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Thursday, July 20, 2006
Ng: Software for lease
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
Microsoft is taking a page off how to sell prepaid cards for cell phones, and use it as an experiment to sell Microsoft Office licenses. Here is how it works.
When you purchase a new computer, you have a choice to buy a Microsoft office Start Card, which already includes installed software and will provide the buyer a 25-character product key. All one needs to do is get into the Internet and activate the subscription software. Then one can start to use the full Office 2003 for the next four months—legally.
The subscription rate is P729 and may be purchased from selected PC dealers who participate in the program. This is available only to small office and personal users.
After the four-month trial, the customer may opt to renew by purchasing additional renewals from either a dealer or online. You can renew before or during the expiration date.
If your subscription expires, your Microsoft Office 2003 Edition will go into reduced functionality mode, allowing read-only and print-only access to files created during the subscription period.
So the question is do you want to own or just lease your software? It has been the subject of long debate, but at least now, the user has a choice.
If you are like me, and most of my friends, you have a computer in the house but you are constantly in competition with your kids over its use. It is amazing how kids, who are barely four years old, are now using the computer. It can truly be said that the new generation is the IT generation, because they can click and use the mouse before they can even write.
But there are safeguards that one must implement. I am sure some of you have experienced situations in which your kids were able to get into the system and delete your files. My kids use the computer for hours even when they still don’t know how to read, and that can be disastrous sometimes.
This is where Windows XP is of great help. It allows multiple users to keep their separate profiles, and you can have your own documents folder which is not accessible to other users, thus enabling you to prevent accidental deletion of files.
If you want to leave the computer for a while, how do you prevent your kids from messing up your work?
With Windows NT, if you press control-alt-delete, the computer is locked. But on XP, this command will only bring up the task manager. The technique is to press Winkey+L. Just a keystroke, and your windows system is locked! Just don’t forget your password.
However, this might not work if you have fast user switching enabled. So you have to disable that first. You can do that by opening user accounts from the control panel. Click “change the way users log on and off,” and uncheck use fast user switching.”
Disabling fast user switching has a good and bad side. When enabled, it will allow you to log into Windows using another name, while preserving the old person’s files and system. This is convenient if you are an administrator. However, it can be bad because keeping the programs of other users while logging in as another user will take up lots of memory. This is not advisable if you don’t have a lot of memory.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 20, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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