School shortage – Newspaper Kommersant No. 149 (7350) of 08/17/2022

There are less than two weeks left before the start of the new school year, and by September 1, parents have been buying not only stationery, but also electronics by September 1. You can come up with different requirements for what store marketers call a “study computer.” But, in any case, it should definitely be ready out of the box at least to work with documents. And this is where serious problems can arise.

The share of laptops imported into the Russian Federation without an operating system (OS) has already exceeded half of the total (see Kommersant dated July 6). More and more computers on display in the trading floors show only a black screen with a cursor or an error message. Alternative OS advocates insist that at least buyers don’t overpay for a Windows license. But a person who needs to equip a child’s workplace without unnecessary hassle is unlikely to consider this a plus, especially considering that stocks of legal copies of Windows are quickly dwindling.

When the other day I noticed laptops with Ubuntu OS (a free system based on Linux) in M.Video, I took it as an attempt by the retailer to somehow solve the problem of “unfriendliness” of computers without pre-installed software. Of course, Linux can hardly be called easy to learn, but among such systems, Ubuntu is one of the most popular, and the free LibreOffice office suite is already included in its distribution. But, alas, as it turned out that Ubuntu is used in this case only to display splash screens and electronic PC price tags. If you buy a display case with Ubuntu, the computer will be returned “basic” before it is sold.

But even if the consumer finds a laptop with Windows or macOS, the question of office software arises. What are retailers ready to offer to people who can no longer buy a subscription to Microsoft 365? Judging by the proposals of M.Video, Eldorado, DNS and Svyaznoy – OfficeSuite and Polaris Office, which were once intended only for mobile phones. Both sets of programs, according to Google Trends, are not particularly interesting to Russians: in terms of the frequency of search queries, they lose not only Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, but also the Russian MyOffice and P7 Office. In addition, OfficeSuite and Polaris Office are products from the US and South Korea, respectively. My questions to their developers about continuing to work in the Russian Federation remained unanswered.

It is likely that such a position of retailers can lead to the flourishing of a new business of “arranging” turnkey computers. And, most likely, focusing on demand, not politics, such services will install pirated products from Microsoft, ignoring free, Korean, and even more so Russian alternatives.