Ret. World Bank CTO on Desktop Linux TCO Facts 345
comforteagle writes "W. McDonald Buck, retired CTO of World Bank, believes we need to take a more honest and frank look at the Cost Analyses it will take to put Linux on the corporate desktop. In Part I of Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth he begins with one of the most common misconceptions... that a business can buy a computer without Windows and save money in the transaction."
Yeah, but it's not a one time purchase (Score:4, Insightful)
When a user bought Windows 3.1, they also unwittingly bought Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, and Windows XP. This is planned obsolescense for no other reason except to keep Micorsoft shareholders happy.
With Linux, you avoid that ridiculous problem.
Re:Yeah, but it's not a one time purchase (Score:5, Interesting)
If only 'twere true.
The problem with Linux is that over the years things have changed and broken binray compatability. This isn't a show-stopper usually, but if you do have some closed-source software from 5 years ago that you still want to run today, you are going to find all kinds of library dependency problems.
The thing about Linux is that most of your applications are Open Source or Free, so they get updated and recompiled incrementally as time goes on.
I bought some Loki games for Linux a long time ago. Some of them haven't worked in years because they depend on obsolete and deprocated libraries. If I had lots of time on my hands (which I don't have nowadays) I could probably spend several days looking out old source tarballs and doing a bit of porting, but life's too short.
Most people or businesses who buy software or computers to do a job need specific version of specific kernels with specific libraries and utilities and specific versions of applications that have been integrated, tested and certified to work together.
Windows is very poor at this. Linux is a bit better, but if you're using Linux commercially, you're probably using RedHat Enterprise Linux (or maybe SuSE), you've payed hundreds or thousands of dollars for the software license (for the OS), you've probalby spent tens of thousands on the hardware, you have a support contract, you'll have spent thousands on the applications and you'll have trained clued-up staff to deal with it all.
Does Red Hat garantee backwards compatability?
Can I get Red Hat ES today and Oracle and be garanteed that in 5 years time, my Oracle that I bought will still run, unchanged (same binary), still supported etc.?
Linux is much, much better than Windows, but no Linux company has solved this problem yet.
YMMV, but... (Score:2)
Now at the time I ran RedHat, but I've since switched to Gentoo. I just restored my old Heroes3 installation from an archive of it that I had lying around.
It works flawlessly.
Now of course I'm not saying that this will always be the case, but obviously someone's done something right, considering the timeframe involved!
As for running
Re:YMMV, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but it's not a one time purchase (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but it's not a one time purchase (Score:2)
You do have a point then again are you still running the same apps from 5 years ago, and has just the OS been updated, or has those apps been updated as well?
My work is running netware 3.1? using win 95 clients to connect. Nothing was ever upgraded. If you upgrade every 5 years or so, the OS will be included. You don't update your database
The same can be said for any industry (Score:3, Interesting)
Parts break down and need to be replaced but, d'oh!, that line has been discontinued. Please upgrade your [[insert item here]]. That means buy a new(ew) car or new vacuum.
I've got an old eMachine P3 500Mhz happily running Linux and I believe this box is still capable of doing real work. Sadly, the mindset we all seem to share is that that old box is too, well, o
Ofcourse (Score:4, Funny)
This is common sense, they're paying us to help dispose of their rubbish.
More Fodder for Anti-Trust? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Fodder for Anti-Trust? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a programmer at a bank.... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, all the Linux Gurus can point to software that does the same thing...the only problem is big banks don't like writing/customizing/modifying/maintaining software. They're not in the software business. They want a vendor to do that and for most Linux desktop apps, that's not an option. They MUST have a contract with a well established vendor that can fix an application when it stops working. I wish it wasn't that way....hey I'm a programmer....but I can't blame them either.
Re:I'm a programmer at a bank.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Step outside your cubicle. Banking is not the only thing going on in the world, and it's definitely not the most difficult.
A security-minded industry? Absolutely... But then why do you choose to rely on WINDOWS?!!
