Strap on the future

Bill Gates, founder and CEO of Microsoft, along with his wife, Melinda, recently were two of three people Time magazine named in its annual “Person of the Year” edition.

I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates. He founded Microsoft at the age of 19 and managed to make himself one of the wealthiest people in the world, worth roughly a gazillion dollars. Unlike some, I do not begrudge him that. I also think that he should be able to make another gazillion dollars on top of that if he can. But I’m guessing his time on top of the techno-world is limited, which brings me to this week’s Right Hook financial tip on technology and money. (As we all know, a core value of conservatism is saving money. As I said last week, let’s just say that I treat every dollar in my pocket like one of my children. I want to know where they are at all times, where they’re going, and whether any of their friends will be coming back.)

Anyway, a couple months ago editor Brian Burghart wrote a computer piece that put a bug in my ear. After expending exhaustive hours of research and testing, I can announce that your host is about to give Microsoft the boot—permanently.

Should you be so inclined to follow me to a Microsoft-free existence, here’s why.

As an entrepreneur I’m always looking for something that is going to make my business more efficient and either save or make me more money. Computers can be a great source of productivity or a horrendous drain on resources.

For years Microsoft has been the only game in town. Otherwise, why would consumers put up with a computer that crashes for absolutely no discernible reason? And the only way to fix it of course is to turn off the machine and turn it back on again. Imagine if your microwave oven or television worked that way. And if you’ve been fortunate enough not to have encountered the ‘blue screen of death,” consider yourself lucky. Anyway, you probably get my point.

So as Burghart suggested, I looked at the Linux operating system. Linux was invented by a Finnish programmer named Linus Tourvalds back in 1991. Rather than copyrighting the system, he made it an “open source” program. That is to say anyone has access to the programming code and can make changes to it. I found 212 different versions (or distros as they’re called) of Linux at www.linux.org. Almost all are available to download for free. Copies on CD or DVD are also available from various Web sites for a nominal charge ($4-$10). You can also purchase commercial versions of Linux supported by a number of different companies. My choice was Suse 10 Linux from Novell. (About $50 from Amazon.com or $60 directly from Novell at www.novell.com.)

I installed it on a 3-year old laptop in just under 40 minutes and had it up and running in short order. Did I mention you can install it on as many systems as you wish? For $50, I saved the equivalent of $1,600 in Microsoft licensing fees.

Functionally, Linux looks and acts a lot like Windows, and it’s configurable to anything you might imagine.

There are some simpler versions of Linux for the technologically challenged, including Linspire and Knoppix, www.linspire.com and www.knoppix.com.

In my experience, the change is the equivalent of going from driving a domestic car to a Ferrari. The Ferrari drives like any other car, but it takes awhile to figure out how the headlights and windshield wipers work—but once you do, the fun begins.