I am thoroughly convinced the average MS Office user can be retrained to
use StarOffice in about an hour, including coffee break. Retraining to
use Netscape instead of IE - about 5 minutes. Use Ximian instead of
Outlook - about 30 minutes. We could use Linux and icewm for the look
and feel of Windows. Time to retrain users to click "Linux" in the
lower left corner instead of "Start" - hmmm... let me think - 5
minutes. (Side note - many of you Linux bigots out there hate my
desktop because it looks too much like Windows - I like the Windows GUI,
so icewm works quite well. It has the exact look and feel of Windows -
except my uptimes are much higher, the box is much faster, and the CPU
runs about 15F cooler.)
If we took a whole day and lost one day of productivity, that would
equate to 50-100% of one year's licensing costs (recent insider info
given to me shows one Enterprise agreement was about $200 per year' and
their website + CompuUSA shows this price to be about $500/year). Find
me a business person who would not make an investment that would allow
the business to recoup any money spent within a year and reap profits on
it after that.
I have to track my time at work by project. Last month, I lost 2.0
hours of productivity due to Microsoft blue screens, reboots, slow
downs, and Outlook inadequacies. Project this out for one year, and
that's 3 days of lost productivity. Would you trade a one-time expense
of one day of training to get back three days of productivity per year?
Would you give me $100 one time if I gave you $300 every year,
especially if this $300 comes from using a product backed by IBM and Sun
Microsystems? Where do I sign up?
The goal is to teach users how to point and click a slightly different
GUI, not how to become admins, or even command line warriors. The
largest labor expense will be in defining a workable desktop environment
that is robust enough to provide what the county needs, yet be secure
enough to thwart the tinkerers, and power user wannabe's.
George
Trent Shipley wrote:
>
> That wouldn't do it for me.
>
> How much is *retraining* going to cost.
>
> I've used Linux and Windows and Windows is *much* easier to work with.
> Linux and its tools also tend to have a lot more anoying bugs that the
> comercial stuff. The saving grace seems to be that the *nix architecture
> tends to keep my OS up and running--provided that the user knows the tricks
> to take advantage of that fact.
>
> Even so, I wind up restarting Xfree pretty often. The fact that I don't have
> to reboot the machine is pretty irrelevant--restarting the X windowing system
> is the moral equivalent of rebooting the work station.
>
> =============
>
> I think that the point isn't whether free, open source, or even Apple or IBM
> solutions are better. From a business perspective "better" is irrelevant.
>
> What is relevant:
>
> 1) The County is in violation of State and County regulations.
> Specifically, Microsoft is a a convicted monopolist. The County can't do
> business with monopolists.
>
> (NOTE WELL: to carry the case you better have lawyers there. The county will
> have lawyers. The license fees are chicken-feed compared to total operating
> costs . The County will have lawyers there to keep it from being forced to
> do something that will cost it a lot more than the relatively irrelevant MS
> license fees.)
>
> 2) There exist alternatives to MS.
>
> 3) The alternatives in #2 don't have to be better than MS. They just have
> to exist and be minimally viable.
>
> =============================
>
> 4) Get a lawyer. Be prepared to sue the County into compliance. You are
> planning to visit a regulation induced disaster on County IT and gigantic
> unecessary expenses on Maricopa County taxpayers. The whole thing is driven
> by regulations, economic logic is irrelevant. If the County is indeed in
> violation, the courts can be used to cram the whole thing down the CIO
> director's maw. If the County is *not* in violation of law then your cause
> is toast.
>
> On Tuesday 02 July 2002 21:22, you wrote:
> > Curtis Zinzilieta wrote:
> > > A far worse result would be to turn out in numbers, largely unorganized,
> > > and appear before them speaking like religious zealots.
> > >
> > > Numbers are important, yes, but more important will be the ability to
> > > calmly and rationally present our points and viable alternatives.
> > > Alternatives that can actually be implemented in a reasonable timeframe
> > > and can be expected to work. I believe it's impossible to expect the
> > > county to turn over every desktop and server in a very few days, for
> > > instance, regardless of standing laws or statutes.
> > >
> > > Again, clear and concise points, well presented, with backup, are what
> > > will be needed here. Speaking off the cuff, without prior thought or
> > > consideration, is not likely to make many points.
> >
> > I'm cramming to get my thesis out and have only been skimming the
> > posts...
> >
> > On thing that I have not seen discussed so far is suggestions on how to
> > ween the Gov. off of M$.
> >
> > Example: can Kword, Kspread, Kpresenter, etc. be compiled using Qt, etc.
> > and run on Win*? Is there another opensource *word editor which works
> > on multiple platforms? How bout databases?
> >
> > If I was their IT guy I would want to see the following at least
> > described if not in person:
> >
> > 1) A list of software with capability lists that are common to
> > orginizations like theirs.
> >
> > 2) a compatibility chart for what they currently use to what roughly
> > replaces it.
> >
> > 3) a list of those packages which will not only run on *NIX, but also
> > Win* so that I could lod it up on the uses machines and start getting
> > people to use it, etc.
> >
> > 4) and possibly last, and this would likely be the clincher, chart the
> > costs (seat purchase, maintance, etc.) of the two. Best of all would be
> > a first pass on estimating the migration costs also.
> >
> > well... back to working on my thesis... that's my 2 c
> >
> >
> > EBo --
> > ________________________________________________
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> > post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail.
> >
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> > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
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