Re:I'm a programmer at a bank.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But the point of the article, and my post, is about linux on the desktop and how difficult that could be to implement (in a large company). I was specifically talking about how most vendor products used in my bank (or any large bank) don't include desktop components that run on Linux. It's different when IBM comes out and says "Were moving to linux!" since they are a technology company. They have the knowledge and
Re:I'm a programmer at a bank.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree that most industries don't look to change platforms or migrate software packages. All it would take is for the demand to exist for the supply of strongly-supported apps to be developed.
Another thought is that with web-enablement of apps, platform independence is that much closer to being an option. And web apps have *definitely* come a long way to providing much of the functionality we have had for some time in regular apps.
Give it a few years, and those web apps will make desktop platform i
Re:I'm a programmer at a bank.... (Score:2)
One thing I forgot to mention... I work with many different systems in the bank. I can think of 4 systems, from different vendors, that all ran on Unix as of 5 years ago. Now, they all run on Windows Servers.
huhhuh????? (Score:3, Insightful)
i think he should take a good look at his support contracts and then figure out just what's wrong with his reasoning here. that's right, his reasoning would be ok IF he was arguing about home desktopts - but he isn't, so what does the initial ten or twenty bucks mean?
of course, maybe the final chapter will be "linux just can't compete.. because linux can't give me huge discounts if i would have said that ms sucks".
Re:huhhuh????? (Score:2)
he's a retired guy, so what. he's trying to make a point about TCO on CORPORATE environment.
but he's reasoning is only meaningful about home(or very small business) desktops.
Windows OEM shop prize (Score:3, Informative)
It is a relatively straightforward number to get: 100 EUR. source: http://siggelkow.de/ [siggelkow.de] (just an example)
Re:exactly (Score:2)
Actually the software is Windows XP Home and StarOffice in the link in the first example.
This is a better link: PC Builder, Software [alternate.de]
It shows the price for software added to a complete system at a big german store.
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, System-builder 79 EUR
Microsoft Office 2003 Basic (just preinstalled) 177 EUR
(IANAL yadda, yadda, but as a sidenote: OEM restrictions to software are not enforcable in germany [bundesgerichtshof.de])
I saved $65 (Score:5, Informative)
The guy I brought it from was pretty impressed when I slapped in a MEPIS CD and checked out everything - RAM, CPU, Ethernet, Multimedia - in a few minutes in the storefront. I left a copy with him.
Re:I saved $65 (Score:2)
But the OS is just the starting point (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that to some, this might sound silly, but it is common practice in many medium to large business anyway. They will simply overwrite the OS that comes on the box with the version that they want configured in the manner that they want it for their IT department.
Now lets look MS office that is installed on the image that is deployed on almost every corporate system across the country. Now if you are a company of any size you will likely get a very nice discount of the retail price, although if you are talking 1,000 PC or more, unless you wish to risk ripping of MS, the price will still add up to a pretty penny.
Then we have things such as Exchange, which at first everyone will swear that they need because it has integrated scheduling functions, despite the fact that most corporations hardly ever use the functionality, except for one or two very annoying people who are quickly ignored by everyone else (if you are one of those people, think of that statement as humor). Here is where the price starts getting steep.
But he does make a fair point, that when we discuss this matters it is only fair that we make an effort to be fair with ourselves and others on the subject.
Cost of viruskiller, spyware cleaners, downtime? (Score:3, Insightful)
-cost of Anti-Virus software (that slows the system down)
-cost of anti-spyware solutions. Typically you need two or more cleaners to get the most common ones.
-cost of downtime. Typical desktop PC in a business is down for most of a day many times a year.
-cost of the forced upgrade cycle.
-On top of that, Windows comes with NOTHING bundled. Everything costs extra. Just managing the licenses in a corporate environment is pain!
Add to this the mu
Re:Cost of viruskiller, spyware cleaners, downtime (Score:2)
The article completely skipped the "Total" in Total Cost of Ownership. I mean it was a cute write up, but the MS tax is certainly not the total cost of going with closed source. If anything, it's the least significant factor.
The cost of the OS is nothing compared to applications. For a home user you can simply borrow them or whatever you want to call it, but in a corporate environment you need to account for everything on the machine. Using closed source even a machine that is only goin
Re:Cost of viruskiller, spyware cleaners, downtime (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But the OS is just the starting point (Score:4)
I think the joke is on you.
