In my spare time, I have begun to ponder about the cost of Microsoft software, especially for large organizations such as the school district. Adding in the cost of Microsoft server systems, Windows XP or 2000, and Microsoft Office, I have caculated that the cost of the software on our computers could cost up to $3 million.

My caculations go as this. If there are 50 schools, each having 3 servers, there would be 150 servers. If you buy Windows 2003 server Standard Ed., it costs $1,000 retail, or total $150,000. Assuming that the district have some computers that have better versions of Windows Server, I would double the cost, to $300,000.

Also, if each school had 60 computers, running Windows XP or 2000, and XP costs $300 retail. That means that 60x50 (schools) x $300 = $900,000.

Micro$oft Office Pro with Frontpage costs about $500. 3,000 computers (last problem) times $500 equals $1,500,000.

So...$300,000 + $900,000 + $1.5 million is about 2.7 million dollars. Micro$oft software will cost almost THREE MILLION DOLLARS!!!

I'm guessing that the district gets a volume discount. If I cut $3,000,000 by a half, the Grand Total is:

$1,500,000 for Micro$oft software.



Now, this is a large sum. How to cut costs?

1. Replace M$ Office with OpenOffice.org software (Free)
(www.openoffice.org)
That will cut $1.5 million (or $750,000, however you look at it)

2. Replace the servers with Linux. (Low cost)
(www.redhat.com), (www.gentoo.org), (www.mandrakelinux.com), (www.suse.com), so many choices
That will cut $300,000/150,000

3. Replace the client computers with Linux. (Neglegible cost)
(www.redhat.com), (www.gentoo.org), (www.mandrakelinux.com), (www.suse.com), so many choices.
This will cut $900,000/450,000

Okay...




Isn't that a little too extreme? Compatibility?

Use: Office
Solution: OpenOffice.org
Price: Free

OpenOffice is FULLY COMPATIBLE with M$ Office

Use: Internet/Email
Solution: Netscape/Mozilla
(www.netscape.com), (www.mozilla.com)
Price: Free

They are popular alternatives to Micro$oft Internet Explorer.

Use: Gradebook
Solution: Use WINE to run windows application such as Gradebook
(www.winehq.com)
Price: Free

Did I miss anything?
(This is an old post of mine from the archives of KL)

open office sucks, definitly not a substiture for office. linux would make people learn new operating system = not good.

plus the education discounts are probably a lot more
you know how flash professional is $700? the educational version is more like $100.... and they sell windows in the company store for like $50 at most so the educational discount probably is around that too

I have also seen vista, it made me relearn every thing I knew, why not just learn Linux? It is very similar to Windows, if you use KDE, though.

OpenOffice 2.0 seems to be a great alternative, it's much better than 1.1

Open Office rocks!! I do all of my schoolwork on it now because I can do my stuff at school without compatibility issues. As for Linux on all computers, this may not be a good idea, because most people are familiar with Windows, not Linux. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, it is just not a good Windows alternative in a school enviornment.

you also forgot the costs of training people to use linux.

Actually, our school got something from Microsoft for about $2000 that contained XP, Office, Excel, Visio, Microsoft Server 2003, etc. That could be installed on every computer in the school, and on the teacher's family's home computers. Buisinesses can also get this same deal. Then Bill Gates Personally showed up at a district board meeting and bought all the teachers in the district $2000 laptops. On top of that, Bill Gates has donated over $28 billion to charities. Microsoft goes out of it's way for education, they aren't tyranical.

Also, We got Studio MX 2004(educational) for about $1000.

However, to use those microsoft products, we have to buy $700 computers(after educational discount... and with monitors... LCD ones), and we've got 2 24-computer computer labs, our Library has a good 30, and every teacher in the school has one. In fact, some have 2. With at least 100 computers, that rings the price up to a good $70,000... which must be where Dell gets all the money to be the biggest computer manufacturer... currently

And Reasons schools use Microsoft:
-Free laptops
-Not Expesive
-Used in most workplaces
-used on 95% of computers
-Easy to learn
-Runs most applications

BTW- do you think that WINE would run Games for Windows? and Direct X?

no way its $700 with educational discount. i was able to make a pc that seems fine in a school environment at hp.com for $464 without school discount

I have heard it can...

Wow, that's one heck of a deal. Man, how big is your school to have 2-24 computer labs and 30 computers in your library? Then again, my school is a tiny little thing, 202 students currently enrolled (private school though).

Why is our school using Celeron Dual Cores, then, Balzam?

Gamemaster, I know that sounds soo cool, but what about this: If every student is trained to use windows, then wouldn't windows become more popular in the future? By giving to schools, they train the students to use Windows, instead of Linux (except for the occasional regenade). By the way, our school district is one of the largest, encompassing the region around the Microsoft Campus, and Our teachers don't even have laptops! We have Celeron D 2.8's in the lab, a Projecter and a computer for each classroom, a touch screen thing for 1/2 of the classrooms, and a Celeron 2.0 for each of the computers. Quoting our webmaster, "to create an entire new website for the school, you have to get a technician to come and create a CD and bring it to the district headquarters! You can only edit the site remotely." Also, offtopic, but "the school controls it's heating centrally. That means, not in the office of the school, but in the district headquarters!"

To go off of what lappy said, MS is donating a bunch of stuff to schools because in the future students will buy MS products because they used them throughout high school... Nice marketing strategy, I admit, but kind of shady.

While I am supportive of Microsoft, I think that a better alternative would be to switch to Apple software, which is less expensive than Microsoft software, but better than both Microsoft software and Linux software.

But Apple is only slowly making the change from IBM hardware, driving up the cost.

