Time, money and patience wasted by incompatible computers, printers and software

This also raises an ecological issue. How much of the mountains of e-waste, which are now poisoning our planet is the result of the insistence of Computer and printer manufacturers and software companies, most notoriously the profit-gouging monopoly Microsoft, forcing their customers to upgrade their hardware and proprietary operating systems year in and year out? Even at the bottom of the mounds of e-waste must lie many computers, printers, monitors and other hardware items. perhaps twenty years old, that could still have been be put to good good use if the IT industry has simply standardised their products, had been forced to provide support for older products and had been less relentless in their upgrades. If any one example cries out for more government regulation and more government intervention in the economy, this one does. If Governments had fully thrown their weight behind alternatives to MicroSoft such as the Open Source Linux operting system, then most of humankind would have long ago broken their costly depency upon MIcrosoft products and hardware built for Microsoft products and the problems described in the aticle would be rare. Each item of e-waste, that has been needlessly created. has consumed yet more of the world's finite non-renewable metals, petroleum and other fossil fuels in it's manufacture. Future generations will pay the cost. It should have been no effort for a government owned telecommunications corporation, not driven by the need to maximise shareholder profit, to have provided a network that would have allowed membes of the public useful access to the Internet using old computers and old operating systems. ---- Copyright notice: Reproduction of this material, in full or in part, is encouraged as long as the source is acknowledged.