Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:46 pm
When I was in Vietnam a decade ago every single copy of Microsoft software I saw -- Excel in a government office, Word at a semi-official magazine, and Windows at various places including private homes -- was registered to the same guy. I think there was one copy of Office and one copy of Windows in use in the entire country. (Not that there were a lot of computers in the country relative to the population, of course). Most other places in SE asia are similar (I think all the internet cafes in Phnom Penh are using the same copy of Windows 2003 Server, for example, often administered quite competently by 8 year old girls). And you can't walk through the Silk Market in Beijing (within shouting distance of the US Embassy, where they regularly have press conferences announcing a crack down on piracy) without hearing "CD, CD-ROM, DVD" (foreign women hear "Donna Karan, Prada, Chanel" and guys get "CD, CD-ROM").
