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Matt Lee wrote: >I guess one question I'd ask... what is it about 'open source' that >you want to promote to your clients? > >matt > > Well I think the main advantage my clients would look at is the fact they could replace their costly Windows Desktops & Servers with software which they don't have to worry about licence fees. I've worked at various places in the past which have been tied in with that Microsoft Software Assurance. A lot of the people I've spoken to (usually customers, friends and family) aren't overly bothered what they're running on their PCs, as long as they can do what they need to, which is usually browse the internet, send & receive e-mails, type up documents in a wordprocessor. What I have found is they aren't keen on upgrading their PCs just to use the latest software. For instance, a customer of mine who lives in Sussex, bought an iPod for their son for christmas. Their old PC was running Windows ME which won't work with iTunes. Now she wanted to buy a new PC, which I quoted for. I told her that she could still make use of the old PC by using a router to share her broadband connection. Since the PC is fairly old now and hardly worth spending money on (i.e. upgrading memory, CPU & hard disk), I suggested that she could consider running Linux on the PC. I've also been taking into consideration some customers who are still running old Windows NT & Novell servers. These poor old customers aren't going to be able to get any updates, at least for Windows NT anymore, so their choices are either upgrade to Windows 2000 (which as far as I know, hasn't got much support life left), or replace the old servers with something newer like Windows Server 2003. I think rather than these companies paying out say £225 + VAT for a Windows Server 2003 licence (price quoted from a trade magazine for Windows 2003 Server Small Business Standard Edition with 5 client access licences), they may find that they could just pay out for the hardware and use Linux instead and still get the same sort of features. >From a support point of view, I also find the updates without having to reboot the system to be a god send, not having to schedule a reboot out of hours, with the risk that the systems may not come back up! (Okay, I know you need to reboot for kernel updates). Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html