Microsoft hates the elderly.......

[LinuxMint-4]

Microsoft mugs old folks homes Down Under

Nursery schools will be next

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... olks-homes

By Egan Orion: Wednesday, 29 October 2008, 5:50 PM

CARE HOMES FOR THE ELDERLY in Australia are in shock, having been told by Microsoft that it will be revoking their non-profit designation that lets them buy MS software at steep discounts.

The Vole's formerly discounted prices offered to pensioners' residential care facilities Down Under had helped its products – including Microsoft Windows, Office, Sharepoint and SQL Server – become widely deployed in the IT infrastructure of the country's old folks homes.

Australia's Aged Care Industry IT Council estimates that having to pay full sticker prices for Microsoft products will increase its members' software licencing fees by about 400 per cent.

It says the surprise change in Volish policy will hoover up about half of the sector's annual IT budgets and extract an estimated AU$70 million over the next 18 months.

"Like many other industry sectors, aged care has probably a 90 per cent-plus reliance on Microsoft infrastructure, so it's not difficult for the company to say the rules have changed," said IT Council spokesman Mark Barnett.

"The difficulty for aged care providers is that they've bet the farm on a Microsoft strategy that they believed was consistent and reliable in price," he continued.

Barnett said the IT Council has been in talks with Microsoft for the past six weeks hoping to reach some accommodation, and the company has promised to take no further action on its policy changes until after Christmas.

At least three IT projects at Australian aged care providers were put on hold last Friday due to Microsoft's threatened price increases.

Certainly some IT managers at the country's 1,300 old folks residential care providers will be checking out lower cost software alternatives involving Linux, Samba and Open Office between now and the end of the year, we reckon. µ

[eddie]

I saw that article also. It shows the true nature of MS. I guess they did not see any future sales because of the discount so MS decided to get blood out of a turnip.