Energy Company Refutes Windows TCO Claims

apt-get writes "Computerworld Australia has a gem of a case study on Country Energy with comments from an IT manager that shoot down Microsoft's 'objective' Windows TCO claims. My favourite; 'we get to see both sides and Windows is not cheaper at all'. Interestingly, in almost every area of its critical IT infrastructure, open source and commercial software work in peace together. The IT manager even says not having MS Office on Linux is a hindrance to its desktop take up."

Comments

mS office on Linux

[nomaan]

I can agree wuth that. i tried selling linux with open office idea to the adminstrative types, and they were like, no we need Ms office.

Re:mS office on Linux

[Negatyfus]

We definately need Office. It integrates well with all sorts of other software, like telex and fax solutions. Also, we have a server-client application that runs Linux on the server, but-- get this-- has been written towards Microsoft's Java VM on the client! Sun's VM runs it much slower on the clients.

Anyway... such tie-ins make it hard to migrate to Linux. I'm not even talking about disgruntled users having to learn something new (computer illiterates abound!).

Re:mS office on Linux

[diersing]

And to really get your bang out of office, you'll need to run Exchange, which of course requires Active Directory...... you see a pattern here?

Having MS Office on Linux isn't the problem, users who believe they HAVE to have MS Office is. That bit of software your business needs, just needs to be rewritten to open standards and if enough clients start to leave SoftwareCompanyX, believe me, they'll write it. Or find the same integreation with Evolution.

Question - since MSJVM isn't available for distribution (from MS, I know what I can find with google) why hasn't that piece of software been rewritten to work better with Sun VM? You need to demand more from your vendors, or if you're going to drink the MS punch, don't make comments about migrating to Linux. I've migrating companies to linux and all were estatic with the final results. They were quite suprised how easy it was.

Re:mS office on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

so download the source and rename the application names.

I'm betting that 90% of msoffice users will not know the difference.

I did that here, replaced IE on all desktops with firebird + a IE skin.

nobody noticed anything changed.

most of the time it's resistance to change, even when there is very little change.

Re:mS office on Linux

[visgoth]

The "I _NEED_ Office" mentality is quite well hammered into average users. When I used to work at a certain office supply big box store (I was young, and needed the money!), at least four times a week someone would come in and ask for a full out copy of office. They would then freak out at the price and ask things like "why is this so expensive?!". Most of these people honestly didn't need all of office. A basic word processor, spreadsheet and email program were all they'd really need. I'd usually mention openoffice, and scrawl down a url for them to take home. Maybe that's why I didn't last long working in that dive :) MS seems to have done an exceedingly good job at promoting the idea that your pc is useless without having a copy of office running on it.

Re:mS office on Linux

[Negatyfus]

Given the problems we've had over the last years getting this software package to run right for us, I don't think porting it all over right now would sit well with management. We've invested a lot of money and can't really back out now. Full migration to Linux desktops would be years away. In fact, we just bought brand new 2.6GHz machines with WinXP Pro. In fact, WinXP Pro isn't that bad at all, if the Microsoft company wasn't behind it. Anyway, the software company has been rewriting the software to have better Sun VM support, but it's still underway. It works, but much slower. Listen, you gotta understand how many problems we've had with this company! Sure, we should just sue 'em, but that doesn't get us the results we want: a working software package. They're getting off their butts-- slowly. We've gone higher up a while ago and it seems to work. Actually, we were a pilot program for a new target audience of their software package. They've invested as much as we did, so it's a trade-off. Suffice it to say that some bad decisions have been made before my time, but now we're kinda stuck with it.

Re:mS office on Linux

[ckaminski]

Throwing good money after bad isn't always the smartest option. If you're vendor is truly responsive to your needs, by all means, stick it out. If they're not however, don't be afraid to make the threat of dumping them. Because they're obviously not looking out for you, their customer.

I do understand what you're going through. I'm having similar problems as well with a particular vendor who seems to think MS SQL Server, IE 6 and Windows 2000 are all that exist in the world.

Re:mS office on Linux

[fzammett]

I'm asking this as a legitimate question, not trying to troll...

Does OpenOffice, or any other office suite for that matter, have something as powerful and easy to use as VB For Applications?

Because I can tell you that's the primary thing that would keep my company (and the vast majority of the companies we deal with) from moving away from Office. I'd also be willing to bet we're not unusual in that regard.

Not so much because we already have tons of complex macros written that we wouldn't want to convert, but simply because it IS so powerful and relatively simple. We do some truly sick shit with VBA.

Note also that I'm NOT talking about simple macros to recalculate cell values and such. I'm talking about the ability to pop open a form on top of a spreadsheet with a bunch of buttons on it, each that execute hundreds or even thousands lines of complex code, some of which upload and download files via FTP, some of which make use of other Office apps via automation to do various things, and then export out the resultant data as a Viso document with an Excel spreadsheet embedded and links to a presentation that was generated and uploaded to a web site at the same time. Yes, we have some that do most of that, and some that do more. Let's not get into the debate about whether that was the right way to do things, because it's a much larger discussion, and the bottom line is that if the people in charge say do it using those tools, you either do so or look for another job, so it is what it is, and that's that.

