It’s a simple matter of cost. In the developing nations, MS software is perceived as out of reach. But with Linux, not so much…

While I worked on new PCs in school, my friends in Panama wanted me to help them with RPG II on their their IBM System 3. In case you don’t remember or even know, the System 3 was IBM’s low-end business computer. When introduced in the 1970s, the System 3 seemed like state of the art. By the time it got to developing countries in central and south America it was out of production in the US and the IBM PC had taken over the market.

I knew people who made a lot of money selling old, worn out System 3s to people in Panama, for example. These brokers bought the systems for scrap metal and sold them for prices IBM got for new ones in the 1970s. The folks in Panama thought they had died and gone to heaven they were so happy to get the System 3. [Read the rest]

[tags]ibm,system 3,low-end,panama,developing nations[/tags]