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

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
>
> I agree that Star Office in its various iterations is pretty damn solid.

I have been using OpenOffice (GPLed, most of StarOffice), for quite some
time, without any real problems.

> 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.)

Working at the University of Arizona, I have had to open many documents on
StarOffice/OpenOffice so that students could then reopen them in Microsoft
Office 2000

> 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.

Most of the problems related to formating come from incorrect use of
formating (spaces instead of tabs, etc), and font differances.

> 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...

I support, on a volunteer basis over 120 Linux workstations, total man
hours - about 6-12/week.  This is in a K-5 school, in Tucson Arizona.

> 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!

Sounds similar to what Tucson Unified School District did, except they did
not get the hardware, or the staff to properly run exchange.  This year
alone, they have had two email outages longer than 3 days.

> 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.

Been there, done that.  Beyond my activites with OSEF, I am a systems
admin for a college of the University of Arizona, and a Linux and Unix
instructor at the community college level.


			Harry

> Steve

--
Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
Hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 661-7875 (CELL)
Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org