If another office suite could match that capability, I doubt we'd have much incentive to stay with Office, but it truly would have to match or exceed that capability, and to the best of my knowledge, no other suite can do that.

Am I mistaken?

Re:mS office on Linux

[visgoth]

"Does OpenOffice, or any other office suite for that matter, have something as powerful and easy to use as VB For Applications?"

I'm not sure, I mainly use the word processor and spreadsheet, and only in their most basic ways. A good place to start checking out what OpenOffice can do would be here Also, remember that it is a free download. You could grab a copy, and poke around to see if it does what you want, all without having to resort to warez.

Re:mS office on Linux

[wasabii]

Yes. It's called open basic or some such. It is somewhat VBA compatible, but not totally, and lets you do REALLY COOL things with Java. You can write Java classes (which are really easy to write), and import/call them in VBA. Much easier than writing a DLL in VB6 or .Net and registering a COM object and some such.

Re:mS office on Linux

[poot_rootbeer]

so download the source and rename the application names.

I'm betting that 90% of msoffice users will not know the difference. ...at least, not until they email an (OO-native format) spreadsheet to someone that has MS Office and get the response "I can't open this!"

Re:mS office on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

They're indoctrinated at an early age. The Bill And Melinda Foundation donates computers to libraries that only can run Windows and MS products, the local school districts provide nothing but MS products, then they go to college where they buy WinXPP for $10, Office for $20.
They don't know about choice, and when they get to the PHB level they don't care too much about the cost, they want to be able to use what's familiar.

Re:mS office on Linux

[daem0n1x]

As a junior, I worked in the Oracle IT department, and MS Access was forbidden in any computer in there. I found it really weird, because at the time I thought Access was a pretty useful tool. It still is, at home, I mean.

Later I understood the reasons for forbidding Access. I worked for many customers who had their backoffices full of really shitty applications built on top of Access, Excel and VBA. I mean, they had their whole business built on that! More than a couple times I had to debug horrible stuff made by the local programmer wannabe, usually a financial or sales guy with no knowledge whatsoever of computer engineering, who learned a little bit of VBA and started coding away, turning his office in an intricate mess of redundant data, scattered files, and very shitty VB code.

Even worse is when some company has its customer database in Access, and each employee in the sales department has a local copy that they update regularly until nobody can track accurate information about anything anymore. Then every guy starts giving the others his password so they can read his files! Help!

And when we tell the manager their stuff is completely unsupportable and propose that they buy a suitable application or have a custom one built, the guy starts crying like a baby about the price of it. Sooner or later they will have to make that decision, but only after spending thousands in support, calling us every week to customise a little shit here or solve a little bug there. Not trying to put you down, though. If you work with VBA, and it works, my congratulations. You must be a pro.

Re:mS office on Linux

[azaroth42]

OpenOffice has multiple levels at which you can extend it. There's OpenOffice Basic, which is more powerful than just simple macros, but less powerful than your examples above.

Secondly, there's UNO bindings for C++, Java and (less well implemented) Python. From here you can do A Lot Of Stuff, including your examples, with ease. Additions like this don't require recompiling OO, they can be distributed (simple zip file) and linked with a single command (pkgchk)

Thirdly, as it's OSS, you could just hack the source code directly, though obviously option 2 is better.

-- Azaroth

Re:mS office on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Does OpenOffice, or any other office suite for that matter, have something as powerful and easy to use as VB For Applications?

OpenOffice 1.1 supports automation via Python scripting (http://udk.openoffice.org/python/python-bridge.ht ml).

You might find that Python is a much easier to use and powerful language than VB for this sort of task.

Porting...

[bendelo]

As for open source on the desktop systems, Peters said although most of the applications are Webbased, a nonnative version of Lotus Notes for Linux and the lack of Microsoft Office are impediments to Linux on the desktop

I wonder how long it will be until Lotus Notes is ported to Linux? Although OpenOffice is improving all the time, would this company rather have MS Office on Linux (shudder) or a vastly comparitive open source product?

Re:Porting...

[Erwos]

A while ago (year or two ago), IBM visited my university. One of the first things that came up was Lotus Notes on Linux, or lack thereof.

Basically, the IBM guy said the code of Notes was an absolute mess, and that porting it to Linux would be more trouble than it's worth. So, it might be ported, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

-Erwos

Re:Porting...

[Erwos]

So Lotus Notes under WINE is a supported configuration? I kind of doubt it.

When businesses want something, they generally don't want a messy hack. They want something that's supported by the vendor. IBM is NOT going to be supporting Notes under WINE.

-Erwos

Re:Porting...

[monkeyfinger]

One advantage of OpenOffice is that it runs on windows and linux. If I was an admin planning to switch to linux then I would install openoffice and get people used to it before the switch took place.

Re:Porting...

[p4ul13]

Nitpicking here; but Lotus Notes is eMail and application databases, and it runs rather well under Wine, but I'd love to see it run native.

