A picture is worth 1000 words. If that’s the case, how much is a video worth?
During the Christmas holidays I managed to wipe out my Windows PC. Faced with the option of installing Windows (again) or installing Linux I chose to install both to compare them. Below is a discussion on the subject, as well as an invitation to join me at a live webinar next Tuesday to show you how close Linux is to Windows, and how much ‘Linux’ software runs under Windows. The major difference? Linux costs nothing. Windows costs a heck of a lot more.
But that difference has some implications. Firstly, the Linux guys are not going to threaten you or prosecute you if you copy the software. Actually, they want you to. Secondly, Linux uses a lot less machine than Windows does, and that means it’s far easier upgrade an old PC. It seems that each time Windows has a new release, that release needs a bigger machine. Windows, in a word, is not green!
Each time I broach this subject a few purists point out that the two are not identical, or even completely compatible. They are right.
Most of us don’t use most of our PCs. Your own PC – no matter how old it is – is almost infinitely more powerful than the biggest mainframe I worked on before 1985, which occupied a very large room and had water based plumbing to keep it cool. It is thousands of times more powerful than the equipment that took Apollo 11 to the moon. And hundreds of times more powerful than my first laptop, all 13 KG of it!
Yet, most of us use our PCs for a few very simple functions:
- Access to the Internet via a browser;
- E-Mail;
- Word Processing (and most of us only use it as a typewriter, rather than all the advanced features);
- Spreadsheets;
- Presentations;
- Accounting;
- And possibly one or two specialist Windows applications. (Voice recognition is one of my specialist apps.)
Most of us, embedded as we are in Windows, have one or two Windows applications that we cannot live without. We think that this means that we cannot change to another operating system. Not true, because there are two ways to run Windows applications inside Linux.
Whether you are the only person in your company, or you have dozens of PCs in your firm, this hour is going to save you a fortune, as well as expand your options dramatically. Did I mention it’s gratis?