Tom Berkley wrote:
> Trev
>
> This is more of something that I can contribute to. Its a simple cost
> trade study. You have a bunch of computers. You want to consider an
> alternative OS (ie Mandrake 7.0 and say Redhat 6.2 both very good)
> Take a typical work computer, load each OS on it and try it. You have a
> problem, resolve it! You have WD or seagate drives and the install
> bombs, that means you can consider upgrading the drives to say ibm
> deskstar 34GXP (min size 13.5 gb but why waste the money add $20 and get
> a 20gb for about $170 each delivered to your door and that was the
> price last week) Now you have an OS that works with your hardware (if
> that's all that broke). How much did you save getting rid of MS, how
> much downtime do you avoid, no more antivirus software, boots faster,
> etc etc etc --> put this in the spreadsheet. Then how much do you add to
> each machine, buy a max cost copy of new OS from whoever to get their
> phone support or better yet since you're a company, buy an unlimited
> phone support contract (means you'll have to call them for a price but
> the max is probably $30 a month), you get upgraded hardware across the
> board at work AND some of the hardware problems that have been crashing
> MS OS and you could not see will disappear, plus any other items that
> you can think up for the costs of the new OS. Now you have a trade study
> with costs and your boss can look at this and make a decision. Simple,
> takes a little time to work up all the details so that the business case
> is straight forward for the mba in the front office (you have to feed
> these guys in a language that they are trained in and they are no
> different from you, me or a monkey in the zoo, all the same thing just
> different set of rules (or language or ...) ). You get to work the
> details, all of them, but the study may point to waiting for six months
> or maybe it will compelling enough to go for today. I don't know and
> won't know until you finish all the details of the study and committed
> it to the spreadsheet for costs and listed the advantages/disadvantages
> for your particular situation.
>
> Have fun.
> Tom
>
> All of life is your interpretation of life's events by you.
> Interpretations are something that you create, always. What
> interpretations, that you make up, do you want to let run your life?
>
Excellent, Tom, that is what I need to do, once I find a distro that will do all
we want. I work in a Govt dept, where we supply IT services to the health sector,
including ALL the hospitals in the region. This means, to me, 2 things:
1) whatever we use has to be rock solid! Peoples lives depend on it being up 24/7
(so why the hell are we using M$??? - historical/marketing!)
2) Whatever we use must be compatible with the level of govt we report to and with
other services we communicate with. Basically, that means M$ os's and M$ Office
2000.
Unfortunately, our changeover cost will be high - simply the cost of
re-installing/replacing 1000 computers and retraining staff who are either totally
computer illiterate or have M$ at home, will be enormous. There will be massive
resistance (perhaps Civileme can comment here, as I believe he has been down this
path?) from all levels - and my management won't say Boo! to their bosses without
asking permission (in writing) first. So the case has to be clearcut, and the
process as painless as possible. M$ have made it easier be a licensing scheme that
means I can save about $400,000 pa by shafting M$, so that gives me a decent
budget to work in!
Yes, it will be fun...
