Every business and government in the world? Once when I started a new job, the IT guy asked if I needed to use things like Word or Excel, because it’s $500 per year per employee for an Office365 subscription and they’re trying to keep the costs down. That’s on top of the Windows subscription.
I work for a big soulless Fortune 250 company. Every desk-based employee gets a Dell laptop. Every laptop comes with a licensed, fully equipped latest version of Windows, Office365, 1TB cloud storage, Adobe Acrobat, and even a secure in-house branded version of ChatGPT.
…and that’s just the standard-issue stuff. All of the engineers get their CAD needs met, all the IT people get ServiceNow ITIL licenses, etc. and then there’s all the Windows Server stuff, SAP, Oracle, SalesForce, etc. etc. We pay legit fees for all of it.
Every laptop is “refreshed” (replaced) every 2 years. The retired laptops are security-wiped and donated to public schools.
I’ve been told that our average per-person endpoint IT budget is insaney high. Our company is not unique. Most big mega-corporations do this. They have to.
Most developing counties very laughably don’t, and really try hard to make it seem like they’re doing everything so super secure. But then do things like send emails from Yahoo or Gmail with “Classified” at the top. As that magically makes it so.
I’ve been given a presentation about the quality of government economic data, and asked not to take pictures for security reasons, while all the “please pay for a windows license” messages are on screen, qbtorrent on the desktop, and chrome with a quarter of the screen scammy browser add-ons.
I wouldn’t say every business, I’ve definitely worked somewhere where all our machines were cracked. but that’s going to be the exception not the rule obviously.
I’m working at a university, and hoo boy, did we use a lot of cracked shit. And funniest thing is that half of that shit can be acquired legally for free as part of education licensing.
I’m happy to be the part of reason why in recent years my department has been shifting towards FOSS alternatives. Like yeah, it’s not morally wrong to pirate from the likes of Adobe or Microsoft, but I’m not a fan of people even simply making a habit of using software from aforementioned companies.
Most folks are on a license that includes m365/office, windows enterprise, exchange online, sharepoint online, some entra/intune/defender things and more for about $380/user per year.
Every business and government in the world? Once when I started a new job, the IT guy asked if I needed to use things like Word or Excel, because it’s $500 per year per employee for an Office365 subscription and they’re trying to keep the costs down. That’s on top of the Windows subscription.
Yeah, this definitely.
I work for a big soulless Fortune 250 company. Every desk-based employee gets a Dell laptop. Every laptop comes with a licensed, fully equipped latest version of Windows, Office365, 1TB cloud storage, Adobe Acrobat, and even a secure in-house branded version of ChatGPT.
…and that’s just the standard-issue stuff. All of the engineers get their CAD needs met, all the IT people get ServiceNow ITIL licenses, etc. and then there’s all the Windows Server stuff, SAP, Oracle, SalesForce, etc. etc. We pay legit fees for all of it.
Every laptop is “refreshed” (replaced) every 2 years. The retired laptops are security-wiped and donated to public schools.
I’ve been told that our average per-person endpoint IT budget is insaney high. Our company is not unique. Most big mega-corporations do this. They have to.
LOL, definitely not every government.
Most developing counties very laughably don’t, and really try hard to make it seem like they’re doing everything so super secure. But then do things like send emails from Yahoo or Gmail with “Classified” at the top. As that magically makes it so.
I’ve been given a presentation about the quality of government economic data, and asked not to take pictures for security reasons, while all the “please pay for a windows license” messages are on screen, qbtorrent on the desktop, and chrome with a quarter of the screen scammy browser add-ons.
I wouldn’t say every business, I’ve definitely worked somewhere where all our machines were cracked. but that’s going to be the exception not the rule obviously.
Back when I was in the Army… we definitely had some means to tactically acquire Windows licenses.
I worked IT in the Army and whenever they asked me how I did it, I told them to not worry about it.
We also never paid for winrar. So if you wonder where that huge budget goes to, it is not to Windows Licenses or Winrar.
We had a bunch of unlicensed windows installs in the military too. They don’t care
I’m working at a university, and hoo boy, did we use a lot of cracked shit. And funniest thing is that half of that shit can be acquired legally for free as part of education licensing.
I’m happy to be the part of reason why in recent years my department has been shifting towards FOSS alternatives. Like yeah, it’s not morally wrong to pirate from the likes of Adobe or Microsoft, but I’m not a fan of people even simply making a habit of using software from aforementioned companies.
I was at school over a decade ago and we all had GIMP on our PCs
Most folks are on a license that includes m365/office, windows enterprise, exchange online, sharepoint online, some entra/intune/defender things and more for about $380/user per year.
I have worked in a place where 100% of the workforce used linux, which was logical seeing as the product was also linux
clearly you have never been to LATAM, India, Indochina, middle east, Russia, China or Africa