letter to the Telegraph

[Rob Lembree]

I have no idea whether or not they will publish it, but I sent
this to the Nashua Telegraph today.

regards,
rob


An article in today's Telegraph reported the theft of a number of
"PowerPoint" projectors from a local high school.  "PowerPoint" is
software from Microsoft geared to delivering presentations from a
computer, and is part of Microsoft Office.  As the article correctly
points out, the projectors can be used for anything that can be put
onto a computer screen.

So why were they called "PowerPoint" projectors?  In my view, the
reason is that most people are of the belief that there is only one
software company on the planet, blinding us to good, inexpensive
alternatives.

An excellent alternative to Microsoft's Office (list price $499 per  
computer)
is OpenOffice (list price: FREE).  A superb alternative to Adobe's
PhotoShop (list price $560 per computer) is the GNU Image Manipulation
Program (GIMP, list price FREE).  The examples of free and open source
alternatives to expensive software are nearly boundless.

Consider how much money schools and government would save if we
switched away from software costing hundreds of dollars per computer,
to free software.  No longer would municipal employees need to justify
another expensive copy of Microsoft Office at taxpayer expense.  No
longer would classroom computers have to be specialized by the
expensive software on them.  No longer would "software upgrades" be
a large part of every city department's budget.  Consider that EVERY
computer could have word processing, image manipulation, presentation
software, etc. on it, without spending a nickel on licenses.

I would challenge us, especially our budget-tightened governments and
school districts to break free of software myopia, and consider  
alternatives
that can save all of us a lot of money while at the same time  
dramatically
improving our computer environments.

Robert Lembree
Past Chair, Greater NH Linux Users Group
www.gnhlug.org