David Guest wrote:
Greg Twyford wrote:
David Guest wrote:
Yes you always have to pay the Microsoft tax. It's a saving in hardware
and techie time not licensing fees.
But the ridiculously prohibitive TS licenses are on top of the normal
CALs and are an extra cost not incurred if you don't go TS. For
example, I have a medical centre with eight consulting room/PM office
PCs & two front desk PCs set up back in May 2003.
I agree that Microsoft terminal server licensing is legalised theft but
that's the environment everyone seems happy to perpetuate.
Since the set-up, maybe 2-3 instances where I've needed to do
troubleshooting on clients and one instance of manually upgrading to a
new version of the PM software on two front desk PCs. Server installs
of clinical and PM upgrades with automatic client updating on first
use requires minimal support. The GP does this himself.
New printers, network hardware problems, etc., don't count in this
equation as you still have to physically install things and set them
up whether TS or local, but all the consulting room printers are
original, just the front desk behemoth has needed replacing. Not such
a big deal.
You're lucky Greg. I am constantly installing new versions of firefox,
thunderbird (with add ins), openoffice, etc., etc. I spend enough time
at the surgery during the day to not to want to go back at night and so
do all of the upgrades remotely. Still if it's your day job you probably
want to maximise the amount of time you spend on the client's site. This
is another reason why the current computing ecosystem maintains
inefficient operating systems and economic models.
David,
Don't worry, I do enough of this this sort of stuff at the Division and
at home.
On reflection, a weekend helps, one of the other issues in this
discussion is the practice size, measured by number of terminals/PCs.
Mostly we have 1-3 GP practices, so we are talking a server
[non-dedicated in solo practices usually] plus 1 to 5 clients. With less
than 10 clients you don't need a Server OS, from licensing limits, and
if, as is the case here, the three apps in use are MD, a PM package and
MYOB, plus Office or OpenOffice sometimes, the TS argument doesn't
really apply, in my view.
We don't see mail servers, web sites, etc either, but increasing
broadband use and MA Online, at long last.
If I saw a lot of 10+ client practices, I may start to think along these
lines more seriously.
Remote access has its own set of issues. The director of the 8 GP
medical centre I mentioned does his batching and other tasks from home
via an IPSEC VPN I set up for him. Freeware VNC and Pc Anywhere is not
where I want GPs to go, though some PM vendors provide remote support
this way.
I wonder how the recently announced health VPN will figure in all of this.
Greg
--
Greg Twyford
Information Management & Technology Program Officer
Canterbury Division of General Practice
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph.: 02 9787 9033
Fax: 02 9787 9200
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