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As this is on the web... On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 06:38:43PM +0000, james kilty wrote: > > > Whilst the up front costs of a Microsoft Desktop compared to it's > Freeware Linux counterpart may appear to favour the Linux route, the > total cost of ownership would show a different picture. The additional > work required on the Linux platform to create an integrated set of > tools, which is out of the box functionality for Mirosoft would very > quickly overtake any initial purchase savings, as has been experienced > by Penwith. This is outside of the argument for the business to be able > to quickly respond to changing needs. > OK this is the key paragraph and basically what they are saying is that they refuse to compare "apples to apples " and instead want to compare "apples to oranges". Lets break it down - Microsoft has an annual licensing cost, and this will be for perpetuity. - Openoffice is free but has a one-off conversion cost (we can argue exactly what cost, and while I would accept it is real; I doubt it is significant in the scheme of things) - Then there are the additional costs / issues. Archival of records, tailoring of the system, lower disk space etc etc etc The question is at what point does the one off upfront conversion fee become equal to a perpetual low cost? If CCC believe that the perpetual smaller fee is always less than a larger upfront payment, then given their credit rating I am sure we can do a deal that will make us rich (and CCC much poorer). This is a classic problem and to solve it you need to find the present value of the future license fees The formula in OpenOffice is "Present Value" and as an example at 6% interest, £20 cost pa for 20 years is the equivalent to a cost of £229.40 today Finally there is the example of Bristol who showed that converting to Openoffice cost £1.6m, but staying with MS would have cost £10m or so (I have forgotten the exact figures) > The council does not rely entirely on the use of Microsoft products, and > have Unix and Linux systems deployed to run some of the most critical > database systems used in the authority. The council uses the right tool > for the right job - the Microsoft platform on the desktop where > interoperability and flexibility is required, and Linux to run the > council's largest databases where security and performance is critical. > This seems to be copied word for word from the Devon County Council.... :) > As a footnote, early tests for the latest release of the Office product > shows that when using the compatibility download, there is forward and > backward compatibility for files created in either Office 2002, 2003, or > 2007. The council has seamlessly and automatically deployed this > compatibility pack to all of its computers." > This is red herring. Is office compatible with international standards? -- Henry Wed Mar 26 20:30:47 GMT 2008
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