LibreOffice

U need not be a charitable organisation in order to be reasonable with the end user.
 
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Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Student for Rs. 4000
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium for Rs. 6364

I see reasonable prices for very mature and usable software.

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You know what... I wish someone takes note of this and starts developing a technology using this philosophy.

Ubuntu LTS is this philosophy. You install it and you are ensured support and compatibility for 3-5 years right?
 
So u expect to extract Rs. 4k (which will obviously increase with every new "Version") out of a student every 2-3 years? All are not blessed with the luxury of that much money. Many of them barely afford a computer, so is it that they dont have any right to learn stuff? Why? Coz they dont have enough money to spend 4k every 2-3 years?
 
Ubuntu LTS is this philosophy. You install it and you are ensured support and compatibility for 3-5 years right?

No. You get regular security and general updates. These do not alter most of the basic features of the particular release. However, every six months one gets a 'upgrade' which is basically replacing your existing OS version with the newer version.

What I meant was that they could 'update' (not upgrade) the current release with the features of the newer release.

For example, updating Ubuntu 10.10 with Unity launcher which was first launched in 11.04. Similarly, adding the Aero look of Win 7 to Win XP.

Of course, they should have hardware compatibility for the same.
 
mmm. i am sure unity could be installed on older ubuntu builds (and other linux distros) manually :| or maybe not because of compatibility issues i guess. :|



So u expect to extract Rs. 4k (which will obviously increase with every new "Version") out of a student every 2-3 years? All are not blessed with the luxury of that much money. Many of them barely afford a computer, so is it that they dont have any right to learn stuff? Why? Coz they dont have enough money to spend 4k every 2-3 years?

students can live with older versions of microsoft office. in fact they can live with free software solutions. just because a new Office Suite is out does not mean you have to use it. i do not see schools or colleges requiring them to latest features of the latest version of the office suite in their documents or spreadsheets or presentations. in fact more schools and colleges in india are unlikely to be on the latest versions of the office suite themselves. so i do not see why your point is valid from any sense.

generally speaking, they do not have clients. they do not have company policies to follow. they have the flexibility that most companies do not have. they can easily survive with something as basic as google docs or the microsoft office web app. both are free. both requires just a decent web browser and internet connectivity. and frankly speaking, internet access in india can easily cost more than what microsoft office students edition cost in a couple of month's time. i guess you should argue for free internet access for students too.
 
mmm. i am sure unity could be installed on older ubuntu builds (and other linux distros) manually :| or maybe not because of compatibility issues i guess. :|

Yes, it can be installed on older versions manually.

What I meant was an auto-update with the newer features.


PIC: Unity on Ubuntu 10.10
 
well major design changes are avoided as auto updates for the simple reason. not everyone is like us who loves to try out new things. people do not want their computing life to be changed drastically by a simple update. :| my dad is a good example. he expects his netbook to behave today as it did yesterday. if the UI changes massively as unity does, he needs to go through another round of lessons literally. :|
 
This is a shot of the latest LibreOffice beta release. They seem to be making some changes to the UI finally. Looks awkward though.

Update: Used it for a while. Seems to be a major improvement over previous updates.
 
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