Dealing with microsoft..

the following article describe the problem in dealing with Microsoft with regards to licensing issues...

A CIO guides to Microsoft Negotiation...

Fundamental conclusion..

- Review your vendor's licensing arrangements and develop a timetablefor upgrading various software licenses.
- Negotiate your tune-up pricing -- the clause in the agreement thatallows you to add users during the lifecycle of the licenseagreement.
- Consider how your employees use the software when choosing theright licensing model.

in my opinion.. many would love to upgrade to Windows XP even though they might not need it. First of all, we must agree that it gives end-user a great eXPerience, compared to Linux which only gives techie great technical experiences. It is like recommend someone to a movie, you just have to say it once, "hey Windows XP is good, beautifu interface..", there goes the sales.

There is another solutions.. where you can actually register as Microsoft Trading partners and get special package for your software.. you would get it at less than RM2k for the basic products such as OS and Office suites. however, you need to make commitment to help Microsoft to promote its product. Perhaps, this might only work for IT companies.