You might be thinking of Lotus SmartSuite, which is a pretty good office package, and I think it'll run well under wine, but again it would be great running native.

Re:Porting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Office on Linux would destroy Windows. Office is by far the best productivity suite available and the most widely accepted. I know that now that our GL software has a web-based option there would be nothing holding us back from switching to Linux.

And before anybody disputes my claims about Office. I can tell you from the users perspective it is the best. I know hundreds of people who would rather using pen and paper then give up Excel. Word is probably the weakest link (there are a lot of good word processors out there). Powerpoint has equal and barring viruses Outlook is the best PIM.

Re:Porting...

[Anonymous Coward]

domino is already on linux

I know people inside ibm running notes on linux, using Wine. For a discussion on the pros/cons of a linux Notes client see this article.

Re:Porting...

[jusdisgi]

Read it again. He doesn't say Lotus Notes needs WINE...he alledges that it's native, and then says the company should run *office* under WINE.

Now, another reply says that only the Notes server runs on Linux, and that the client does not. And frankly, I don't know which is right.

Also...about the "supported configuration" deal...if you get Crossover Office with the intention of running MS Office on Linux, the Crossover people support the application.

Re:Porting...

[garcia]

Back when I was in college at BGSU and the method of checking email was telnet to one of four different SunOS servers to use Pine, someone came in and "revamped" everything so that we could covert to Lotus Notes. They upgraded hardware, software, and pushed Notes on everyone. Sure, you *could* use any old POP equipped mail client but anywhere on campus you could only check your mail with Notes.

It was a major flop. The software was seriously crappy, it was slow, and it was quickly dropped in favor of POP clients and now webmail (which from what I understand still sucks).

The code may be messy but the application itself is a POS and isn't likely to be picked up by users.

Re:Porting...

[Sique]

In fact Excel is the only part of MS Office that is really good :) And Visio has an unrivalled number of stencils for it, so all line drawing monkeys (like me) are using it.

For all other parts of MS Office (Word, Access, PowerPoint) I prefer other solutions. And I especially hate MS's spellchecking. Because I am fighting with it until I have it switched off. It is good for nothing to me. But maybe that's because the words I am making spelling errors in aren't in MS's dictionaries anyway. And the nagging feature of correcting words starting with two uppercase letters always gets into the way while writing program or other technical documentation. Basicly everytime I try to adapt spellchecking to my needs I end up with having all features switched off.

When it comes to Outlook and Exchange I barely use anything outside blank text via SMTP. So Outlook is a piece of bloat to me, and Exchange features are just there to be set wrong and creating havoc. :)

Re:Porting...

[ciggieposeur]

I wonder how long it will be until Lotus Notes is ported to Linux? Although OpenOffice is improving all the time, would this company rather have MS Office on Linux (shudder) or a vastly comparitive open source product?

Never.

Lotus has announced repeatedly that they are never going to port Notes 5+ to the linux/unix desktop. And now that WINE is capable of running Notes 5 they have even less incentive.

In 1999 IBM Server Group was literally only two days away from receiving the source code to the Notes 4.6 client and they were going to port it to linux for internal use. The Lotus higher-level managers cancelled the deal. (Even though the 4.5 client for AIX had been ported to linux, then re-ported again to AIX with better stability and performance.) With the 5.0 release they dropped support for AIX and OS/2.

Inside IBM, Lotus still behaves like a separate company and basically never give out their code to other IBM groups. I don't know who precisely is sleeping with who, but clearly there's some bad mojo at work here.

To reiterate: we will NEVER see a native Notes client for linux. Support the Evolution folks instead. Their client is very similar, and if it ever supports the Domino server natively that will be our Notes client.

Re:Porting...

[jimlintott]

I think you have perfectly described what I consider to be MS Office's greatest weakness. To most Office users it is single app. It is a spreadsheet or a word processor or a presentation creator, it is seldom all things to the user. That Microsoft has managed to bundle all these apps together and sell them all to every user is the greatest marketing achievement ever. Yes, I do know that Office is capable of a high level of integration, the fact is that few users go there. Most Office users would be fine with just the single app they focus on.

Disclaimer - I have loathed word processors for twenty years now. MS Word is at the top of that list. So I am certainly biased. To be fair, I don't like Open Office either.

Re:Porting...

[richie2000]

Notes as only an e-mail client is indeed seriously crappy. Notes as a groupware package shines. When was this, BTW? If it was eight years ago or more, a die-hard Lotushead probably should have pushed cc:Mail on you instead of Notes.

Or maybe they had plans to use the database and document sharing functionality in Notes but never got around to it? That would be a good, valid reason to use Notes. There are many, many reasons to use Notes, but e-mail isn't one of them.

Re:Porting...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I don't like Open Office either.

Someone didn't take the blue pill did they? ;-)

Re:Porting...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Basically, the IBM guy said the code of Notes was an absolute mess

Having worked with notes that does not surprise me. What does surprise me is that an IBM guy would admit that. Usually when I ask the local IBM rep about buggy software he gets this distant zombie like look in his eyes and responds with the same mantra (in a hollow, mechanical voice):

It will be fixed in the next version....