Every company that I've done consulting for in the past 5 years uses Outlook and Exchange for scheduling meetings among individuals. Several have set up a temporary account for me specifically for that capability.
I haven't tried the recent version of Evolution, but until there's a reliable replacement for Outlook that works with Exchange, Linux won't even be considered in many companies.
Re:But the OS is just the starting point (Score:2)
Re:But the OS is just the starting point (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how you could come to this conclusion, but must assume you haven't been around m
there is a demand for Linux (Score:2, Informative)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=10&u=/pcworld/20050202/tc_pcworld/119537&sid =96120756 [yahoo.com]
I think the conclusion ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Flawed Logic (Score:5, Informative)
What he forgot to mention is that any serious business trying to get some work done "the Microsoft way" must own a copy of MS office for each computer in their workspace. So for a small business who can't afford huge site licenses, that's going to add another $379.00 to the cost of each workstation. Even if the bundled windoze works out to only $20 a machine, you are still out $400 per worksation just to open and read your doc and xls files.
Another consideration is that in the Windoze world, you pretty much have to have a full-blown installation for each user. Yes, I know you can do thin-clients with windows too, but there isn't an easy and inexpensive way to do this for small businesses.
Also take into account that once a business reaches a certain size they are going to need dedicated backup servers, mail server, exchange server, etc. All this stuff costs $$$ to implement, and is usually more expensive than the linux alternative.
We run a small business and power our entire sales and support department on LTSP-based thin-client terminals. The cost of each workstation? Well let's do the math:
* Pentium II computers, bought from an auction, by the pallet. About $3.00 per workstation.
* 17" CRT monitor - brand new $89.00
* Fedora Core Linux - FREE as in freedom AND as in beer. w00t!
* OpenOffice - Free.
I am not going to include the cost of my time as a sysadmin, because I'm going to get paid to do my job whether the end-users are on windows or linux. I probably spend less time troubleshooting things now that we are using linux so ostensibly the cost of tech support is *less* but I don't have the empirical evidence to back it up.
The server running LTSP has 4 gigs of memory and a Pentium 4 processor and handles up to 20 users quite nicely without even getting close to dipping into the swap file. They are all running web browser, Open Office, and Evolution pretty much all day long. I expect that this particular server could support up to 30-35 users before we saw a big performance hit. This server cost less than $2000 to configure.
My LTSP workstations are so cheap they are nearly disposable. Oh, dropped your computer on the floor? Power supply burned out? Let me pull another one out of storage, plug it in, and off you go. Try that with your windows boxen.
Yes, I'm aware that you can put openoffice on a windows box and use that, but why would you do that when OO, Firefox, and Evolution are available for linux?
The only groups that I would *not* recommend this solution to would be companies that use and depend on a lot of doc and xls files that are heavily formatted and full of macros. Open Office still can't quite render all
All in all, Linux is easier to use, and less expensive but to really find that out you have to take more into account than just the difference between an off-the-shelf computer from IBM or Dell, and the similar no-os computer.
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget the additional cost of the requisite anti-virus system for every PC, and possibly a commercial anti-spyware solution too. Oh, and since the anti-virus slows the system down by X %, you'll need to buy all systems X% more powerful than you need.
funny different link for slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
here is a link to the one where everyone shoots down
his unqualified opinions.
http://osdir.com/Article3992.phtml [osdir.com]
You buy a machine it does not matter what comes on it since every single corporate environment images machines when the come in the door anyhow, so the price is still the same.
Besides no Linux administrator worth a grain of salt is gonna install linux on anything anyhow. Everyone I know that runs real desktop installations does so using thin client.
Re:funny different link for slashdot (Score:2)
maybe in that he'll try to buy open office and concludes that ms office is cheaper because open office isn't even available in stores.
Re:funny different link for slashdot (Score:2)
I bought a couple thin clients a long time ago, 2 NCD HMX boxes for $20 for both to be exact. I sent an inquiry to NCD because they stopped providing information on that particular thin client line on their website and they wanted $200 or $300 for the linux software to support the thin clients. To this day, they are under my bed at home, waiting for some kind of use.
