PC World: Move your business to Linux, not Vista

The PC World magazine now recommends moving to Linux instead of paying for upgrades to Vista. Even using the "downgrade to XP" option still requires the purchase of a Vista license from Microsoft, so PC World recons that especially small businesses will be much better served simply moving to GNU/Linux instead.

Making the switch from Windows to Linux will incur some costs as employees and support staff adjust to the new system's configuration settings, utilities, and applications. Even so, the savings in future hardware and software upgrades could be huge.

In particular, the article lists that you won't need to upgrade your hardware or pay for a license and that most GNU/Linux distributions come with a lot of software, such as e-mail clients, business productivity suites, etc. It also addresses the often mentioned concern about support:

The latest distributions are free, easy to install, and highly customizable; they harness your existing hardware without overtaxing it; and they include a wealth of productivity applications and utilities. You may already have a closet Linux expert on staff, but if you don't, paid support is usually available at rates far less than Microsoft's.

I think the only real impediment here is the fear of the unknown, being comfortable only with what you know, not being willing to learn something new.

If people wouldn't be raised to just memorise specific key-strokes and mouse-clicks to get stuff done on their computer, but would actually have an ounce of understanding of what it is they actually do, the much-feared cost of training staff to use a different system would just not be an issue.

Other related posts:
And you thought your computer would do what YOU wanted...
The great 'Windows collapse' of 2011?
Firefox and Google at Microsoft