Microsoft will distribute Windows and Office for three dollars

Bill Gates yesterday at a conference in Beijing shared his plans for the expansion of Microsoft to third world countries. He said that by 2015 the company had set a goal to acquire two billion users, which should guarantee the cloudless future of the world's largest IT company. For this purpose, special distributions with software worth just three dollars will be released.

Student Innovation Suite's three-dollar disks will include the basic version of the Windows XP Starter Edition operating system, Office Home and Student 2007, the Windows Live Mail mail program, Microsoft Math 3.0 training programs and Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office.

Now Microsoft is working with governments of different countries to ensure the mass distribution of such disks among millions of students and schoolchildren. For example, they can be included in a set of cheap PCs that are subsidized by the state. In 2008, the program will be expanded to all countries of the world that are officially considered low or medium level development according to the World Bank. By the way, this list includes both Belarus and Ukraine (lower-middle level), and Russia (upper-middle level of development).
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According to Microsoft, the distribution of cheap disks with the help of the government is the only way to distract schoolchildren and students from the “hostile” Linux OS, which is completely free.

via ComputerWorld