Re:Porting...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I've used both OO and Office. I have Office at my day job and on my wife's home computer and OO on my home computer. OO is much slower. The interface isn't as nice, i.e. it's not as easy to get things done. The startup time is abysmal (P4 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM)...open a spreadsheet, go get a cup of coffee while it opens (ok, it's not that bad but it feels like it). My demands on an office suite are not great - I use a spreadsheet for time tracking mostly (sometimes I'll work with data) and I use the word processor for letters, invoices, fax cover sheets, the occasional mailing label.

The large company I work for during the day has a deal with Microsoft where I can get the full version of the latest Office for $20. I'm going to be ordering that and dumping OO, because even for my modest needs I find OO cumbersome and annoying.

While one advantage of OO is it runs on multiple platforms, the big downside is it is a hinderance to productivity. Labor is expensive - the cost of Office for the office is less than the time spent wrestling with an immature product.

Re:Porting...

[RMH101]

nah, think of all the cost implications of those nerf wars in the cubicles, and the health and safety issues caused by all those mac boys hanging their mountain bike on the office walls...

Re:Porting...

[Anonymous Coward]

>The interface isn't as nice, i.e. it's not as easy to get things done.
depends on what you use it for....depends on who you ask..etc...

>The startup time is abysmal
try loading it into memory right after boot....and leave it there mister 512mb RAM.

>I use a spreadsheet for time tracking mostly
there are other programs besides OO, you know?

>The large company I work for during the day has a deal with Microsoft where I can get the full version of the latest Office for $20.
Sounds great...not many other people have such a great deal, and many people are trying to get away from being locked-in to MS products. Oh yeah, and MS doesnt like to play with all the other boys and girls, rather they try to break them. Take, say, Corel WordPerfect. It took many hours trying to diagnose problems with it only to find out that Office INTENTIONALLY tried to crash it. So if OO doesnt seem great on a Win machine, perhaps you should compare it to that running on linux...just to calibrate how correct a feel you are getting in terms of speed, memory, and stability.

> the big downside is it is a hinderance to productivity.
depends on what you use it for....depends on who uses it...depends on who you ask..etc...

Re:Porting...

[Pyrrus]

Just think of the backwork written in past MSoffice.

Just think of the fact that OO can read .doc files.

Re:Porting...

[24-bit Voxel]

There must be some sort of conflict between some drivers or processes in your machine. OO does indeed open slow for today's speed capabilities, but it's still under 4 seconds.

It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools. When I show up for work if the boss says I am working in Maya this week, I work in maya. If it's Studio Max that next week, I work in Max. (Hell, I had to work in TrueSpace once, not so bad once you learn it.) Yeah, they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but the important thing is that I am still able to get the job done, regardless of the renderer/3d engine. If I am able to handle working in different 3d platforms, why is it that 'normal' office users can't do the stupid TPS report in whatever is placed in front of them. It really pisses me off. I have to take college level physics and learn some fundamental AI as an artist, but some business guy can't even learn OO? It's truly a shame.

I am glad I am not the boss of someone who can't handle a different software package. I would be forced to fire them because they are clearly not able to 'grow' on the job. It's my opinion that the first priority is that the job gets done, how it gets done falls in second.

With all due respect, how hard could it be to do "word processor for letters, invoices, fax cover sheets, the occasional mailing label"? It's not rocket science, and doesn't require a huge amount of macros to do. If you can't work in multiple/different softwares, I am sure there is a new-comer college grad who would love your job for less that CAN do it, and will get a kick out of using something that is not the norm.

Signed, 24-bit Voxel

Re:Porting...

[tedgyz]

Lotus is the most hienous piece of crap ever to infect a computer. It's worse than Windows for pure evil factor.

I coded to their C API and found it to be a horrible mess. The API exposes all kinds of stupid artifacts of the internal database and file storage architecture. The API forces all clients, including their own client and server code to be a twisted mess.

The Java API is an order of magnitude better, but it is layered on top of the C API, so it is simply hiding the horror show underneath.

Lotus should be shot in the head. The best thing they could do is start over. They pretend to support standards, but the database and APIs force all kinds of conversions that end up mutilating the "standard" content. Case in point - I sent a simple HTML file to a colleage from Mozilla. The mess that came out of Lotus looked nothing like my original file.

Re:Porting...

[barzok]

Lotus Notes is eMail and application databases, and it runs rather well under Wine,

So you're saying it runs better under Linux/Wine than it does on Win2000?

Re:Porting...

[dudeman2]

The IBM guy has most likely NEVER seen the Lotus Notes codebase. I have. There are definitely challenges in working with a codebase that's probably three or four times the size of Mozilla (and this was in 1997!), and besides that was evolved from original code written for Windows 2.1 and OS/2 1.3. Nevertheless the codebase was very well designed with an abstraction layer for porting the GUI and many features that were WAY ahead of their time (i.e. complete support for cross platform i18n years before UNICODE) The code was indeed ported to Macintosh, Solaris, HP/UX. (they did not port Notes 5+).

