wow...I knew windows would be expensive, but not THAT expensive

[CP]

But that would be the case in a medium to large business. In a small to medium business you wont have same huge number of people. You may have one network manager, and the change doesn't have to happen overnight. If you have a small business and you only have 2-3 people to train, then the cost difference would be significant.

[cga]

I can speak from experience here. My company has 13 offices and about 180 employees. We run a SuSE Linux mail server and RedHat servers for samba. Still using Win2k and XP for the users, as we have to use Windows specific software like AutoCAD. We have two IT guys for the whole company. Our servers are all comodity PCs. The IT guys migrated to Linux after M$ pulled the NT lisences from the company, which is what the servers ran before.

Since we buy our laptops from regular dealers, they come with Windows preinstalled anyway, so we do not have any "deals" with M$.

The company is looking into running Ximian + Redhat + OpenOffice for users who do not need AutoCAD, but even I have to run stuff life AquaSolve, which only runs on Windoze and many states require the use of specific custom software for work in Risk Based Assesments, and that software only runs on Windows. Iowa's software is writen in Visual Basic

But moving the backend of small companies to Linux is cake, and M$ can be damned about supporting 98, NT, ME, whatever- if it came with the computer, you can still run it, with or without their blessing.

[Kernel_Killer]

I can see your point in samll businesses. I'm using my my work as an example, where 8000 employees reside. Just Customer Service alone has at least 50 people covering all 3 shifts.

I have to say, while small businesses are small, this type of delimma should be overcome, or at least have a good plan of action in the future.

[TeRG]

[quote author=Master Copy link=board=13;threadid=8013;start=0#msg73090 date=1067210432]
I think you missed the point. Training the end-users would be an easy task. I'm talking about network managers, customer service, security analysts, database programmers, etc, etc. You expect them to go from M$ to a completely foriegn OS overnight?
[/quote]

you expect a company with 10 computers to have all of that? customer service is the only one that my dad's company has, and they have 11 computers and 50-something employees (most dont get to even touch computers though) and the customer service uses stuff like excell and peach tree, both have free alternatives