Re:funny different link for slashdot (Score:2)
Why branded? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why branded? (Score:2)
There's
Re:Why branded? (Score:2)
of course there's zillions of places which pay for this kind of support but never use it even if something breaks..
Re:Why branded? (Score:3, Insightful)
Quality Control.
I've had whole labs of PCs bought from white-box vendors, and whole labs bought from Dell etc.
We had a white-box lab of 700mhz slot-A athlon systems. after 6 months of running, we had just about every CPU fan die within a 3 week span. The machines were somewhat unstable, mostly due to poor ram compatability. When it came time to cycle the lab, we ended up having to dumpster about 1/2 of them because of problems. (the rest w
Thin Clients (Score:3, Informative)
Very true (Score:3, Insightful)
It can be difficult to get pre-installed Linux desktop.
Servers, though, a totally different matter. Here you can make really large savings. Especially when you consider that you don't need all those CALs. Compare a Windows Server 2003 running Windows Terminal Server and having 20 Windows XP desktops connecting to it, to a completely Linux Desktop OS and Linux Server OS solution, and you're biggest saving is in the server area. Heck, according to this article the Linux Server / Windows Desktop would be the cheapest solution!
W. McDonald Buck? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you all have been hacked, because the article tells you what you wanted to talk about.
Looking at worldbank.org and searching for CTO, I haven't found a reference to a CTO for themselves, only references to CTO's elsewhere. I don't beleive they even have a CTO, honestly.
Just sayin'.
Re:W. McDonald Buck? (Score:3, Informative)
http://ceb.unsystem.org/documents/ISCC . Reports/rep ort5.html
This is a William Mcdonald Buck talking to the United Nations Information Systems Coordinating Committee on behalf of the IBRD, which is one of the main divisions of the World Bank.
There's also a William Mcdonald Buck who had difficulty booting his 2.5 kernel on the LKML (but wasn't subscribed) and a William Mcdonald Buck who's apparently done some sort of instructing at the CS department of George Mason Univer
Re:W. McDonald Buck? (Score:2, Interesting)
Turns out there is a McDonald Buck, who does know something [helsinki.fi] about Linux. As parent says, repeated searching on worldbank.org (or worldbank.int) gets scratch.
For the curious, his e-mail address comes from wmbuck.net [wmbuck.net], which he owns [dnstools.com]. His website is however completely locked out using server-side authentication.
Hey, it's a boring Saturday night
Re:W. McDonald Buck? (Score:3, Informative)
The HR cost... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, if you can sell the idea to the bean count
The price of "change" (Score:3, Insightful)
WHAAAAAT?!! YOU'RE TAKING AWAY MY POWERPOINT?!!
People grow up with these programs. They devote time and personal resources becoming proficient with them. They don't want that background to become obviated. They don't want to start over. We who work in technology are just the opposite by our very nature. We like change. We like the challenge and adventure of learning new (and better) things. That nature is one of the things that drove is into a technical field.
I personally think the only practical migration is to first migrate to F/OSS apps on Windows, gradually. Then, migrate all those apps to Linux. So that, to the user, Linux is just another application migration.
MS Lock-In? (Score:2)
Is this REALLY a problem? (Score:2)
With that said, I don't really see Linux becoming all that big on the desktop. Because most of the office users won't start using it at home, simply because 8/10 users plays with their computers in a very different way of what the more geeky types does. Me for example, I only use my computer to code, write rapports with latex, maple and
This is a CTO?!?! (Score:2)
He's doing it like a typical CTO (Score:3, Insightful)
Any IT worker with half a brain knows that you can deal with your primary reseller. I can get really good HP business desktops sans Windows XP or a Windows XP license for about $500 (dx2000's fully loaded, $400 not). That should be the starting point of pricing for the desktop itself. This guy is spending too much money any way you look at it. Has he never heard of a reseller?
