I was asked to review some work on software piracy and home users. It said several things that are relevant to users moving away from Windows.
While the costs associated with using Windows may be high - at least the frustration costs and those associated with cleaning up malware messes, the costs assumed to be associated with switching platforms are higher. Most notable of these are software costs.
Home users tend to have quite a bit of pirated software. I won't quote the numbers of this paper as it is unpublished and will be sold, but the average home user has what came with their machine, a few inexpensive programs and a lot of stuff from family and friends. It turns out that only some of this pirated software is used, but the home PC owner knows they have access.
A switcher candidate may not have access to friends who would "share" software from the other platform and are faced with actually paying for it. I'm going to guess this is a serious roadblock - perhaps the most serious roadblock for most people.
In the past year I've helped five or six people move from Windows. In every case I've given them lists of recommended freeware and even CDs with good collections. Some software houses that support multiple platforms have liberal switching programs and others don't (this tends not to be well documented).
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