Have to agree with you, Gary. SuSE's new pricing structure is sound. Three levels: $30 $49 (upgrade) $79 Pro. Those 6 CDs are stuffed to the brime. A collection of M$ software that would do the same would around $10,000, if not more.... JLK On Thursday 08 February 2001 11:11, Gary wrote:
Hi Samy,
On Thursday, February 08, 2001, 1:24 AM, you rearranged your electrons about "[SLE] SuSE Inc. Lay offs?":
S> all the more reason to keep the BS factor and smoke and mirrors stuff to a S> minimum. The reason I continue to buy suse is the rock solid product , the S> new two tone pricing structure does not make me happy. I have bought every S> version since 5.3 most of them for $29.99 and am not happy with being hit S> for M$ type pricing of 7.0 / 7.1
$69 is far from MickySoft type pricing. Have you checked out what the W2K servers are going for, starting at lease $2000+ for small licenses .... and any upgrade from M$ is costs more than far more than a full distro. Linux is not only a desktop application, but several other things rolled into one, i.e. NFS, webserver, firewall, DNS server, router, mail server, etc. You pay *extra* for all of these, in M$. SuSE's pricing is right in line with the other distros, unless you want the RH Pro which is $159 to $179 US - that is without hardly any software... You mainly get a web server and SSH... big deal.
S> That and there new "strategy has turned off a LOT of LOYAL suse S> useres who put them there.I seems that they want to go closer to S> the enterprise big corperate customer and not there mainstay linux S> users of the past. If that does contimnue , I will look into S> another distro , most likely Debian.
I disagree with you here about their pricing strategy. It is directly in line with any other distro on the store shelves... Check out Best Buy, or Office Max, or any of the others, $69 is the going rate here in the US for a powerpack or Pro version, and most don't have the complete manuals that SuSE has. Getting closer to enterprise, is the money backbone for any Linux company, as retail sales worldwide will not sustain corporate earnings. Profit comes from service. Linux per se is now in a position to really do damage to M$ enterprise corporate users because of the new 2.4 kernel. Memory is now fully supported up to 6.5 Gb, instead of 2MB, cluster and load balancing is enhanced, and most importantly the use of multiple processors is now fully supported, which enterprise has always used and needed. I believe that now up to 13 processors (from my poor memory) are now supported, and some have used far more with success...
-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781