"most staff are already familiar with Microsoft products"

this is very much true, and the main reason for Microsoft's grip on the market. People intuitively reject change, new interfaces, etc.

"and [that] Microsoft has been flexible and more helpful"

kind of invalidates the good person's arguments. Firstly, it actually is not the case (at least not for organisations as large as Hampshire County Council); and then a prostitute tends to be more helpful to a man's sexual needs than the wife/partner; otherwise the client's visit at her place of work would be superfluous.

Your argument is immaterial, because a lot of BOFH-s and ThePointyHaired-s use Mac. Plus, they are in average willing to spend serious money for licenses.

I noticed some words painted on a defunct building while passing by on a tram. It said something like "Kunst ist keine Krücke, sondern das Rückgrat der Gesellschaft" (my excuses if cited not totally correct) - "Art is not the crutch but the the backbone of society". I have remembered the meaning ever since.
Humanities are on an induced decline - but arts are even more at the receiving end of the queue, because it serves even less in economic terms compared to the humanities.
It is obviously forgotten that man is not a human without art. So Henlein was correct with the 'insects' - highly intelligent in a specialized area or not makes no difference. Ants are surely better in a number of collective functions than humans.

Vengeance? It's no vengeance I'm in for. Actually, I would not want him tortured. My question was rhetorical. No, we should not stoop to the level of that.
Though - and you might not like it either - I have no qualms to see his eviction from the living part of the human race. His deeds have forfeited him all rights to live among humans; and if only because there is no regret, no extenuating circumstance, only bloody lust of hurting and killing that he has demonstrated.
He is, you may call me cynical if you want, however entitled to a torture-free death and that's what he was deprived of through the clumsiness of some medical staff.

Sorry, but you come across like a tad naive person. What do you mean 'then we rehabilitate them'?? How's this done?? Do you think it only takes some effort, a bit of psychology, and then - voilà - the murderer cum rapist who buried alive the girl he had raped before turns into an angel? Or what?

I have to doubt that locking up for life is actually cheaper. Okay, a prison is no 3-star hotel, but a lot of items, food, clothing, medical care, heating, eventual air-conditioning, etc. and not to forget round-the-clock guards .... No, I can't believe that.
Revenge is a strange animal in this context. He found it 'okay' to bury someone alive. If it is okay for him, what's wrong with doing the same on him?

Raping the offender? No
Burying the offender alive like what he did to his victim? Why not, actually?
I am most hesitant with capital punishment, but here the guilt is not questioned, and not disputed.

Absolutely! But in this case, the line of guilt is not circumstantial evidence, witness statements of dubious quality, but a straightforward, clear manhandling of another person including burying her alive.
So what's to argue here?
And while I'm not too keen on capital punishment, an offender like that - what's the alternative? The only one we have is incarceration for life. How human is it, to put someone behind bars for life, knowing he'd die in prison, eventually of old age, having 'lived' in a small cell.
Why not the old testament / Jewish 'an eye for an eye' and likewise bury that person 6 feet below, and likewise alive?

In the end you could have modded me up. Not that I really cared, but your contribution was kind of implicit. Plus the actual scarcity of a clean environment. Look at recent pictures of Beijing, where everyone is currently trying to stack up cars. Also a peak-resource variant, though on the other end of the production cycle.

I'd prefer a blind philosopher any day compared to those celebrating the post-scarcity. They are effectively delirious suicide candidates.

I wouldn't be that negative, though.
While in the currently fashionable economic theories a proper countermeasure is lacking, there is no good reason to preclude its existence. Once we are screwed, we will refocus our interests and research on the topic; leaving marketing research behind, because it won't help us any longer.
What troubles me more, is the need of the individual to participate, to understand, to react and eventually to lower their expectations on impending richness.

Huh!? I wouldn't want to succumb to 'supply and demand' when I am standing in the middle of nowhere, at 23:00, and urgently need to go to some civilized place. Or back home. I don't want to do any haggling with a cab driver, and the next one and the third one, and so forth, until someone offered me a suitable price.
I had to do this when living in Asia, and I was very sick of this.

How I wished you were right!

Quite so. But that is no more than day-dreaming. Because the labor requirement is going down rapidly, due to productivity increases. AND the labor force [us] is NOT desirous to earn less.
Combine this with the desire of the labor force [us] to own ever more for ever cheaper, you know where the actual culprit is located. Yep, in the end it is the consumer who wants ever more for ever cheaper with her hat of consumer; and demands ever more salary with her hat as member of the labor force.
If this is not a vicious circle, then there isn't.

This is the best of the statements in your post, and Insightful as such.
Over-production is actually an empty term, when not seen in conjunction with the rest of the market. The key term here is demand. And what would better be taken into consideration is the term of over-supply. We actually suffer from over-supply. Just drive to your next friendly supermarket, be it in LA, Nairobi, Moscow or Madrid. The shelves are bursting with merchandise. Much more than you can ever consume.Therefore, the value of each item goes down, and implicitly the potential / possible salary for everyone involved in the chain from development / design over manufacturing to distribution.

Perceive yourself being modded up 'Insightful'.

It is a new economic paradigm that currently evolves. Until recently, economics was based on the distribution of scare resources. And Marx didn't live to see this new aspect. Therefore, despite of his usefulness of his work in our days, his insights need to be accompanied by the only-evolving paradigm of managing an oversupply.
Combine this with the concept of the necessity of growth, and we all run into troubled times. Because the necessity of growth is by mathematical definition not linear but exponential. Compound interest, in case you don't understand the pure term.
Overall, an exponential growth is needed [so teach us the prevailing economic theories], while on the other hand an oversupply with decreasing prices [due to great leaps in productivity] kind of drowns us in mountains of consumables.