Porting to UNIX or LINUX today is technically feasible. Working with WineLib I am sure they could get a port up and running in a matter of weeks or months. The problem is one of support. Once a port is built, IBM has to QA it. Package it. Sell it. Support it for years. The costs are enormous. Measure that against the projected user base and it just wasn't cost effective. They'd rather spend the money on a web client.

Given that IBM is pushing for Linux desktops internally, the prospect of a Notes client port is more likely. On the other hand, IBM is now pushing new Java based groupware technologies that will naturally run on Linux. Who knows how it'll turn out.

Anyway Notes 5 runs splendidly under Wine and I think support for Notes 6 is on Codeweavers' todo list.

Re:Porting...

[Mr. Shiny And New]

It's not that people can't handle a different software package. They can, if they have to. But any time spent learning that new tool, or re-writing macros, or working around limitations in that tool is time that could be spent doing real work. All of that has to be factored into the cost of switching. In my job, I am required to work in Java or C++, depending on what project I'm working on. I don't get to whine, I just do what I have to. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I am forced to use one or the other depending on the task. But for my office correspondence? It's MS Word. It's there, I use it, I get stuff done. (Though I prefer Word Perfect, myself). Any time not spent messing around with my word processor is time I can spend coding. If my company were to switch to another word processor, they'd have to take into account all the time I, and my other coworkers, would spend messing around with the new program instead of coding. That's the cost of switching.

Re:Porting...

[sloanster]

spoken like a man who hasn't used any recent version of openoffice...

I would have agreed with this having used openoffice 1.0 and Staroffice 6, but I find that with version 1.1 all the complaints I had with openoffice have been fixed.

Your comments about openoffice are about as relevant as somone today complaining about ms windows 3.1

Re:Porting...

[ScuzzMonkey]

It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools.

WTH? You think there is no such thing as poorly written, unresponsive software? I'd say it's a poor craftsman that can't pick his tools... but most of us don't really get the option to choose the right tool for the job in most of our positions.

The idea that all software simply has strengths and weaknesses is overly accepting... certainly, it may have strengths or weaknesses compared to another package, but it may just also be a steaming pile of crap, unless you consider the ability to consume disk space a 'strength'.

Re:Porting...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I am using 1.1. It would be silly of me to complain about an older version.

Re:Porting...

[24-bit Voxel]

That is not my job. That is the job of a secretary.

You only have to train upper management where the templates are. A monkey could do it. I have never heard to a macro using CEO. I don't see how that is relevant. (And you can bet his secretary DOES have the templates.)

Re:Porting...

[BoneFlower]

Odd. Office 2000 is more cumbersome on my system than OO is(my system- Athlon XP2200, 1GB DDR266, WD 7200RPM/8MB cache hard drve- so ok, my system is a bit of overkill for office productivity apps), starts *very* slightly slower, but not much at all. barely noticeable.

As for ease of use, I find OO a lot easier. I don't even know how to do footnotes in MS Office, and I have looked, but I can do it with a right click in OO. That puts a nice little polish onto school papers, gets a few extra points(and wastes a couple lines to help bump up page count:))

Only reason I'm using MS Office mostly these days is its part of one of my courses.

TCO analisys worldwide

[Jotaigna]

I live in Chile and i must say Chilean IT managers are very intrested in this kind of resources. At least 6 big Chilean firms are considering moving existing management, database and mail(the pain of spam beaking throug) to Linux as a safer, cheaper and more reliable alternative. But in general people are affraid since there always will be a Microsofr counterreport saying otherwise. As long as Linux doesnt gain reputation within the corporate world, it'll still be a small idealistic comunity. So TCO i think is the best way to change things theese days.

Re:TCO analisys worldwide

[archeopterix]

I live in Chile and i must say Chilean IT managers are very intrested in this kind of resources. At least 6 big Chilean firms are considering moving existing management, database and mail(the pain of spam beaking throug) to Linux as a safer, cheaper and more reliable alternative. But in general people are affraid since there always will be a Microsofr counterreport saying otherwise. As long as Linux doesnt gain reputation within the corporate world, it'll still be a small idealistic comunity. So TCO i think is the best way to change things theese days.

I've skimmed the Microsoft TCO reports and they boil down to "Linux is more expensive, because it takes more qualified-man-hours to maintain". I think that in countries with lower labor cost this doesn't hold.

Re:TCO analisys worldwide

[Jotaigna]

In Countries like mine, completely dominated by Microsoft you could maliciously justify labour hours by considering the training needed to get suck professionals to a decent Unix level, however, young professionals (like me ;) are very intrested in Open Source solutions, and the potencial they hold, so the transition should be rather smooth. My point is, determining such details about systems should be more the task of an independent source, like the costumer. Suse for instance publishes some case studies, but for me to believe them, must be the testimony of a real costumer.