Next you look at the cost of licensing. If you want Microsoft's "Assurance", or whatever they call it these days (in which you can upgrade without fee the next time around), a company my size would have to spend about $300,000. The other option is buy each individual XP license at $176 a pop. Neither of these options include any kind of support. Going with Linux, lets say Novell's Desktop Linux (Suse 9.2 Pro with the LDAP client preinstalled and a shiny Gnome configuration), I'm looking at $80 a license. This includes a little bit of support, and an active community on Novell's official forums.
Anyways, from here you have to figure out how to get around the Microsoft Office lock-in, and decide whether you want to go with Citrix or Codeweavers. But that's an entirely different discussion.
If we are talking of corporations... (Score:2)
No, they will contact their Dell/IBM/HP sales representative, tell them what their needs are, and if they want Linux instead of Windows, they will get it. IBM have a Linux 'client for ebusiness' that is made to run on their PC hardware. (And if he really wants just one workstation, he forgot to have a look at the Intellistation range). If they want no preload so they can install their own Linux i
Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
But when I negotiate for big customers they're putting our gold disk image on our machines. We pay for our site licenses through MSFT, not the PC vendor. And we have a disk image for some servers that's not Winblows and we're not paying MSFT for those. We spec the components and configuation. The only company left out of that loop on some of the servers is MSFT. Our unit machine cost doesn't change.
For a real TCO study the author isn't going to be buying machines retail. But he still has a point. Most companies aren't going to be buying enough machines to be able to supply the image like we do. Interesting. I build my own machines at home so I had no idea you couldn't buy a machine without Windows from the big players.
As long as MSFT can keep a grip on that pipeline and make it a huge pain in the ass for someone running Linux to get a rebate for the Windows they don't use, then that sort of anwsers that thread yesterday about why when Windows sucks so bad does it stay so popular. Consumers don't have enough choices.
Memories... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to say, the World Bank is not your model of intelligent spending when it comes to this kind of stuff, though. I don't think he was CTO at the time I was there, though he may have been.
You have to understand, the World Bank operates much like a government. Everything is very political, much more than most offices. Advances happen more from a buddy network than from actual accomplishment and the quality of one's work is seldom appreciated as much as the quantity.
For example, if you're a in charge of making loans, the volume of loans you make, and not the security of those loans, is what gets you noticed. Everything in the WB operates that way (or it did when I was there).
Money is pissed away in almost every way. For example, a number of years after working there the first time, I was hired as a contractor to write a very basic time tracking package to keep track of billable ours by employees (departments bill each other for various services provided). They spent about $40,000 for me to write this fairly basic software. Instead, they could have spent a few hundred dollars and bought a much more feature rich shrink-wrapped package. My software, while customized, was largely a matter of customized look and not customized features.
Anyway, I'll have to take any spending advice coming out the World Bank with a brick of salt.
So you have to reinstall... so what (Score:3, Insightful)
But isn't that what most big companies do anyway? Even if you run Windows, you never want the stock installation that Dell put on there. You reinstall the machine with the corporate standard version of Windows (if your IT people have any clue, this will be fully automated).
So I don't see that inability to get Linux preinstalled is a big deal. The main reason to buy a machine which comes with Linux is as a guarantee that all the components have Linux drivers - but you can check that separately.
Flies in the face of... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like this has been happening to OSS from the beginning of time.
OSS User: "I love OSS. It works for me."
Anti-OSS: "No you don't. You just think you love OSS, and you just think it works for you. In reality, you're wasting all of your time fiddling and nothing on your desktop works at all!"
OSS Business: "I saved big money with OSS. My books are balanced! Woohoo!"
Anti-OSS: "No you didn't. You just think you saved money because the numbers in your ledger tell you you did. In reality, it's not possible to save money with OSS, so you must have lost somewhere."
As far as I'm concerned, if you think you're very happy with a product, and your bankbook numbers tell you that you're saving money, then who cares what's "really" happening in the underlying "reality" of the OSS-doesn't-work-at-all universe?
Re:Bring it on. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well it might not look good to start when you can buy a windows dell for $400 but the same Linux dell costs $420
But DUH you can buy the Windows dell for $400 and install linux FOR FREE ON IT
Even then if you needed to deploy a hundred of them through all a company then yo
Re:Bring it on. (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's hardly a win for Linux to say that Linux is not more expensive than Windows. If we can't show a cost savings for Linux, it's a win for Redmond.
