Family Life and Friendship Network

I saw an interesting Amazon.com ad the other day. It said "Buy Microsoft, Get Up to $75 Back". What a deal! If I spend billions of dollars to buy Microsoft Corporation, I get $75 back! Bill Gates here I come! Oh, and by the way, what made you choose to sell your company through Amazon?

Okay, so they didn't really mean the company. They meant something like: "Buy some Microsoft software, get $75 back". Still not a good deal. Spend $500 or $600 and get $75 back? I'd like to say that to someone sometime and see if they fall for it... "Hey you, if you give me $2, I'll give you $1 back!". Instead, spend $0, and don't worry about getting anything back. Install Linux for free. Install OpenOffice.org for free. Install all the bloatware you want - gigs of products that do all the things Microsoft products do for free. Finally, if you want to feel really good about the whole thing, donate a few dollars to my favorite Open Source project.