Re:TCO analisys worldwide

[JWW]

Ignore TCO. In the article they get it right. TCO is crap, in the end the only thing that really matters is cost of downtime. In most cases the cost of downtime is orders of magnitude greater than that of ownership.

For my location 24 hours of system downtime is one million dollars of lost production.

Re:TCO analisys worldwide

[F34nor]

I am sure it takes more qualified man hours to run and support linux but I look at it this way, pay rent to M$ or put equity into a mortgage with Linux. They cost about the same, but when you're done you have the ability to knock out a few walls and paint the place any color you like.

Good article.

[grub]

I would hope that reading such as this is sought out by IT managers looking at a migration to any other platform. Real world results are what count. Trusting studies paid for by $COMPANY is just plain ignorant.

Don't get too excited

[gowen]

This is just one case study. One could certainly find one case study to "refute" this refutation.

To repeat a popular statistician's aphorism:

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"

This has been a public service announcement.

Re:Don't get too excited

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. It has nothing to do with statistics, it's logic.

A single counter example is enough to refute a general statement.

If somebody says that Open source software is more expensive than commercial software, having a case with says otherwise invalidates the statement. The case itself proves nothing either way, but it does disprove the general statement.

So to refute the case is useless because the case proves nothing.

Re:Don't get too excited

[gowen]

A single counter example is enough to refute a general statement.

But no-one made a sufficiently general statement. No one said "always has lower TCO". The Microsoft studies are specific, and are neveer dumb enough to make the kind of sweeping generalisations that single counter-examples can refute. In fact, they often just just give anecdotal examples themselves.

Re:Don't get too excited

[torpor]

Typical human reaction, bow to the abyss of the infinite whenever something comes along your way that you don't agree with, find 'right', or have an alternative use for ... ... of course there are an infinite number of arguments that its not this way. Just as there are an infinite number of arguments for using Linux...

The point is not whether or not there are alternative arguments, the point is that an Energy Company (in whom one ought to have at least a modicum of respect, given the parameters of their environment) saying it, not some market-droid, not some 'independent' research firm, not some half-assed marketdroid with a room full of monkeys.

You 'refuting' this 'refutation' with the 'statement' that this 'refutation' can be 'refuted' an 'infinite number of ways' says more about your ideals than it does about this article, actually ...

honestly, I don't get it

[bsDaemon]

I have not come across anything that MS Office can do that another office programme, such as StarOffice or OpenOffice can't do. AppleWorks is a bit crippled. The MacOS X version seems to be exactly like the one that I used to run on my PowerBook 1400c way back when.
Is the cause just coverting some of the document formating used in existing .DOC files? Feature wise MS Office has always kind of pissed me off, but document formating was a total sabot in the gears when trying to get my stuff to print off of windows machines at school

f.p. too

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[DrSkwid]

can any of those run vb script macros?

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[Ernest P Worrell]

Just because you haven't come across the inferiority of [Star|Open]Office, doesn't mean it isn't there. Sure, it works fine for the average home user, just as MS Works would work fine.

But, just try doing enterprise strength solutions such as Sharepoint-style document management, smart documents, and so on -- it just can't be done as quickly and easily as with MS Products. Err, I mean, M$ Products.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[DrSkwid]

All of the Office applications are also ActiveX objects with enough methods to do *any* of the tasks one can do via kb/mouse with the GUI.

For instance I wrote some IIS script that instanciated the Word object, opened a template, filled in the contents, printed the document and then archived itself as a Word document on the server for later retrieval as required for some legal documents (these were court documents for non-payment of bills).

You can open a Word document and have it present dialog boxes and generate an Excel sheet complete with graphs etc. if you felt like it.

I don't do this stuff myself any more (I don't even know what it's called these days. It was 'Visual Basic for Applications' in my day.) but that's the kind of thing you can do.

Most MS places I've been don't use it, through ignorance usually, and have been impressed when I wrote a few scripts to repeat tasks that people seemed to like doing manually!

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[DukeyToo]

I have no idea what other office products can do, but I know of clients that have used the Word Basic macro language to great effect. Can you do this with other office products? Is there another word processor product that exposes a complete object based API to the user, so that even a non programmer can write very impressive macros?

Also, I have tried other products over the years, but have always found the competition to be slow and buggy. The last impressive competition I saw was WordPerfect, back on Windows 3.1.

If I look again now, will I continue to be disappointed? I think I will be.

That said, I think that MS Word competitors will always lose out if they try and compete on the same platform. They need to have a little vision, and create their own market. For example, Word's big downfall is that the document is tied to the formatting. A good competitor would create something which added value to the data by separating the two. (Newer versions of Office support "XML" documents, but I doubt this is what I am talking about).

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[Maestro4k]

• I have not come across anything that MS Office can do that another office programme, such as StarOffice or OpenOffice can't do.

That's not the problem, the problem is all the other people using MS Office. Even if your whole organization uses OpenOffice or StarOffice, you'll run into problems with people you do business with only using MS Office. Sometimes the documents won't look/work exactly right in anything but Office so you end up having to use it anyway, no matter how hard you try.

