Bonum Certa Men Certa

~$10,000 Per Windows Desktop Per Year in the British Government, and Microsoft Wants to Deny Us Choice

David Cameron
Image from the 10 Downing Street Web site



Summary: The insane spendings that accompany Microsoft in computing, based on new revelations from the UK

There are some outrageous reports about our government spending about 10,000 US dollars for each Windows-running machine in government, essentially flushing taxpayers' money down the loo. One article put it like this:



The government has always faced criticism that its IT is slow, unwieldy, inflexible, unnecessarily complex and overpriced. It’s one thing when you face this criticism from your rivals, the press or members of the public – but you know you’ve reached a dire point when it’s your own chief operating officer (COO) twisting the knife.

At a government spending review attended earlier this week by V3, the government’s new COO Stephen Kelly shed some light into the world of technology at Whitehall and across the public sector.



Munich could do far better than that!

Over the years we covered many examples where the British public sector favours Microsoft for no good reason.This is used to funnel public money into private hands. The NHS and BECTA are just two examples of this.

Here is my co-host's take on this latest outrage. He points the finger at Microsoft:

People still running a Windows system in the home will probably be able to appreciate the almost full time job of securing it against the latest malware, fixing nonsensical bugs which suddenly appear for no reasons and creating their own imaginative workarounds just to get the desktop functioning. For the home user this may be seen as run-of-the-mill home computing, but put the same issues into government systems where your tax money goes and the problem becomes less of an annoyance and more a costly exercise – at your expense.

[...]

Now user’s of Windows can appreciate that boot up (and shut down) can take a long time. Here’s your Government (in the UK)
“I came into the office and I pressed my PC and it took me seven minutes to boot up,” he told attendees. “That’s government in the old world, that’s three days of the year I waste of my time booting up.”


Computers are needed in government, but why do they run Windows? Mr. Pogson says bundling is still the issue. To quote:

Ask yourself, why did M$ insist it’s customers not ship bare metal? Did M$ want to ensure end-users had less choice of OS? Did M$ want to ensure it had a larger market-share than it was otherwise earning on price/performance? Were they afraid people would realize the price they paid for that OS?

A market that does not offer choice of OS is broken and governments should have smacked M$, OEMs and retailers long ago over the practice of bundling the OS. It’s clearly an anti-competitive act. Where I live one can buy a bare-metal PC but only as a “bare bones” system to which you must add components or as parts. That worked for ATX PCs but it does not for notebooks and tablets which so far don’t have many user-changeable parts. Freedom in ATX is fading with the decline in “desktop” PCs. They’ll likely be available for years longer but unless we demand notebooks and other PCs offer a choice of OS, bundling will be coming back in a big way. M$ may yet try to get OEMs to ship nothing but M$’s OS.


Why is there no government action against it? Microsoft is too big to jail; for other illegal practices too there has been no punishment, AstroTurfing and racketeering included. What about UEFI, the latest scheme to keep GNU/Linux out of desktops? UEFI is again being covered in ZDNet, owing to J.A. Watson, a Brit who was approached by UEFI Forum after he had criticised UEFI. Here is his latest problem:

I have written a number of times recently about UEFI Boot, and how much trouble I have had getting it set up and getting it to stay the way I want it.

It is important to remember that system manufacturers sometimes make BIOS firmware updates available, and installing such updates can sometimes be of significant help with existing problems.

An example is my Acer Aspire One 725. I have installed several different Linux distributions on it (openSuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian), and I had run into two related problems.

First, when the Linux installation was finished the system still only booted Windows, and second, even when I changed the UEFI Boot parameters in NVRAM (using efibootmgr), the changes would be lost on the next reboot (which was actually the root cause of the first problem).


All this complication sure is enough to discourage most people from installing GNU/Linux, There is an antitrust complaint in Europe.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
there's a wide window of opportunity opening
Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
Links for the day
In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
Links for the day
Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025
Intimidation, Threats, and Bullying Not Tolerated by Techrights
When it comes to our reporting, safety always comes first
A World Without Rules
We're long insisted on better laws and actual enforcement of them (applicable to all, not selectively applied)
statCounter Sees Microsoft Windows Falling to New, Unprecedented Lows in Palau
Taking Android into account, Windows is now down to an all-time low of 14%
Google News Lost the Fight to LLM Slop (While Google Itself Sells Slop, Nowadays Under the Name "Gemini")
Many people say that "Google is getting worse"; that's almost an understatement
Links 28/03/2025: AirAsia Trouble Again, UMich Culls All DEI Programs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/03/2025: Alexa is for Gullible People, Rant About Feature Overload
Links for the day
The SLAPPs From the Microsoft Strangler (and Sidekick) No Better Than Patent Trolling
one must never settle with trolls
Something to Celebrate in Gemini Protocol
More capsules and users join in
Links 28/03/2025: Last Reminder "to Delete Your 23andMe Data", "UK's First Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras Installed"
Links for the day
Microsoft Canonical Continues Its FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) Campaign, Reveals Google Too Sponsored It
They're paid-for lies from a Chinese company that takes GAFAM money to write puff pieces about them
Android Rises Above 76% in Mozambique, Leaving Windows in the Dust
Windows may soon be measured as smaller than Apple's iOS
IBM, Red Hat and Microsoft Probably Also Manipulate Metrics (It Helps Con the Shareholders)
Wall Street's credibility will depend on enforcement of "checks and balances"
Slopwatch: trendhunter.com and Other Pure Junk From "Google News"
The need to vet sources is hardly new; anyone can spew out anything, anywhere. There's a need for vetting.
Gemini Links 28/03/2025: Rewatching The X-Files, Slop Concerns, and NOSTR Censorship
Links for the day
Links 28/03/2025: Australia at Risk, EPO Grants Illegal Patents With Illegal Effect
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 27, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, March 27, 2025