Electronic Bill Payment options
I was quite impressed by the article on ‘Electronic Bill Payment set for Quantum leap’ [EC, December 31, 2001]. However, there was no coverage on its impact on the traditional payment by cheque. For instance, you could provide details on the number of people who still pay by cheque and if there has been reduction in this due to EBP. You could also analyse the impact it has had on traditional modes of payment. I would also like to know what impact it has had in urban and rural areas. Since financial institutions are encouraging online payments more information on how the payment is made for utility services, information services, and other services such as travel would be informative. This would give a more holistic picture of the advent of EBP in India.

— Krishnan Ramamurthy
Senior Manager, Tata Infotech

India and e-governance strategies
Recently the US government set up a committee for drawing up strategies and standards for e-governance activities. One of the committee members is our own Wipro, which shares the honour with other US IT majors. If an Indian company can frame the policies for the US government, it’s about time that we did the same for our own country. The ministry of IT should form a committee comprising various sections of the Indian IT industry. This committee can formulate the various strategies and standards and can also help officials to integrate various existing applications.

— Hanib Mohammed
Hyderabad

Great peripherals issue
Kudos to EC for a great peripherals special edition. The issue provided an overall market perspective of each device. Magazines like yours help users like us to keep abreast of the changes technology is witnessing each day. It also helps us in our decision making process when deciding on new technology. We hope you will keep providing us more of such informative matter. Keep up the good work.

— Zorammachana Fanai
Mizoram

Microsoft rules
Apropos your article ‘The great software wars’ [EC, Jan 20]. The media seem to be going all out to run down Microsoft and promote other desktop software. Since StarOffice didn’t pick up as expected despite being offered free of cost, the media now seems to be hell bent on promoting Linux. No one seems to take into consideration the opinion of the end user. Most end-users don’t even know what Linux is all about. And the few who do have some knowledge don’t want to go through the hassle of partitioning their system to load Linux. You just can’t do without Microsoft. As the article says Microsoft is today the king of the desktop software market and it is not going to be easy to dethrone this king, especially when the populace does not seem to have any problem with the existing set up but can envisage a lot of them without Microsoft.

— Aditya Tiwari
Delhi