Re:Bring it on. (Score:2, Interesting)
> to a hundred systems. The business pays for that time and
> effort. Even if it's an in house tech doing the job, at the very
> least his salary for the time spent doing the install should be
> factored into the cost.
Well then you can buy 99 Windows PC's for $400 and one Linux PC in the same configuration and mirror the linux PC configuration and put it on all the Windows PCs then. So then you save $99 times $20 or $1980 doing t
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Interesting)
so twenty two thousand dollars saved by going with linux.
The best mac support on the web [tribbles.org]
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you're paying big dinero for top-tier support, it'll take more than 20 minutes just to get through the voicemail maze. Windows support that's worth the money is a delusion. I worked projects where I had to deal with MS, Sun and Samba for support, Samba through discussion threads. Samba was most timely at act
Re:Bring it on. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Dell is also a good company for this. You're probably thinking, why should I buy an agreement like this from Microsoft when I have no choice but to pay for the Windows license from Dell? Dell will work with you. Once they verify you have a
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Informative)
So, Linux and Windows are dead even in this area.
I thin
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Funny)
You mispronounced 0wnership [immunitysec.com].
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Interesting)
We're talking about TCO - Total Cost of Ownership. It takes time and effort to create an install and then mirror it to a hundred systems. The business pays for that time and effort. Even if it's an in house tech doing the job, at the very least his salary for the time spent doing the install should be factored into the cost.
Just like no one installs windows from raw OEM media, if you roll out Linux to many machines you image it just like Windows. And if your tech staff can't install Linux, I pitty yo
Re:Bring it on. (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess there are a couple of points that have to be considered in all this.
First : If the cost of a PC with windows is $400 and the same PC with Linux is $420, you have to realize that actually a PC with either Windows or Linux or BSD costs $400, because you can install whatever you feel like on that PC. After that, the cost of additional software for basic things also has to be considered. Windows is an obvious loser in that area (consider antivirus/basic editors/remote mgmt/whatever and the bill start
Re:Bring it on. (Score:5, Insightful)
a VERY large company can get much better pricing without windows and from DELL.
He may be a smart guy but he is making some really DUMB mistakes trying to get TCO information.
NO corperation on this planet goes to Dell's website and configures up a computer, and presses the "order 10,000" button. you call a personal Sales Associate.
That is what I did, his first quote was in line with the article until I threw the quote back at them saying, "not good enough, HP is mre than willing to do what it takes to get our business, that includes not charging us for windows."
The quote came back over $250.00 per machine lower and the line that mentioned XP pro was actually removed from the quotation.
The machines arrived with no OS.
Maybe when the author of the article starts thinking and acting like how a company will get their PC's then we will get a fail TCO.
Until then he is acting like joe-blow off the street looking for 1 pc, and this is not the way to get a fair TCO.
Re:Bring it on. (Score:4, Insightful)
However, since we have a corporate volume license from $PARENT, and we have an image we've built with our software load, we essentially pay for Windows TWICE - once on the pre-install which we don't use, then software rental on the corporate install.
The other TCO problem with Windows is in imaging. With a Windows image, all the machines have to be identical for the image to work or you get all sorts of interesting driver issues. Manufacturers keep changing their specs. You can get the same model of PC from HP and find it has a different NIC and a different chipset and a different video card even though it's apparently the same. With a Linux image, it seems so long as you've got the module, it just works without complaining. With a Windows image, the best you get is many "Found new hardware" dialogues (and the driver install may or may not work, and you have to sometimes feed it disks which is kind of missing the point of a hard disk image). Sometimes you get a machine that won't even boot. Windows is a royal pain for machines built from hard disk images unless you can make sure all your machines are identical.
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternatively, you can buy one machine, configure it the way you want it, then send Dell the disk drive and tell them to load that on *all* your machines - try getting HP to do that...
You can certainly talk to a Dell sales rep about 70 PCs, you can even talk to a Dell sales rep about 5 PCs - I haven't tried talking to them about 1 PC yet though.
