very well said !!
ditto
Paul Bearne
-Original Message-
From: Wayne Bollinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 19 December 2003 07:57
To:
Subject: [e-smith-devinfo] Thank you Mitel!
Christmas Greetings Everyone,
Before this list shuts down, I want to express my gratitude to all of
the Mitel employees who have worked so hard over the years to produce a
simply amazing product.
I am one of the many people who benefit from SME Server, without being
able to purchase a ServiceLink subscription. Hopefully this will change
someday. For now, in lieu of $, I hope this story will at least give
the Mitel folks a warm feeling of job well done.
I use SME Server in volunteer mode to support a K-12 school that
operates on an extremely tight technology budget. Three years ago the
school was in the dark ages, technology-wise. I remember people running
up and down the halls, yelling Can I use the phone line now? I need to
check email!. There was no network. They shuffled huge stacks of
paper. They ran diskettes around to print and share files. I wanted to
help, but was afraid the nightmare would only grow worse if a Windows
server entered the scene. ;-) As a Linux fan, I discovered references
to something called e-smith while searching the internet.
Then came e-smith 4.1, installed on a donated 500MHz Celeron PC. I
begged the cable company to bury a new cable run for free (they did). A
cable modem combined with some Cat5 runs and e-smith began to
revolutionize the way the school administration communicated with each
other, the staff, and parents.
Every year the school has acquired more donated computers through the
IBM K-12 matching grants program. We still don't have a computer for
every teacher, and we are still using equipment like AST laptops running
Windows 95 with 16 Meg of memory - I kid you not. There have been many
frustrations and hardware failures along the way, but the one thing I
can always count on is e-smith (and our tape drive). e-smith is the
glue that holds everything together, and allows us to stretch every
dollar to the max for the benefit of the kids.
At first I was horrified to read that Mitel was turning the SME Server
developer release over to the community. I actually decided that I
needed to resign as Technology Coordinator for the school. :) Of
course, we have all witnessed a very carefully coordinated, professional
handover to contribs.org. I don't know why I expected anything less.
(By the way, many thanks to the contribs.org team as well...)
To wrap this up: next year the school is moving 500 students from three
separate rented buildings (three e-smith installs) into a new building,
where everyone can sit together under one roof. Being able to use
reliable, affordable technology has been critical in making this a
reality. Although there are certain people pushing for a move to a
Windows server - parents who have trouble understanding all the services
provided by the e-smith platform - the principal knows a good thing when
he sees it, and e-smith will continue to form the foundation of our
technology program. I wouldn't use anything else. When e-smith goes, I
go.
THANK YOU Charlie, Gordon, Dan, Rich, Mike, Peter, and everyone else on
the team. You guys are a class act.
Merry Christmas and God Bless,
-Wayne Bollinger
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