Pirated Software Crackdown in Thailand
In the past week Thai Police have raided businesses for software piracy.
Many businesses have had equipment confiscated and received large fines.
This is a bit of a problem for many as the cost of legitimate software in the country is quite high in comparison to average wages.
For example a teacher in Thailand earns anything from 8,000-20,000baht per month. That’s about €200-500/month. A good price for Windows 7 Pro is 6,000baht. Which works out at anything from 30% to 75% of a teacher’s monthly salary.
That’s the same as an Irish person, on take home pay of €2000/month, paying €700 upwards for the joy of MS’ latest offering. Windows 7 Pro currently retails for €200 in Ireland.
I’ve been advising a few friends and businesses to have a look at using Linux. In my view it’s a perfectly good alternative to Windows for most uses.
A lot of people I’ve spoken with have heard that Linux is great…. if you have a computer science degree, or that it’s unsecure or buggy.
I’m not an expert but I can say that my experience with Linux has been bug free, no security issues and although it was, a few years ago, difficult to setup Linux on your PC it is now relatively straight-forward.
But I think that the greatest selling point of all is the Linux Live CD.
Go to www.ubuntu.com and download the Ubuntu install CD. Boot up your PC with this CD and you can “try before you buy”!
The option to try Ubuntu before installing it means you don’t have to change any settings or files on your PC. Plus you can try it out and make up your mind as to whether or not Linux is for you.
If Ubuntu isn’t for you – give Opensuse a go. You’ll fall in love with the KDE desktop!