Re:Bring it on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense.
We just have to point out the fact that most larger businesses throw away the bundled OEM-XP-home licenses anyway because they have their own licenses (which of course would no longer be needed if you have Linux).
And of course smaller businesses tend to buy whitebox or cheap systems which can be often had without Linux.
Re:Bring it on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what. Large businesses do install their systems from scratch. It's called imagining. Did you really think they drop, for example, an HP system with all those additional HP OS 'enhancements' cold onto the network, or sit in front of each box in a 1000 computer shipment with install discs? All Buck demonstrated was that he didn't spend any time talking to IT departments, which is hardly 'trying' to
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:3, Insightful)
He's talking about corporate purchases; where the company buys off the shelf, simply re-buying "their standard configuration" each time another cubicle needs filling. These kinds of customers don't build their PC from bits, you fool!
And they DO worry about tiny differences in price; because they get multiplied out by the hundreds of boxes getting bought by the whole company.
Get a brain before using your keyboard, FFS.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:2)
I guess this isn't usually true in the corporate world.
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the "Microsoft tax" is not just on the purchase price of the first year's license, it's on the all the years following.
Second, if corporations are too stupid to figure out how to save money, they should be out of business.
And everybody knows MOST corporations - the bigger the better - are LOUSY at figuring out how to save money. Which is why they spend most of their time raising prices, cutting customer service and having their accountants nickle and dime the IRS.
Because management are morons.
As
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:2)
I know one that did, at least four years ago. They had a PC department that constructed white-box PC's out of commodity components.
I don't know if they still do it, since desktop prices have dropped to the point that it is difficult to save much money by doing it yourself.
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:5, Interesting)
For techies, building your own or going with not so mainstream manufacturers isn't a problem.
But for W. McDonald Buck, retired CTO of World Bank, he wants a big name, 1st tier manufacturer to supply his PC, not Joe Bobs PC Hardware Shack.
The point Buck makes is:
The boxes with Windows are less expensive than the boxes without.
Or to be more accurate:
It looks to me, however, like the Microsoft monopoly has such a stranglehold on the tier 1 manufacturers that it is now not possible for a corporate shopper to save money by avoiding Windows unless they are prepared to go outside the first tier...... Small businesses may buy computers this way if they have or hire somebody tech savvy to help them, but I don't think this is how your average homeowner buys, and I know it isn't how large companies buy.
Which is the main point he makes. The big players, including IBM, are still shills for the Microsoft tax.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:3, Insightful)
The title of the article is Corporate Desktop Linux. Corporations don't piece their systems together.
So he purposely misstates any facts and says that windows is cheaper because some pricey manufacturers choose to sell windows for less than linux installed machines. This is silly too because you can just buy the chjeaper windows defau
You don't need to buy piece by piece (Score:3, Informative)
Forex, one wholesaler is offering 2.4GHz Celery, 256MB, 40GB, CD, Floppy for AUD$399exGST. With XP Home OEM, AUD$514; with XP Pro OEM, AUD$584; with 98SE OEM, AUD$578. Their home page proudly displays the Microsoft logo, too, and until recently had a direct link to their "piracy" (as in, "We're going to
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:3, Insightful)
I would probably go with Dell/HP/IBM because it is actually a better value because your time and the staffs time costs money too and you also need to save your b
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:2)
Assuming it's true that you can do that, businesses would be stupid to do that. (The last time I checked it wasn't, simply because big manufacturers like Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM, etc., get such a big discount on bulk hardware orders that it is cheaper for them to buy the parts than it it for you.)
Do you know how much time and effort
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:2)
Your response is a typical
Listen, I'll
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway... have you ever worked for a large company, say, a bank or large corporate office, with procurement policies? I think you haven't, otherwise you would know that just telling them "Just buy a couple hundred motherboards, HDD's, CPU's, RAM sticks, cases, monitors, keyboards and mice and have your techie guy working in the basement put them together for you over your lunch break and install Linux on them." just ain't gonna fly. They are large companies, they do business, their business is not computers, but they need computers to run their business, so they look for other large companies that assure them that they are getting solid computers that will get the job done. They're going to buy Dell, or HP, or IBM. They are *not* going to show up at Bob's Discount Linux Shop and order a couple hundred desktops. And they are not going to give their one IT guy back in the server room a pile of components. They are going to go with a large supplier who will deliver a bunch of pre-built, pr-econfigured machines that they can plug into their network, put their username and password in, and get to work.
