Chilean bloggers lead campaign for Open Source PC’s
Chilean bloggers are leading a campaign against the use of Microsoft Windows “Starter Edition” by the Chilean Government as part of a campaign to get computers into more homes.
The bloggers are claiming that the analysis of the “My First PC” program demonstrates that the harware offered is not any cheaper that what’s already out there, and that the use of Microsoft products make up 20% of the price.
According to the campaign blog:
“In the specific case of MPPC (My First PC), the incorporation of Microsoft XP Starter Edition, Works 8 and Encarta 2005 Standard Edition involves an additional investment of at least CLP$50000 – 20% of the price tag of the computer – which could be eliminated thanks to alternatives with better features offered by Ubuntu Linux, OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox.”
(via NewsForge)
Blog Herald has misunderstood the whole point of the campaign, MPPCDV (“mi primer pc de verdad”, or “my first pc for real”) has for goal the denouncement and alterations of various critical flaws in a government-sponsored program to sell PC’s to the poorer classes, and all that it acomplishes is to enrich the enterpreneur few of chilean society and many trasnational companies.
Open Source is only mentioned because it is clearly a cheaper choice.
In fact, althought i think that the publishing of this article on the Bherald its a good notice, the contents of it shows us a ‘lack of content’: the article don’t captures the whole thing behind the MPPCDV campaign, this is, a government announce -with press for massive knowing- of a private_biggest_vendors campaign that is intendeed to be an oportunity to access to computing and IT for the segment with less aquiring power. but , the price/quality of the PC dont make a real difference against other oferts already on the air, that’s why we think that it cannot be announced as an ‘effort’ to break the digital barrier…
i’m looking for, but still can’t see the ‘effort’ on giving a computer at the same or worse price that the one that you can already recieve from a local small vendor, or by paying between a 41% and 61% more over the cash price by using a credit card? where is the ‘social campaign’ ?
where is it, if the bigg_vendors answers to the critics “if you think that you can make an equivalent offert for Chp 50.000 less , go and do it and put it at our side, then let’s see wich is sold better”. is sold better? let’s see… the whole thing behind this “Campaign” is only to sell more computers? What a great effort!!!