p2pnet.net news:- Bill and the Boyz are going for a loss-leader approach with a $3 software package aimed at the “underserved,” a euphemism for people who aren’t already Microsoft punters.

The bundles, slated to start shipping in the second half of this year, includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail Desktop and several educational applications.

The ‘deal’ also allows Microsoft to penetrate users’ homes.

” The software maker said it will sell a Student Innovation Suite, which includes Windows XP Starter Edition and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, for $3 to governments that subsidize a certain percentage of the cost of PCs for primary and secondary students for use at home and at school,” says Associated Press, going on:

“Orlando Ayala, a senior vice president for Microsoft’s emerging segments market development group, said it took 35 years for the company’s software to reach a billion people; reaching the next billion isn’t just a side philanthropic project for Microsoft. ‘Many of these people we think are going to be consumers down the road,’ Ayala said in an interview.”

Bill Gates made the announcement in Beijing, says AP.

Coincidentally, talking to students at the University of Washington’s business school students in 1998, “Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software,” said gates, adding:

“Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

The next decade has arrived.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Associated Press – Microsoft increases software, education for underserved billions, April 19, 2007
sort of addicted – Bill Gates’ China sales trip, July 3, 2004

If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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