Windows 7?

My students are offering to install Windows 7 for me (in English!).   

I'm looking to get Windows 7 next week.  I'm get the family license so that I can put it on our three laptops.  It goes for about $150 CDN.

Paying for operating systems... one gets out of the habit, I suppose.

I've been wondering recently what it would be like to be a software producer and be thinking about such things as the existence of crazed persons willing to crack software protection and make the result available for file sharing.  If such a thing were to become the norm, I presume the only way to make money as a software producer would be to become an Internet Service Provider.  The software production would become an adjunct business to the Internet Service provision.  One's company would provide free of charge high quality software products.

Me old Da used to talk about such things, and he called it Convergence.  Businesses and media coming together to make a buck out of... stuff.

Or I suppose the real Next Gen OS will be all client-based with servers in the sky and permanent internet.


Meanwhile, mmm, copyright.

Paying for operating systems... one gets out of the habit, I suppose.

I presume the only way to make money as a software producer would be to become an Internet Service Provider.  The software production would become an adjunct business to the Internet Service provision.  One's company would provide free of charge high quality software products.

Me old Da used to talk about such things, and he called it Convergence.  Businesses and media coming together to make a buck out of... stuff.

Or I suppose the real Next Gen OS will be all client-based with servers in the sky and permanent internet.

Google is doing it.  Google Chrome - free.  Google Apps - free.  Their next step has to be to have notebooks or laptops boot up with Google OS and run apps from the "cloud".  And yet their stock price keeps going up and up and up .... free stuff yet they make money ....

I am using Google Chrome for my browser to connect with the Saloon.  I also use the Google mail program when wanting to use a web-based e-mail viewer.  So far, these are the only parts of the Google empire I am using.