[Gllug] The total cost of ownership to Ealing Council

[Christopher Hunter]

On Sun, 2009-09-06 at 20:32 +0100, Caroline Ford wrote:

> One workplace decided not to run anti-virus software which was really
> clever.

Using a proper operating system effectively obviates that problem.

>  Obviously gawd knows where those sticks have been.

The same with floppies, USB hard drives and all the rest.

>  The other workplace with the non-outsourced IT support has encrypted usb sticks.
> Alas they don't work on linux.

They can be made to!

> USB sticks are how people do work. Banning them shows a lack of
> understanding of this.

Correct.

> I'm not sure how to respond to this thread as I don't think some of
> you know how offices work. The costs of moving to linux are
> considerably more than the costs of conflickr.

Actually, that's completely wrong.  The costs associated with corrupted
data, insecure servers and malware using your machines for spam are
considerably higher!

>  You'd have to train the entire workforce as they come pre-trained in 
> windows. 

Last migration I did required < 20 minutes "training" per employee.

> You'd have to rewrite all your documents that require features of MS 
> Office.

That's seldom any hardship, as those documents have to get converted
every time a new version of "Office" comes out, and often wrong because
the FOSS "Office" software handles Windows document formats.  The FOSS
office software that's about today is usually easier to use than the
Windoze "equivalent", and it's never a problem to get users to use
"Writer" instead of "Word".  If you really have die-hard Windows users,
you can make KDE look identical to Windows, and fake all the program
names, if you must!

> It is very easy to forget how IT illiterate normal people are.

Not at all.  I'm often surprised by how easily users pick up a new
application.

>  Work got rid of real faxes and replaced them with this e-fax thing. Not
> only was it implemented in a broken way but the users couldn't work it
> either to see that it was broken.

That's fairly typical of corporate stupidity - it's easily overcome by
firing the more stupid managers, and retraining the rest.  You could
start with the fool who thought that e-fax would be a "good idea"...

C.



-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug