Im getting confused on the price of CNR. On my.Linspire I get:

Your FREE trial time must be used immediately on sign-up. We've waived the membership fee for your first 15 days. To avoid being charged future $14.95 membership fees, simply cancel within the first 15 days.

Cancellation after the trial period requires that at least 12 payments be made, otherwise any remaining payments will be charged to your credit card.

That tells me it costs: $179.40 for one year.

but I also read this:

http://info.linspire.com/askmichael/value.html

Can some please tell me how much it is to download from the CNR?.

When I read this I was not pleased
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15388

I run gentoo but I wanted to try out CNR to covert family(mom) and friends to Linux. I could not tell them how much it will cost them.

This is the way I understand it (somebody correct me if I'm wrong).

CNR can be bought by the year or by a monthly subscription.

Right now you have the whole thing CNR, Surfsafe and VirusSafe. That package costs $15 a month.

But if you don't want surfsafe or virus safe it's only, $5.00 a month, or $50 for the whole year. If you go to the shopping cart CNR is the PLUS package in the add-on section.

Any application you download during the CNR trial membership stays active on your machine when the trial period has ended. But you won't be able to download new apps or reinstall those apps using CNR if you cancel your subscription. If after the first year of membership in CNR you decide not to renew, anything you downloaded can be reinstalled on your machine with out a current active membership.

If you sign up for the "subscription", it is a monthly payment. You have to pay for the whole year. You can't cancel whenever you want.

Hope that clears things up...

Someone needs to get onto them about this they might be losing customers through it unawares.

Has anyone mentioned this to kendall out inhouse slave at the lindows forum?

Not only does the $15/month include CNR, VirusSafe and SurfSafe - you'll get StarOffice as well!

Btw, StarOffice in CNR is $30 and everywhere else (outside Linspire and CNR) StarOffice costs $75. This means that, through Linspire, you will get StarOffice AND CNR for only $5 more than just StarOffice!

Also the $15/month deal is good since it includes versions of StarOffice coming out as long as you have an active subscription as well. I can really recommend this deal!

Why not try Mandrake's free download edition which is free and updates are free? Then you can tell them it will cost $0.00. If I wanted to pay for software I'd still be using Windows.

You can give her mandrake yes, but the moment she wants to install any software, imo she is then screwed. That is why click and run was created. mandrake doesn't come close to it, the closest it has is urpmi and even that is mediocre in comparison. The opensource world needs to create a more newbie (N00B0 friendly software installation package if it wants to market linux at 'mums' The fact mandrake has nevertried to really do this gives an indication why they were filing for bankruptcy not long ago.

Why, because that particular person may have locked their mind into m$'s way of doing things? It doesn't take long to learn how to use Mandrake's easy software installer program. You can sort the programs to list them by group or whatever, and the descriptions of the programs are listed there when you click on them. If you want a particular program, you place a checkmark and continue to install it. If the person has a problem with such a simple way of updating, they are at fault.



I prefer click and free (mandrake's built in software installer or using urpmi) which is simple. I disagree with your opinions/comparisons on urpmi/mandrake vs. click and pay, I mean CNR/Lin(whateveritisthisweek)dows.



I would argue that much of society has largely evolved into more of a passive observer sort of type (watching tv vs. reading books) and IMO if you want programmers to make something simpler than apt-get or urpmi, it's a waste of time and flies in the face of anyone with intelligence and the means to use it. Give it a few years, I'm sure click and pay, I mean CNR will be considered too mentally challenging as well. No, I don't believe time should be spent dumbing down GUI programs any further to cator to mental midgets. IMO time would be better spent developing more serious/useful programs.

Wrong, but a nice try. The fact remains that for anyone with a mind and that knows how to use it, Mandrake's software updating program (and urpmi) are both simple and easy to use and are FREE. IMO anyone who clicks to pay should have their head examined.

Edit: this will be my final post to the Lin(whateveritisthisweek)dows forums*, I have better things to do with my time (like use a 100% free OS) so I won't be reading your reply. I don't feel a comparitive discussion is worthwhile because those who have used Mandrake know it is better (plus compare the # of users of each distro) and I feel silly for even wasting my time discussing CNR.

*=except for one other reply to another thread

I have a few points to make.

Firstly,
There is no reason whatsoever to call people who want things "easy" "mental midgets". Urpmi is an easy way to install and yet you think that because it takes a little more typing, it should not be lumped in with CNR. Linspire have hit upon a business model which works very well for them. The fact that they appear to be doing very well must show that there is a market for their distro. All OSes have an easy install method - apt-get, yum, CNR, urpmi, swaret, slapt-get, portage, installpkg, etc, etc - you are saying that all who use these are "mental midgets", are you?

Take cars, for instance. I am sure that you will still be able to find people who were around at the dawn of car manufacture who remember having to do absolutely everything by hand or the hard way - the double de-clutch comes to mind. And now, of course, we have computers running most of the insides of cars and you can only get a proper service if you garage has a Krypton machine. By your lights, this would make all car users and mechanics "mental midgets".

The fact is - and this is a fact - there are a large number of people who view the computer as a tool and who just want it to work. I would argue that someone who writes novels for a living does not want to have to understand hor the whole OS works just to type the words "Chapter 1". They just want to turn it on and use it.

Frankly, it is this elitest attitude which holds back Linux - or at least makes it less attractive to new users.

And on the same lines, this is a forum to discuss Lindows and to ask and answer questions. The stock answers I have been seeing on this forum "problem with Lindows, don't be so dumb, use <insert OS here>" are unhelpful. If all you want to do is bash Lindows, their business model or their methods, please do us all a favour and find somewhere else to do it.

Hello XavierP, you won't see another post from me in the Lindows area. Thanks for reading.

Actually, my comment was not pointed specifically at you Furfurdemon666 but at all who do this in this forum.

The Lindows forum appears to attract the most flames, which I find disappointing since they support the forum and, imo, are doing a good job. It is the only forum which attracts these posts and is a shame since we are here to help all users of all distros without showing favour to any.

Anyway just so you know I'm a mandrake user, started on redhat 7.2 when I discovered linux would not recommend both to anyone in my family if they want something that will do everything they need with minimal tweaking right out of the box. I supported lindows in their battles withmicrosoft and thus I got the chance to tryout their little click and runthing. Happily now I can say that I'd be happy to recommend this distro to my family as it does allthe things mandrake fell down on for the neew user, although it doesn't use gnome so I wouldn't use it.

Hey, I'd much rather it be a GNU/Distro, it'sjust a shame the linux community can't get over this 'lets not make it easier' for the user policy so there is no viable equivelent technoloy in the OSS world.

The main thing to take away from this is that linux users have really little grounds to complain about microsofts market share on the desktop. Untill they make something just as userfriendly or even moreso they will always be in the minority.

You're making out that installing software without CNR is hard, which it isn't! The biggest problem with most linux distros (IMO) is that they encourage people to use RPM which is the nasiest form of software distribution ever devised - it gives the impression that software installation on linux requires specific versions of libraries rather than just needing 'more than' a specific library version. If people were just taught to compile from source in the first place they'd find life much easier.

Even my mom can type:

make

What is it with RPMs that people hate so much??

I much prefer them over any Debain format that usually tells me I am missing some damned what ever tool to install the program, and usually with a ton of dependency errors.

CNR from Lindows Inc. is a greatway to get around that problem.

I hope Autopackaging will come around.