RE: [seul-edu] M$ Audits (long) [was Re: MS targeting...]

["Stephen C. Daukas" <stephen@daukas.com>]

At 09:51 AM 4/23/2002, Chris wrote:
> Simple answers: 
>
> StarOffice6/OpenOffice641d are more than adequate
> replacements for MS Office in all but large enterprises with much MS
> macro stuff in place. They read/write MS formats almost frighteningly
> well, and if you choose to, it can be made the default
> format.

I agree that Star Office in its various iterations is pretty damn
solid.

There are occasional glitches in representation of the same document
between M$ and SO, but to be fair to the SO suite there are occasional
glitches in representation of the same document between M$ and M$
(assuming you are not trapped from even opening the document in the first
place.)   Also the filters to Word Perfect etc., are two way
filters (not import only) and allow kids who have family computers
running alternative software more flexibility. The other benefit of SO
(and OO if you decide that the sys admins are up to a little more
complexity (and I believe they are not yet there)) is that they can run
it on Win boxes and dabble in Linux without causing confusion to the
office suite end user. That makes it possible for them to consider
jumping ship in a silent revolution should they build up the
confidence.

Having said that, the last version I used was 5.2 and is still had
problems.  For example, someone takes an inordinate amount of time
to format something "just so" (as kids are want to do). 
Some of that formatting is often lost when opened in SO.  Then the
fun starts!  ;-)  I haven't played with 6.0 yet - it ought to
be fun to play with and see how it handles things like embedded Excel
files and such...  5.2 had difficulty with this, and other things
people would routinely do in Office, but as I said, I like SO.

My feeling is that yours and my tolerance for a few "glitches"
may not be the same for many others, especially if they have a way to
avoid those "glitches" now.

> Sys admins? Quality
> ones are expensive, but cheaper than your systems not working. This is
> true  whether or not you use MS, Mac, Unix or Linux. The price
> difference between the MS and Linux knowledgeable people will disappear
> pretty fast - in the meantime, look at remote admin capabilities, price
> savings on MS licences, system reliability. All adds up to saving money
> with Linux. As in bags full.

I hear what you are saying, but am skeptical in it's application, at
least based on what I have seen in Massachusetts education in the past 6
months.  (Hell, the indirect argument wasn't an easy one to make in
corporate America!)  The "indirect savings" argument sails
over most folks heads here, and they have no way to approach the problem
without quantitative measures - something M$ and Apple are great at
providing, no matter how untrue their claims are...

In terms of salary and capability, districts around here hire support
folks for less money then new college grads with no experience routinely
receive.  Hence, they don't have any depth to speak of - few even
know what a TCP stack actually does or how to manage security, and the
ones that do are usually those who took early retirement or were part of
a successful IPO.  There are of course exceptions, but they are few
and far between.  I suspect the price difference between MCSE and
UNIX/Linux Admins will close, but not in the direction we would
hope.  A good (not expert) UNIX/Linux Sys Admin around here starts
around 72k (the truly great ones routinely get over 100K)!  
The truly great MCSEs usually max out where the good UNIX/Linux ones
start.  Even if the salaries fall, a school district will be hard
pressed to pay that kind of money for support staff...

> The background I speak
> from? Commercial IT support (MCP, MS Exchange specialist and networking),
> moved into the education sector, (laughed until I cried at what they were
> doing with ICT), started making waves everywhere to wake them up and
> *then* I started to experiment with open source and Linux, which is now
> being introduced in various schools I have connections
> with.

I not only cried, but eventually left UMass Medical Center when, against
my better judgement, the administration went with exchange.  M$
provided all sorts of misinformation about cost savings, etc., when
compared to the Sun server I was running for the school (I was the
director of Academic & Research Computing).  Before M$, we would
service about 2000 school users on one spark server (8000 users total
across various architectures).  After M$ we had a farm of DEC
servers (I believe more than 20), and 2 resident M$ employees, just to
service the school!  

About 2 years after I quit, the Medical School broke away from the
Hospital and formed its own IT department (essentially what was
originally Academic & Research Computing) to better service the
academics (i.e., UNIX/Linux and Macintosh).

So much for quantitative numbers and the critical thinking ability of
school administration.

Steve