As for mom and dad and grandma, you try telling them to buy the components and build it themselves. Or telling them to go to Bob's Discount Linux Shop when they can get the same computer with an OS they allready know, and often for a couple hundred dollars less thanks to the discounts the big companies offer that small shops just can't match. They want a computer thay can buy, plug in, and start sharing pictures. They don't know, or care, about Linux or wether it's better/cheaper/sexier. They didn't buy a windows machine. They bought a Dell.
The point the guy makes in the article is completely valid: Unless and until large suppliers like Dell/HP/IBM make computers preconfigured with some flavour of Linux available, and make them cheaper than a comparable Windows box, then Linux will never be 'cheaper' or 'free' to the 99% of people out there who aren't geeks like us.
As a bit of background on me, I also work with Windows 2000-2003 *and* Linux servers for a living, in an environment where we have all our outward-facing machines running Linux and acting as webservers/webapp servers/firewalls/VPN server, and inside the network itself we've got several Windows 2000 and 2003 servers running Active Directory, Exchange, and several proprietary apps that require a server component running on a Windows NT-variant, and a client component running on a Windows desktop. Point is, I work with both Windows and Linux servers and desktops on a daily basis, I have some idea what I'm talking about.
Re:Well he ignores one big fact (Score:2)
I agree with all of your points except that one. Everybody who doesn't want to switch to Linux says "but I know Windows and I don't know Linux". In fact, most of the people I've talked to *don't* know Windows; they know by rote 4 or 5 tasks they use for their job or personal life. They are just as clueless about using Windows as they are about Linux. And thanks to Knoppix, I have now proven
Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. (Score:2)
Re:How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. (Score:2)
Re:Dumbass, Your'e a Banker or a MS shill? (Score:2)
This is only Part I of a series. Let's see what he says next time.
Here, he is talking specifically about one and only one of the main tenets of why a corp should switch to Linux, i.e. saving money on the Windows license. He is not going into the entire lifecycle TCO.
Re:Dumbass, Your'e a Banker or a MS shill? (Score:2)
Please continue with your apologia though.
Re:Dumbass, Your'e a Banker or a MS shill? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try WalMart (Score:2)
They already have. [walmart.com]
Re:Article before the slashdot effect kicks in... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course we were buying some serious hardware and they knew we were going to be getting support for it as well for a long time. But even less serious corporate buyers will never be buying a
What CEO goes to del.com??? (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, I second the note. No large-compamny CEO in his right mind is going to pay the stock prices at dell.com or ibm.com. They're going to call up their personal sales rep and say "I'm buying 4000 machines next month. What's the price without Windows?".
The people who have little choice but to pay stock price at the tier-1 manufacturers are also the same ones who have half a dozen friends who can point them to a local grey-box manufacturer who can give them a much better price with better local support. (i.e. they won't go: "Your CD died?? Well, first you have to load Windows on your box, then you have to reinstall it.").
For me, it's literally the computer store next door (OK: 2 doors down). He'll sell me a cheap box for $285CDN (about $230US) without windows, and another $100 ($80USD) for XP home.
The reason why Microsoft makes it so hard to get boxes without Windows at places like DEL and IBM is that they know that if home users can get easy access to Linux, they'll talk about how well it works when they get to work, and that'll infiltrate to the CEO who'll start a pilot project on the corporate desktop.
They also don't want corporate CEOs to just buy their $3000 home box with Linux installed on it 'on a lark' and (once again) find out just how much functionality and security they get (see previous paragraph).
Throw windows out with the packaging (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Article before the slashdot effect kicks in... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Article before the slashdot effect kicks in... (Score:3, Insightful)
If that's a correct summary, then he's urging acceptance of what is likely to be a highly volatile status quo. That seems simultaneously fatalistic and a bit silly.
Re:A golden opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)