One of the problems is MS's ever-changing document formats, while WordPerfect's not changed their document format for years, MS's seems to change with ever release. I'm not sure, but I suspect the format will even change ever-so-slightly with some of the service packs. Nothing that'll affect MS Office versions, but enough to make the document a mess in anything else. Personally I dont't think this is just a coincedence, MS seems to be trying to make sure Office is the only thing companies can use without massive headaches. That's why I doubt we'll ever see it ported to Linux unless a court ordered them to, and then they'd probably find a way to hobble it enough that you still needed a Windows box to run it on for it to not cause grief.

If you're in a company that's not mandated another product, you can pretty much forget using anything buy Office happily. Last place I worked even though pretty much all the staff in my dept. preferred Word Perfect and had it on our machines, we still had to do the majority of stuff in Office because we had to deal with people outside the dept. It's insanely frustrating let me tell you. I ended up doing most of my work in Office just to save the hassle. The one thing I always used WordPerfect for was labels though, Office royally sucks for creating labels. It also sends unnecessarilly large files to the printer when it comes time to print the labels. I remember trying to print some VCR labels on an old Apple Laserwriter. Each one was a single graphic the size of the label. Couldn't get them to print, after looking at the queue size it turned out the document in the printer queue had a size of over 5MB! (The printer only had 2MB memory onboard.) What's scary is the actual .doc file was quite a bit smaller than 5MB. That's when I got a copy of WP for my work computer, when I checked its print queue size (for the same set of labels, all graphics) it was around 700k.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[99bottles]

I actually prefer OO for envelopes. I can't even count the number of times that I had to re-type an address when something went wrong and the MS label window had already gone away and taken the data with it. Setting up an envelope as a document makes much more sense to me.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[Shados]

Simple enough...people here where I work use Excel for a lot of things, as they are used to it and it gets the job done (which in the end, is what matters). Some things they do in Excel, to interract with our other programs, require update of an SQL Server database, or because we are switching from a legacy system, even an update of Foxpro stuff, ODBC connections, sending files over the network, etc. We can just reuse our VB dlls and import them in those macros and such, so it takes seconds to make them, it gets the job done, and the employes can still work with excel. In the end, its more productive. I hate Microsoft's products as much as the next guy, but in many case, they're what does the job best.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[IANAAC]

But, just try doing enterprise strength solutions such as Sharepoint-style document management, smart documents, and so on -- it just can't be done as quickly and easily as with MS Products. Err, I mean, M$ Products.

But the fact of the matter is that it can be done with non-MS products (easier, I might add). Whether you think Microsoft's solutions are easier and quicker are, well, subjective, just as much as any other option.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[Ernest P Worrell]

Being anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, and anti-profit motive precludes you from comprehending the definition of such "buzzword bullshit." I'll try to break it down into language even you can understand. Okay, so let's picture a system that isn't capitalist, corporate, and has no profit motive, and let's call this system, oh, I don't know, Communism. So this Communism thing is going to have lots and lots of people doing lots and lots of different things: farmers, doctors, waiters, etc (none of which, of course, will be motivated by profit, just the love of being a Garbage man). In Communism, a lot of time will be spent in something called "overhead," which well define as people not doing things that relate to their job function. A doctor managing his schedule, a delivery guy filling out forms, and so on. Now, since no one will be motivated by saving money, we'll just assume they'll be motivated to save time. Maybe that's a bad assumption, since it seems in Communism, everyone loves their job, but still, let's work with it. To save time, we would need to cut overhead and make processes more efficient. Some times, this will be very complicated and difficult. For a large organization, lets say, a Police Department (perhaps another bad assumption, as I'm sure communism will have no crime), they'll have lots and lots of information going from place to place that, often times, is disseminated and processed multiple times by multiple people throughout the organization. I hope I didn't loose you there. This is where the "enterprise strength solutions" will come in. To maximize productivity, we'll need to maximize information organization and processing throughout the organization. This is a complicated task, as it involves many facets of the organization, and requires tools that can manage this task. [Open|Star|K]Office just simply can't cut it, they just simply don't have the power. Hence, "enterprise strength tools," such as MS Office, Sharepoint, exchange, etc, are the tools for the job.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[Tin Foil Hat]

Obviously not, but some of them can do similar stuff, if not as well. OOo Writer, for instance, can use (non-VB) macros to do many things. I use them to write scripts that convert word and excel docs to HTML on the fly. I get approximately the same conversion quality you find over at google.

Re:honestly, I don't get it

[peter_gzowski]

I don't have a lot of experience using word processors, but I have switched people over to Linux, and the number one complaint is OpenOffice. Here are the complaints:

- It's slow, reaaaalllly slow (yes, OO 1.1 is slower than MS Office 2000).
- Where is Times New Roman? (Windows font, not installed by default)
- These fonts look weird, and strain my eyes. (OK, turn off anti-aliased fonts)
- It doesn't do lists easily. Do this in OpenOffice 1.1:
1. item one (enter)
It may number the next line 2. but if you hit the increase indent button, it does not go to 1.1, and it's not easy to figure out how to make it do this. It took me 20 minutes to figure out for my wife how to do this.
- It doesn't remember the last font you told it to use. Choose a font, do stuff, close OO, open OO, back to Nimbus Roman.