Apple's hardware is already expensive; they charge a premium for the hardware.

Our middle school has Apple computers. They are more expensive, slower, harder to work with, etc. We just make an image to each of the computers at my school.

And about the computer price, these are with 17" LCD monitors, but they aren't that powerful. Plus they're from dell, which overprices everything. Heck, if you don't custom build it, it's gonna be overpriced.

and Lappy... what?

they dont use dual core. there are no such thing as dual core celerons
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/celeron_D/
if they were dual core it would say under features
o look a celeron d 2.9 ghz for $50
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...p?EdpNo=1498707

It seems Celeron D's are P4's with EM64T and a very small cache... Very very small cache...

No, because that is a good thing. Now that Mac OS X is being written to run on the x86 architecture, people will be able to use Mac OS X on regular computers, not just Power Macs, iMacs, Mac minis, et cetera.

But Mac OS X is being written to run on the x86 architecture, which will allow people to buy Mac OS X and use it on existing computers.

They are not slower in terms of the equivalents from their time periods. The PowerPC G5 processor actually crunchs numbers faster than the Pentium 4 processor. And about being hard to work with, that is bull. Apple software has always been simple to use. And not just the software mind you, the Apple Click Wheel is perhaps the most intuitive interface ever made for a digital music player. It is a wheel with a button in the middle. The touch sensitive layer beneath allows the user to use the Click Wheel as a scroll wheel. Then, at the bottom, there is a Play/Pause button which also doubles as the Off button. On the left and right, there are Rewind and Fast Forward buttons. And at the top, there is a Menu button which allows the user to go back. The Select button at the middle allows the user to confirm things. You can't get must simpler than that without sacrificing crucial features.

Dawg, workability is all preference... this is why people don't like you. You can't say someone's preference is bull, even if you don't agree, but at least you have to respect one's opinion, which you don't.

How the heck would that work? The interface is counter-intuitive.

And, as far as my school goes, to get half as much power out of the apples, it costs us almost twice as much.

It's the theory of the one-button controller in play, tap twice, rotate counter-clockwise, then do the hokey-pokey to make it fast forward. You could tap the button to play/pause, and hold the button down to turn it off.

My district just spent a huge amount of money on HP (the models that used to be Compaqs) computers, while we're underbudget on the paper account.

Your school has a paper account? . And I suppose there is this big-shot wanna be that has been appointed the administrator of paper .

We have several accountants in our district, we don't have a head of an account, they estimate what money is needed for what, and they spread it out for the month.

Lately, the Texas legislation has been talking about shutting down "Robin Hood," which is a financial plan that takes money from the richer and more property wealthy districts, and feeding it to the poorer districts. My district is one of the latter, and without Robin Hood, we would be millions of dollars in debt every year, which brings me to the second thing, if they shut it down, then we won't have any money because they spent it all on worthless computers.

I do not respect people when they believe that what they like is the best, and that everything else is excrement. If people were more open to conflicting ideas, I would be able to respect them. For isntance, I think that the Xbox 360 is pretty cool, but balzac is dissing the Playstation 3 and that just pisses me off.

It is not counter-intuitive, the interface of the iPod could scarcely be more intuitive than it already is, that is why they have been using the Click Wheel for more than a year now.

Well, that is only expected, cuz during the late 20th century and early 21st century, Apple had a reputation of selling high-end computers, so obviously, you'll be paying a premium for them.

Oh really? This sounds alot like someone I know *cough*you*cough*.

Well, it is obvious that you are referring to me. But what you people don't seem to understand is that I support both the Playstation 3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360. On the otherhand, the Nintendo-fanboys are against both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, and the Microsoft-fanboys are against the Playstation 3 and the Revolution. I mean, you have to pity me, I am going 1 on 5+!

At least they aren't personally insulted when someone makes a comment about something bad about their respective consoles/companies.

I am insulted by such impertinence because they also hate Sony to spite me.

I will not show pity for you. I do not see you having pity on me due to the fact that when it comes to Christianity v. Athiesm, Creation v. Evolution, etc, generally it is 5 on 1 (me being the one).

That is cuz the idea of creationism is just absurd.

If Spacekid said the same thing about the PSP/Sony, what would you reply with?

I would reply that he is just saying it to spite me.

Yes, so the only reason you said that creationism is absurd, is to spite spacekid, yes?

If I didn't know any better I would think that myscrnnm was this arrogant kid on my school's scholastic (spelling?) bowl team...

Wrong. I believe that creationism is absurd because not only is there no evidence that suggests it, the laws of physics just don't allow it. A man suddenly appears out of nowhere, and then a rib is taken out and becomes a woman?! How does that work?! I just find Hinduism so much more believable. I mean, an elephant head going onto the body of a boy, while unlikely, it is more likely than this creationism stuff.

And a supernova randomly made the universe happen and two humans managed to evolve into a creature that could reproduce... And that makes any more sense?

That's not how the theory of evolution works. Again, an example of a person being stupid because they chose to be ignorant. There is no stuff about two humans being the first creatures on Earth in the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is totally different. What you're saying is a combination of the theory of how the universe began mixed with your brew of creationism.

*shrugs*

No respect for beliefs at all.

You fool. Trying to spread lies about me again, will you? I have already said that I respect the Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto religions. And outside of the religious beliefs, I also respect people who believe the Playstation family to be superior.

You fool. Misinterpreting me again, are you? You don't respect beliefs outside your own.

He's right you know, that you don't seem to respect any beliefs that conflict with yours...

STOP GETTING OFF TOPIC.

and a lowercase sentence to go with it.

Making an off-topic post right after someone says "Stop going off-topic?"