Re: [seul-edu] Re: [school-discuss] our saga continues in jeffersonparish

["tompoe@renonevada.net" <tompoe@renonevada.net>]

Hi: Excellent discussion points. Add to that the ability for each and 
every user to have access to worldwide support through Seul.org and 
local Users' Groups, and you have a compelling argument for the general 
public, parents, and school officials, not to mention the students and 
teachers.

One final comment. Someone needs to ask if there is an administrative 
position in Jefferson Parish that has the job description of "copier". I 
know of at least one school district that pays an employee to show up 
every day, and if there is a need for copies to be made, that person 
makes the copies. Otherwise, the administrative staff is overworked!
Thanks,
Tom Poe
Open Studios
Reno, NV

jeff williams wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 August 2002 07:46 am, Leon Brooks wrote:
> 
>>On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 20:16, tompoe@renonevada.net wrote:
>>
>>>Hi: What's the M$ license cost for Jefferson Parish?  If it's more than
>>>$1 million, they probably want to listen to Open Source and it's
>>>beautiful melody.  <grin>
>>
>>Not if it involves changeover costs (retraining, re-eqipping, buying Linux
>>equivalents for apps). They'd be caught between Scylla and Charybdis.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't know about teachers, but my university students (mostly freshmen and 
> sophmores) can pick up Linux enough for basic tasks in under an hour.  Yes, 
> the systems administrators need to be trained, but a surprising number 
> already have Unix / Linux experience.
> 
> There are essentially no re-equipping costs associated with Linux.  Indeed, a 
> good 486 runs Linux nicely.  I've even got KDE running very, very well on a 
> 32 mb 486DX-4/100.  Sound drivers may be a hassle, but even that tends not to 
> be a problem on older machines.
> 
> As for buying Linux equivalents for applications... this is Open Source.  Yes, 
> free is as in freedom, but many applications are free as in cost.  The 
> educational license for StarOffice 6.0 allows a school district to equip 
> every system with the software for $25.  That's not per computer, that is for 
> the district.  But I would look at OpenOffice in stead.
> 
> So, the bottom line for a cut over to Linux... system administrator time.  If 
> these people are salaried, there should be no increase in cost.  Teacher 
> training... should be within the same training budget as currently exists.  
> Re-entry of current M$ format documents... $0.00 because there are a number 
> of Linux apps that read M$ file formats.
> 
> Final note.  In our computer science labs at Concordia University Wisconsin, 
> we re-install Windows 2000 on at least one system (via cloning) each week 
> becasue of corruption caused by multiple users on a given system.  We have 
> not re-installed Linux (RH 7.1) since the original installation.  Oh, I did 
> upgrade our server (a Pentium II/350 running Slackware) because some newer 
> tools were not available on the older Slackware.  We really weren't planning 
> on upgrading from Slackware 7.0 until next summer.
> 
> Are there costs associated with removing M$ products and replacing with Linux?  
> Sure, but the savings are enormous.


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