, but Google has a version in Zulu. You can get
questions answered at OpenOffice.org or
Google though. Because its Collaborative / Open Source lots of
people are writing hooks for it. Remote users would be interested in
Gnome RDP to attach their new mini-book running Ubuntu to the office
network.
People don't generally like change and prefer to
stick with what they know even if its flawed. In January,
Windows XP is no longer available. Right now XP is a "downgrade"
from Vista on a new PC. So in January nibiza (you change, in Zulu) .
Most people don't know much more about Vista than Unbutu so either
choice is a leap of faith. If you ask people what they do know about
Vista they'll tell you it doesn't work.
Yebo Ubuntu or
hhayibo (no way!, in Zulu), but that's your call, and that's
Cocktail Talk.
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Hambani kahle -
Salani kahle (Go well / Stay well, in Zulu),
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Craig Phillips
CN Consulting, Inc.
* Not to
be confused with the outstanding 1964 movie Zulu with Michael Caine.
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