On Friday 05 December 2003 09:16, Craig wrote:

Speaking about this.. anyone seen that show last night on BBC2? Bill Gates 'won' ;)

'Bill Gates won because his software is everywhere'

True however but I felt as always the BBC doesn't research far enough.

I think these sort of programmes are a real waste of time, and don't actually teach us anything new. An obvious way to sort out who was more 'powerful' (however you define that) between Gates and Jobs would just to do a quick poll on who had heard of Gates, and who had heard of Jobs. Gates would be a clear winner, it would take 5 minutes and then we could get on with the rest of our lives. However, the whole exercise is fatuous in the extreme.

On Dec 4 and 5 2003, nick daniels wrote:

Microsoft boss Bill Gates has promoted laptops for pupils Schools across the UK could save up to £50m on Microsoft software over the next three years. The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, said Microsoft had reached an agreement with the government's educational technology agency, Becta. "This kind of agreement shows the advantages in co-ordinated procurement for schools across the country." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3291279.stm

Sorry I meant to add on the bottom " how much would the saving be if open source was adopted"

Exactly. £50m saved must mean an awful lot more than that is being spent, which at the end of the day is our money, as taxpayers. They should ditch all propriatory software in schools, and switch to OSS. Part of the savings could be spent on providing hard up families with computers, again fully installed with OSS. The rest can be spent on (gasp) books.

If kids at school are using the software, they will want to be able to use it at home. Sufficient numbers will then be clued up when they go into the workplace, and can help business save some money too.

Dave