Re: [seul-edu] Typical costs paid by school districtsfor software?

[Chris Hobbs <chobbs@silvervalley.k12.ca.us>]

Through this program, we buy media, docs, and licenses separately. So, for a
site, we'd at a minimum need one copy of the CD, and how many ever licenses
are required. I'll take a 30 computer lab as an example, with one file
server.

Windows NT 4.0:

1    NT Server 4.0 CD                  26.00
1    NT Server License                 90.90
1    NT Server Doc Set                 39.00
35   NT Server Client Access Licenses 175.00
                                      ------
                           Subtotal:  327.90

Windows NT Workstations

1    NT Workstation 4.0 CD             18.00
1    NT Workstation Doc Set            18.00
30   NT Workstation Licenses          348.00
1    Microsoft Office 2000 CD          18.00
1    Microsoft Office 2000 Doc Set     16.00
30   Microsoft Office 2000 Licenses  1050.00
                                     -------
                           Subtotal: 1468.00

                              Total: 1795.90

or, $59.86/workstation. This of course compares to the cost of, hmm, $0.00
for Linux based solutions (download a Linux ISO and StarOffice). However, if
you back out the cost of Office 2000 and decide to use the Win32 version of
StarOffice under NT, the cost per station for just the OS drops down to
$23.70. If the average cost of a new computer is $1000, then the cost of
running Windows is only 2% of the purchase price. Is this enough to make
your school board consider Linux? Probably not, which is why a broader based
argument is neccessary (ease of administration, reliability, etc.).

Of course, in my personal situation, the cost per station is only $250,
which makes the cost of the software that much higher as a percentage, but
that's a dead horse I've beaten quite a bit here :-)

Hope this helps,

Chris

ps. If these numbers are used on a web site, it'll be important to
emphasize, for those commercial entities that look at them, that the
educational discounts are really quite impressive. If you were looking at
the prices business pays for this same software, the difference would be
staggering.

pps. I realize that I didn't include the princing for Win98, but I can't
justify putting an OS that is completely insecure out there - it's far too
much of an administrative nightmare. [*shudder*]


Doug Loss wrote:

> Could you,
> Chris, (and anyone else who has equivalent information) work up the
> figures on cost savings of Linux over other options and post them here?
> Thanks.