08-23-2003, 03:54 PM
Unfortunately, it might be too late for them. The growing tide of PO'd MS admins, MS developers, and IT management are starting to look at the alternatives. With products like StarOffice, some of the GUI Linux Shells like KDE, decent e-mail clients, you can really do away with MS, their exhorbitant prices and their licensing baggage.
See what the BSA and MS did to Ernie Ball...
Ernie Ball - Model For Open-Source Transition?
I've already ported my DB systems from MS on MS to Oracle on Linux this spring. The driver for me was that I intend on eventually porting my inhouse apps for client use over the internet. The only licensing option, other than named users was per processor. My systems use redundant arrays, so I was looking at ~$20,000 per processor x 2 (OS & DBMS). And in total I have 4 quads, or 16 processors for my system. We are a pretty successful small business, but ~ $640,000 just for system licenses is a little to hefty a price tag for our little company.
My recent fiasco at home migrating to W2K SP4 has left my primary home system more secure than its ever been(sic). It is unable to boot, and unable to repair, and unable to re-install without formatting the HD. I found a Linux tool, called Trinity, which you can download as an .ISO and burn to a CD. Then boot and recover any information you need from your corrupted system. After getting a BSOD 1/2 way thru the upgrade, my home system was in a state where the security hive was in an indeterminate state, there were no NT boot programs on the boot partition, and no one had the rights to change the boot partition.
Anyway, I'm going to continue to work on convincing some of the key user managers at my office, that it is time to begin the change. Really, how much is XP Office Professional? How much is StarOffice? What are the feature differences?
See what the BSA and MS did to Ernie Ball...
Ernie Ball - Model For Open-Source Transition?
I've already ported my DB systems from MS on MS to Oracle on Linux this spring. The driver for me was that I intend on eventually porting my inhouse apps for client use over the internet. The only licensing option, other than named users was per processor. My systems use redundant arrays, so I was looking at ~$20,000 per processor x 2 (OS & DBMS). And in total I have 4 quads, or 16 processors for my system. We are a pretty successful small business, but ~ $640,000 just for system licenses is a little to hefty a price tag for our little company.
My recent fiasco at home migrating to W2K SP4 has left my primary home system more secure than its ever been(sic). It is unable to boot, and unable to repair, and unable to re-install without formatting the HD. I found a Linux tool, called Trinity, which you can download as an .ISO and burn to a CD. Then boot and recover any information you need from your corrupted system. After getting a BSOD 1/2 way thru the upgrade, my home system was in a state where the security hive was in an indeterminate state, there were no NT boot programs on the boot partition, and no one had the rights to change the boot partition.
Anyway, I'm going to continue to work on convincing some of the key user managers at my office, that it is time to begin the change. Really, how much is XP Office Professional? How much is StarOffice? What are the feature differences?
”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.
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