** Jacqui Caren <Jacqui.caren@???> [2008-06-20 12:51]:
> Roger Munford wrote:
> >http://www.itpro.co.uk/603639/becta-open-source-and-education-too-little-too-late/3
>
> Perhaps we ought to offer Barrett a bit of free installation and training...
>
> "But incredibly Barrett, the 'buying solution chief executive' for OGC,
> told the Committee: "I thought I would investigate the use of open
> source software on my personal computer at home. I got a licence, free
> of charge, but after three hours of struggling to retrain myself from
> many years of using Microsoft, I abandoned it. On a sample of one, me
> personally, it was more cost effective to stay with Microsoft. Those
> arguments, when magnified across the whole public sector, may well sway
> the balance against the open source software..."
** end quote [Jacqui Caren]
Hmm, that contradicts my sample of one that was unanimously in favour of
Linux. In fact my sample of one has been struggling to turn Windows into
a usable tool for the desktop since around 1990, and in all those years
has failed to make it as productive a tool as, initially OS/2, and since
around 1996 give or take, Linux.
More seriously, let's do a comparison...
"After three hours of struggling to retrain myself to drive a car from
many years of using a bicycle, I abandoned it."
Actually, there's some mileage in that. If you can't pass your test
after 3 hours of self training you are never allowed a license. That
would reduce both peoples carbon footprints and the number of road
accidents - a win, win situation ;)
That is, of course, assuming that we don't lower the pass standards in
the same way that Windows has reduced our expectations of quality
software. I quite liked the comment from David Cartwright in the July
Linux Format about "Old-school efficiency" which ended:
"But I do find myself wishing that every so often I'd find something
that's been designed by a person who learned computing on a ZX81 or BBC
Micro, and who's therefore used to giving at least a passing thought to
resource usage and algorithm efficiency."
I still maintain, although cannot prove, that the performance
improvement of software released for, say, the ZX Spectrum over its
lifetime, with no hardware changes, outstrips that of Windows over the
same period of time [1] with the leaps in computing power that
transformed the PC.
[1] That's not the exact same dates, but the equivalent length of time,
before anyone picks me up on it :)
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