Linux vs Windows - A price guide

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Revision as of 10:07, 6 September 2008 by SteveBaker (Talk | contribs)

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Prices of non-OpenSource equivalents of OpenSource programs are sometimes tricky to establish because many packages have student editions and pro-editions that are differently priced and precise feature alignment is tough to establish. Street prices also frequently differ from "official" prices - and software is often a fraction of the price if it's bundled in with a substantial hardware purchase. (eg The official price of Windows Vista is $220 - but when it's bundled with a new computer, the hardware manufacturer might pay $50 or less). The methodology I used here was to pick the prices I get by typing "Buy <productname>" into Google and entering the lowest price I see in the adverts in the right-hand column. I've also rounded to the nearest $10 because $199.99 doesn't look like $200.

Application
Area
Closed
Source
Price Open Source
"equivalent"
Office Automation MS Office $600 Open Office
Operating System Vista $220 Linux
Operating System WinXP $100 Linux
Web Browser Internet Explorer $0 Firefox
Image Processing Photoshop $650 GIMP
3D Modeling 3D Studio $390 Blender
Audio Editing WavePad $39 Audacity
Vector Graphics Adobe Illustrator $320 InkScape
JAVA Development JCreator $80 per user Eclipse
C++ Development Visual Studio $200 KDevelop
Email Client Outlook $100 Thunderbird
Presentation Manager PowerPoint $190 Impress