Did you know that for every dollar spent on computing hardware, as many as five dollars are spent on the system's lifetime for software licenses, support and maintenance? And did you know that this enormous expense recurs on a cyclical basis?

In the average American business, computer hardware is replaced every 43 months (for desktops) to 36 months (for laptops), and software expense recurs with each turnover. The cycle for home users is eerily similar.

Blame the turnover on the never-ending quest for greater productivity. Also blame system performance problems and failures, increasing support costs for older computers, and changing software requirements. Oddly, the purchasers of new computers usually view the cost of hardware as primary, not the cost of the software to be used. The tail is wagging the dog.

To our minds, a new computer system should be chosen for its amenity to free and open source software. That's what we optimize our systems for. We select systems for their versatility and compatibility with open-source operating systems. We seek to avoid systems with exotic components that would require rare drivers or proprietary software to operate them. Then we pre-configure them for easy access to the vast libraries of free and Open Source software.

Free software has reached the point where it provides an equivalent to every proprietary package on the market today. That is why Desktop Linux is unique when it comes to total cost of computer ownership. Linux is the ideal platform for open source software, and the libraries of free software are most easily accessible to users of Desktop Linux. Most "distros" in general use are developed with the goal of making it easy to download free software.

Nowadays, you find that all the hardware you can buy is pretty much the same price. But the software varies widely between proprietary and open source brands.

For the uninitiated, a little explanation is in order. Many open source programmers actually fulfill the notion of "free" by not charging for the applications they have developed. However, the defining characteristic for free software licensing is not the inability to charge a fee for software, but access to source code: it is freely available. When open source applications are developed, even by large companies, the cost tends to be much less than proprietary applications. Compare Microsoft Office ($399) with Sun Microsystems' Star Office ($79.95). The latter is a state-of-the-art replacement for the well-known suite of Word, Excel and Power Point and has a bonus feature Microsoft can't match: the ability to export a document as a PDF. (Buying Adobe Acrobat Professional for that feature would set you back $449.) I'm writing this article with it. Star Office is progenitor of the free-as-in-beer office suite, Open Office, whose recently-released 2.0 edition adds a powerful database application that is similar to Access. A review in Real Tech News (August 29, 2005) declared, "Open Office 2.0 kicks MS Office around the block."

The sneakiest cost in software, of course, is what you pay to offset Microsoft's vulnerabilities: antivirus protection, spyware protection, popup blockers and "tune up" utilities (like Norton System Works) to keep the operating systems running right. When it comes to malware protection, there are costs for the applications and then there are costs of subscriptions for antivirus and anti-spyware definitions. Let your updates lapse and there are greater costs for repairs and support of all kinds, such as when viruses and malware grind the computer to a halt.³ Linux, being Unix-based, is immune to Windows malware, so these costs are saved with a Linux system.

They are also saved with a Macintosh, since Mac's OSX is also Unix-based. (Linux and OSX are sort of first cousins.) But open source software for Mac is not nearly as prevalent as for Linux, and specialized applications in Mac tend to get really expensive. For example, on the day of this writing, I looked on Amazon to see what was available in Photoshop 7. The Windows versions available (new and used) started at $149, while the Mac versions (new and used) started at $377. QuarkXpress retails for a whopping $1,045.

Another large part of the overall cost of computing is software upgrades. Here the effect is twofold. On the one hand, there is a cost of upgrading the software itself. On the other hand, the need for more powerful hardware is driven by increasing system requirements of newer softwares. While Linux users are just as hungry for speed as their Windows and Mac bretheren, by and large they can avoid costly software upgrades through the use of Open Source.

There is no cost to upgrading the free software applications that have been mentioned in this article. They are free to use and own and they are under constant development.

We think that hardware replacement time should also be the time to migrate to free software. There is nothing that makes one so clear-eyed as starting over. So when you order your next computer, think of the software expense you're signing up for before you think about the name on the box.

^{EDITOR'S NOTES:}

³A recent article article by Adam Hyde, director of product strategy at Electric Mail, caught our attention on the subject of antivirus protection. In an article praising Clam A-V, the free "alternative" antivirus application noted above, he wrote: "[Antivirus vendors] sometimes pretend they've caught a virus when they actually haven't. They simply release a fix to an old pattern file without changing the file name, and at first glance it looks like they caught the virus well before they actually did. That's because their Website lists the original pattern release time and not the date and time for the updated release of the pattern file. . . .Someone needs to investigate why all these antivirus labs, with lots of engineering expertise, are so slow to release a patch and why some are playing games with the release date/time for updated pattern files. It makes one wonder why we pay these hefty licensing fees when a free product is doing a better job." To read the full version, go to: <http://www.linuxpipeline.com/166400446;jsessionid=NCII4TX4LQXFKQSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN>.

On the subject of popup blockers, our own Ira Hyman writes in, "Windows popup blocking software tends to fail within three to four months, once the hackers know what they are up against. They write around the blockers and then Windows users have popups again."

⁴Athough version, upgrade, and update are often used interchangeably, each term has a distinct meaning. A software version is a stand-alone edition of a product that is marketed, sold, and supported as such. Typically, the latest version adds new features and improvements to the previous version. A true software upgrade adds new features by installing over an existing program. Because a true upgrade is not a stand-alone program, it usually costs less than the full version. A software update, also referred to as a release or patch, is a product revision which can be downloaded free of charge. Updates improve program functionality and fix known bugs. Changes to the program after installing an update are usually invisible to the user, as updates do not add new features.

Upgrading a Windows OS is another matter. Upgrading Windows 9x/Me to Windows XP is actually a bit of a misnomer. When you upgrade such a system, Microsoft actually examines your installation, moves your documents and personalized settings to a backup location, and then performs a clean install of XP.