the stock papt introductory letter
a client of mine recently received a letter from the pilipinas anti-piracy team shown on the left. with the exception of to whom the letter was addressed to, i received this exact same letter about a year ago. when i first got this letter i had the impression that the company i was working for is using pirated software. that’s strange. i know for a fact that all the software programs in the office are either properly licensed or legally free. reading the letter the second time puts it in perspective–its a reminder not to use pirated software, albeit worded rather aggressively so the first tendency is to panic. some might even consider it a veiled threat.
its nice to know that some people in government are doing their job.
so what do you do when you get a copy of this letter? first, do not panic. read that letter again. no one is actually accusing you of using pirated software. its just a notice.
next thing you do is to take their advise and perform a software license check. remember that for each kind of software there is a single corresponding license. so, if you have a windows set up like most of the world, each computer should have one license for microsoft windows and one for microsoft office. there is no one license to rule them all (we’ll get to the linux license later).
and the cost of those licenses add up–php7,700 for microsoft windows and php18,000 for microsoft office 2007; php25,700 in total. multiply that by the number of computers that you have. if you have 10 computers the cost is going to run up to a quarter of a million pesos. that’s jusT for 10 computers. that’s quite a hefty sum considering the recession and all.
if you do not want to spend that much on software there are legal alternatives. you can replace microsoft office with open office. that’s a savings of php 180,000.00 already for 10 computers. and yes, it can open all your word documents, excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations.
if you want further savings, replace your pirated microsoft windows with linux. that’s savings of php 77,000.00 for 10 computers. there are so many distributions (loosely, types of linux) out there. off the top of my head, ubuntu is a nice alternative if you’re coming from the windows world. you can look for more distributions over at distrowatch.
if you want to stay within the microsoft world then be ready to pluck down a hefty sum to use their software.
i’m in a bind of sorts. half of my users are using office 2007 and half are using office 2002. what can i say? the crisis came and we put ugrading the rest on indefinite hold. but there are complications with this kind of set up. the problem stems from the inability of the office 2002 users not being able to read the newer file format of office 2007 (docx mostly). typical of microsoft. they want every old-version user to upgrade to the latest and greatest. but everyone is in cost reduction mode so upgrading is not a popular option for now. besides, i was informed that you can’t really upgrade an old oem version, say office 2002 oem, to the next latest and greatest oem version. you have to buy the boxed product for it to be eligible for an upgrade in the future.
