Saturday, October 24, 2009

Way for churches to upgrade to Windows 7 ultra-cheap? (Update: apparently not)

Check it out. I don't know anything about the site, but if I pastored a church, I might be looking into it.

UPDATE: looks like churches cannot take advantage of the offer. Reader Stephen noticed this paragraph:

  • Religious organizations not registered as a charity and without a secular community designation that is separate from the church or religious organization. A secular designation is defined as an organization that provides services to people regardless of their religious beliefs and does not propagate a belief in a specific faith. Example: A food bank with nonprofit or charity status that is run by a church, but is a separate and unique organization that provides food and meals to anyone who qualifies for services, regardless of religious beliefs. Religious organizations without secular designations can visit Charity Open Licensing for information regarding licensing options.

8 comments:

Jerry said...

That is so cheap it has me wondering "what's the catch?"

I just returned from Sam's where I picked up the Win7 Home Premium 3 pack for $125. I have a Vista laptop that I use for church and I hate Vista. My wife's laptop is running XP, but will handle 7. The other PCs are Ubuntu, and they are all getting updated to 9.10, which is the best Ubuntu Linux yet.

DJP said...

"I have a Vista laptop that I use for church and I hate Vista."

Wow, did you write that, or did I?

If you're going to use one of your three to upgrade that laptop, please tell me how it goes. Costco has exactly the same deal. We have 2 pcs and my laptop; both of the pcs are a bit older, one of them is perfectly great on XP, the other has some problems which may be hw or may be sw.

My laptop is a Gateway combo tablet/laptop - and I hate Vista. Vista is to XP what ME was to 98.

Jerry said...

Go online and snag the "Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor" before you buy the package. I ran it on the church laptop (presently upgrading, no glitches yet) and my wife's laptop prior to purchasing the software.

Make sure to follow the suggestions to a T once you have run the advisor. For example, it told me to uninstall iTunes prior to running the upgrade.

Unknown said...

Not everything is as it appears here. In order to be eligible for these amazing deals you have to agree to a nondiscrimination clause that includes that you do not discriminate based on sexual orientation. So read everything very carefully before you sign on the digital line.

Jerry said...

I am pleased to report that the Win7 upgrade of the Vista laptop went very well.

It seems like a new machine. It is faster, and the UI is so much better. All of my settings, files, etc. came over, and i haven't found any of my programs that don't work.

I will see if I can't get the wife's XP laptop upgraded tomorrow afternoon after church.

Soullifter said...

No catch as long as you qualify and follow their rules, you have to register and supply them with your 501(C)3 documentation. TechSoup.org is a great resource for non-profits to find affordable software and often hardware as well. At a non-profit I used to work for, last year I got the full package of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 for $40.00...retail is $400.00. And we got new Cisco routers for almost nothing. They are a good resource for technology information as well. For Free.

Stephen Rodgers said...

Unfortunately, most churches will not quality for this.

Relevant Section:

Organization types that are not eligible for participation in the Microsoft Donation Programs include:

Religious organizations not registered as a charity and without a secular community designation that is separate from the church or religious organization. A secular designation is defined as an organization that provides services to people regardless of their religious beliefs and does not propagate a belief in a specific faith. Example: A food bank with nonprofit or charity status that is run by a church, but is a separate and unique organization that provides food and meals to anyone who qualifies for services, regardless of religious beliefs. Religious organizations without secular designations can visit Charity Open Licensing for information regarding licensing options.

Source:

http://www.techsoup.org/stock/dtjumppages/Microsoft/microsoft_restrictions.asp

Jerry said...

After reading the preceding comments it looks as if my original "what's the catch" observation was right on the money.

Update: The conversion of my wife's laptop from XP to Win7 was faster and easier than the upgrade from Vista to Win7, and this required that I reinstall all of her software and restore her files from backup. Everything works fine, and it is just as fast as it was with XP and it only has 1 gb RAM.

I might just use the third license to upgrade another XP machine, assuming that it checks out with the upgrade advisor.