Microsoft Donates Windows 8.1 To Nonprofit Organizations 224
An anonymous reader writes in with good news for Windows loving nonprofits and libraries. "Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows 8.1 for nonprofits. The move is an extension of the company's nod to the nonprofit community with the launch Windows 8. The announcement means eligible nonprofit organizations and public libraries can request Windows 8.1 through Microsoft's software donation program."
How white of Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now those non-profits will not have to look towards free alternatives such as Linux! True humanitarians.
Re:Donate Win 7 if you really want to be charitabl (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true.
MS is using this faux charitability to advance their agenda, because they know it's the only way to make people use.. whatever you would consider W8.1. If they really cared about non-profits, why not ask what they need and work out a deal to offer that?
And let's not forget that any open source project does the same thing for EVERYTHING they produce. So what does MS really deserve praise for here? Microsofts products aren't even worth a penny compared to alternatives anyways, but when they reduce their prices on products on which they already make absurd margins, we're supposed to worship them like saints. Please.
Re:Windows 8.x is horrible! (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is, Linux really doesn't offer the average desktop computer user anything over Windows. Ok, so Dell doesn't have to pay Microsoft $40 for the OEM copy of Windows, big deal. That isn't the make or break reason for a customer to change OS on their machine.
The truth is, Windows has been "good enough" for a very long time, Windows XP was finally the OS that killed any chance of something else stepping up to the plate.
Re:Charity? Or PR? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is always a catch (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely right. Over the last decade or so, much of Microsoft's sales & marketing hasn't actually been done by Microsoft at all.
They haven't needed to.
"We're starting to receive files in formats we can't open" does it for them.
Historically, that resulted in Office upgrades; they're now using that leverage to push other upgrades (Office 2013 requires Windows 7 and Outlook 2013 requires Exchange 2007 or later). In the process, they're losing customers - Office 2013 starts to look like quite an expensive upgrade when you suddenly need to rip out your entire infrastructure
Drug dealing mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
The first one is always free.