[AT] OT- Computer help please

[Henry Miller]

What justifies the cost, well someone has to plug it into a computer, start the write process,unplug it and put it in a mailbox. That 15 minutes of time is worth something (though hopefully they are doing something else while waiting). Someone also needs to create the image to install, including picking programs, verifying it installs and works... That too is worth time, though spread across all customers (and you probably start with work someone else did for free). There is a small chance that someone wrote custom software to make it all easier again worth some time.

How much is up to you.

Beware of that last one if you want to make copies yourself. Custom software running on Linux exists and isn't something you can copy.
-- 
 Henry Miller
 hank at millerfarm.com



On Mon, Feb 17, 2020, at 4:11 AM, Stephen Offiler wrote:
> Hi farmer: don't worry, I've got a half dozen thumbdrives sitting here too ;-) It was not the cost of a thumb drive that had me wondering. I think you are getting to the heart of the matter with the mention of legality. I guess what I've been wondering is, what justifies the $35 cost of that "XtraPC" thumbdrive (not that you'd know the answer, just pondering here). I have wondered whether it's not trivial to make a thumbdrive bootable, and I have wondered whether those folks have some tricks up their sleeve that justifies the cost and circumvents legal issues... or whether it's mostly a scam.
> 
> SO
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>>>> .Hi Stephen: I must be the odd one here, I have a half dozen USB drives laying on the table beside me. :-) I don't use them much on very old stuff anyway because many of the old systems don't have a USB boot option in the bios. I usually just burn a CD as bootable since most of the old systems have that option and a CD is dirt cheap. I'm heading outside right now but I'll try to remember to look up the public licensing on that stuff. As I recall you are not supposed to sell public licensed material (most Linux) for more than the actual cost of the media and shipping. In other words you are not supposed to turn a profit selling it. Most of the legit offers seem to run more like $6 or $7... I "think" that you can boot from the web in some cases but it's been too long since I was doing that much puttering and anything from before breakfast is pretty much gone. :-)
>>>> 
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