Linux for small business

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2002-04-26 at 12:10, David Mandala wrote:
> I am sorry that you don't think it is accurate. So some points:
> 
> It is quite clear that you have not looked at KDE & Open Office in the
> last 6 months. There is very little if any retraining costs involved.
> Since they primarly use the accounting software that will still be
> installed there again there is no cost of retraining.
----
This isn't the case - KDE isn't ready for prime time yet - KWrite
doesn't convert Word Documents accurately enough - KSpread doesn't come
close to converting Excel documents properly so KDE isn't gonna make it
in an environment that already has a base of Microsoft documents.
Perhaps Abiword and Gnumeric are ready for prime time - I have no real
experience with them but it would seem that Star Office 5.2 is the only
serious player in Desktop suites at this point.

As for retraining - any office - any size will have some that will be
afraid of anything new. You will have to create shortcuts for people to
take them from their own personal workspace to the shared files
workspace etc. There is some training that will have to be done, no
amount of wishing will make this go away.
----
> If the people used lots of packages there might be some retraining costs
> involved but if the packages used are basicly Office the existing
> replacements use the same key strokes and memus systems that are close
> enough to the MS Office menus as to more equilavant to a MS upgrade
> where they change their menu structure a small amount.
> 
----
Virtually every office I know has some Windows / Macintosh proprietary
product that they rely upon - sometimes Filemaker Pro - Microsoft
Publisher - Quickbooks - Quark Express - and these don't translate at
all or not easily.
----
> 
> I am working on converting some small business to Linux, it works, it's
> cheap and it's solid. The tests are showing that the adverage office
> worker does not percieve the difference, they log in, they edit files
> they print files, they leave.
> 
----
We need to know who these people are to build a database of success
stories. I am pushing on several of my non-profit clients right now for
this very purpose.

Craig