2005/11/16, Kelsey Hartigan Go <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Unvollendeter Tag wrote: > > > >What social impact? Convince the person with the purse strings and you > >have 99.9% of the problem of migrating desktops to free software > >solved. Employees use whatever they're told to use. Of course, the > >technical aspects are different. > > > Cost is just one aspect of it. User acceptance is another. The way I > see it, when the user is given no choice, it takes a little bit longer > for the adoption to be successful. That is the reason I want to find > out more --
That "little bit" shouldn't matter in the long run, if the slave really has no choice. I think stability is more important. Users will be satisfied when software is predictable in the right way (e.g. it doesn't crash too often or at least has the good grace to autosave your work). > 1. What is the perception of the user to the change > 2. How effective is it to the user? > 3. How fast is the user adoption? > 4. What can make the user adopt faster? > 5. Did the change affect productivity? > 6. What's the typical learning curve? In my previous job I was forced to use ancient (not just Old World) Macs. It took me one day to adjust. Any graphical user interface made after Windows 95 and Mac OS 8 (the one I was forced to use) should be as easy or as hard to use as any other. The case studies have already been done. And they're either inconclusive or biased. Just show the user the not-too-sublte differences. Start button = K button = Apple icon = Foot icon. After that, it's just a matter of clicking. Users will probably find OpenOffice to be the toughest nut to crack. It has menu items in all the wrong places. Which is why I'd suggest going for Abiword or Kword. But if your goal is to win persons in authority to the cause, much more effective than showing off case study after case study is to do a live demonstration on how little difference your free desktop is from desktop X. Just be sure to "rig" your demonstration in your favor. Make sure beforhand that the system boots smoothly and would stay up long enough for you to conclude your presentation. _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
