[Technical] Interestingcomputers-in-education

[Clark, Ian C]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tech-bounces at edulists.com.au 
> I am also aware that by opening up the tender to competition 
> from other firms, besides Microsoft, the savings can 
> potentially be even greater. Why not do that? That's all I'm asking.

Hi Con,

You still don't accept that it's embarrassing to offer a product
different to the one the customer (who might be an individual or a
company or a government organisation) actually wants! That's the reverse
of modern marketing theory!

It has to be asked, if Linux is free, why there are home users who still
buy Windoze when they've already tried Linux off a copy of PC User
Magazine, and IT Departments of corporations and government departments
who choose to go with the Evil Empire even though Unix is something
they've known all their adult lives.

The answer is that these people have already decided what they want -
despite propaganda from Micro$oft and from groups like the political
lobbyists you're an organizer of (Open Source Victoria, who have been
the beneficiary of our tax dollars too). 

They want the right products for their situation, and like books or wine
or holidays, shockingly, these might not be the cheapest ones.

If you don't acknowledge that, you're underrating us all, and marketing
your products is going to be bl**dy hard! :-)

Apple users love their OS, and there would be no point calling them
idiots because they could download and use for free the BSD Unix it's
based on. In getting prices for teacher Macintosh notebooks, the
Department was not interested in insulting staff by awarding a cheaper
tender to Macs with YellowDog Linux preinstalled on them. The minority
who want to do that can do it themselves for nothing. Novell
administrators will end up getting best value by paying for Novell's
Linux SLES, not downloading some free version of SUSE Linux, even though
it comes from the same developers. 

No, I believe people will pay money for the right product, and I think
you do too. You reckon that instead of recycling Pentium 200s with
Terminal Services, customers will buy fifty computers that don't have
hard disks for $30000 to $40000 (
http://www.cybersource.com.au/product/trimclient/ ), or they'll go for
an open source intranet (even though I can't see the link that should be
there to download its code for free) that costs $5000 (
http://www.cybersource.com.au/product/eduflow/ )!


> > 
> > A single Red Hat Workstation has an annual fee of three hundred US 
> > dollars. http://www.redhat.com.au/software/rhel/compare/client/
> 
> Why on earth would a student need a corporate-supported 
> desktop workstations? You would give them Fedora. Same code, 
> minus the corporate support. 
> 
> I take it you know that most of the $300 fee for RHEL is for support?
> 
> I take it you know that you get no (non-installation) support 
> from Microsoft for that $22 million?


Of course customers receive support.  The Department is an Enterprise
customer, and couldn't have rolled out its complex infrastructure
without Micro$oft's help and advice. 

For those on a smaller budget, businesses get phone and web support for
just about every issue imaginable at $300 per incident, unless it's an
installation, bug or documentation problem, in which case it's free.
http://support.microsoft.com/?ln=en-au&id=fh;en-au;offerpers 

For home users, it's $50 per incident
http://support.microsoft.com/?ln=en-au&id=fh;en-au;offerprof

Obviously, for other companies, support is their *real* earner - it
works for IBM, covering up the losses in other areas of their
operations, and Sun's hoping to do the same with supporting open source
Solaris. If I bought tech support for a year from Cybersource for a
single Linux server I could be up for a fixed annual fee of $5000,
whether I had a problem or not!
http://www.cybersource.com.au/support/rh-support.html

> Why pay the $22 million at all?
> 
> Fedora Core 4 will cost you $0 per PC per year. 
> 
> And it ships with 100 times as many applications as you list 
> on Sofweb.

Because you'll get the best of the proprietary software *and* more of
the best free software, of course. You can have Cubase, Premiere,
Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Exchange and SQL Server as well as The Gimp,
Audacity, Squid, Apache, Firefox, Virtual Dub and MySQL.


> With my deal, _every_ student (and teacher) can install more 
> zero cost applications at home. That's even _more_ amazing. ;-)

Why do they have to deal with you, Con? That's underrating us users
again. Everyone can download Fedora Core 4 for themselves, and then go
to Freshmeat or Sourceforge. There's no need for us to pay a company for
free software. There are schools in Victoria that have done that for
themselves, right now.

If I returned to teaching, I'd insist my IT students did all their work
on Linux, because I think they get easily enough exposure to the
'mainstream' OS. And if my colleagues didn't want me touching the
workstations' hard drives, I'd have the kids running off a CD distro
like Mandrake Move, that I'd burn for nothing, and that the kids were
free to take home.

And I might even checkout the LiveLAMP 'server off a CD' distro you guys
are developing!  ;-)  

Cheers,
Clarky



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