Some complaints were just vague. I had a girl who had done some secretarial temping, and told me that she felt OpenOffice was "written yesterday" and that it was not nearly sophisticated enough for her day-to-day use. This frustrated me, because I wanted to know what specifically was deficient, but I didn't press it, as converting people to Linux is a delicate operation, and I just try to give people what they want. So I just said, fine, we'll put MS Office on it for you.

comment...

[freerecords]

"Also, it is easy to find Oracle admins for support."

And it isn't easy to find Windoze admins?

Re:comment...

[I Be Hatin']

And it isn't easy to find Windoze admins?

Competent ones?

Re:comment...

[jusdisgi]

And it isn't easy to find Windoze admins?

No, it's plenty easy to find Windows admins....it's just really tough (read: not possible) to get ahold of a Windows database stack with the performance, reliability, and scalability of Oracle on AIX.

But of course, the important thing here is that Windows wasn't even one of the stated possibilities; it couldn't even really be considered for this. The choices were Linux (on a big Altix box...probably 20+ procs) or AIX (on a 24-proc), either way with Oracle. They mention that the OSS databases aren't there, but it seems to go without saying that Windows doesn't fit in this market segment. What, are you going to use MS SQL Server? Give me a break.

Linux alert

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably want to acquire more machines for Windows. Hence they are advertising their liking for open source stuff so that Steve Ballmer will visit them soon and offer to shave off 90% of the price + free training.

Governments can always have second thougts....

[Groote Ka]

Over the past time, I've noticed more and more news coming from Australia that Australia will comply with US economical requirements, as the US is a very important trade partner for Australia. What if George W. ask Mr. Howard nicely to implement US software in all government applications?

Fortunately, on the other hand more and more government institutions give Linux a fair chance as well in competing with Microsoft and especially on the cost side, Linux (and other open source) wins! (Community of Munich, Amsterdam is considering it and I bet there are more examples)

About time, I could really welcome a tax cut. I hate to lose my tax money on Microsoft.

Re:Governments can always have second thougts....

[Jaywalk]

What if George W. ask Mr. Howard nicely to implement US software in all government applications?

You mean suck up to Microsoft while angering IBM? Ain't gonna happen. While politicians try to curry favor with special interests, they have to do it without angering other special interests. The last thing George and Company need in an election year is another story that paints him as pandering to a particular company. And a move like that would guarantee that Microsoft's enemies would see that the story got a lot of press time.

Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[heironymouscoward]

Product L is free, widely available from a variety of sources who compete purely on technical quality, and designed principally by its own users to be portable, reliable, and as efficient as possible.

Product W (its primary competitor) is sold at quite a high price, by a single vendor who relies on marketing, market position, and features to sell the product. The product's users have little to say about the evolution of the product and nothing at all to say about its internal design.

The vendor of product W releases studies which it pays for proving that W is cheaper to own than L. Later, a large field trial proves that product L is, actually cheaper than product W. ... duh.

Who is kidding who here? There is a very good reason that small businesses with any technical savvy at all jump onto the Linux/OSS bandwagon as soon as they possibly can. It saves money.

Small note to evangelists: convert people to OpenOffice.org on Windows first.

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[MisanthropicProggram]

"convert people to OpenOffice.org on Windows first"
This has been a concern of mine. Whenever I have to send a doc via email, it's ALWAYS assumed to be in some MS Office format. I would switch to OpenOffice, but I'm afraid that when MS comes out with a new version, it will break any compatibility that OpenOffice has and any doc I send will look like shit - if I'm lucky - or not be able to be viewed at all.

MS Office is the defacto office suite is the US and if you don't comply, you're SOL.

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[Apreche]

Another note to evangelists. If people only use word and have no need for spreadsheets databases and such. Convert them to abiword on windows first. My usual conversion strategy is thunderbird firefUx, abiword and gaim. Once they've got that down if they like it I say, you know... all the software on linux is like that. In fact, the whole os is like that.

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[DarkSarin]

You know, I used to think that you were correct (at least that line of thinking), but there is a little snag to the logic--MS is unlikely to break backwards compatibility with its own office suite. That said, many people may need to upgrade to see documents produced by the newer, but the newer will always be able to read the older.

Otherwise they lose some of the "vendor lockin" that makes them so powerful...

just a thought

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[kinnell]

Initial cost is insignificant compared to administration, support, training, etc. Many companies have a significant investment in windows infrastructure with custom software, experienced administrators, etc for whom switching to OSS would take years to pay off, if it did at all. In short, while the windows TCO claims are laughable, it's not obvious at all that linux saves money.

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[mpe]

This has been a concern of mine. Whenever I have to send a doc via email, it's ALWAYS assumed to be in some MS Office format.

In a great many cases the sensible format is PDF, which even Windows can handle.
Unless you explicitally want the document alterable at the other end and you know exactly what you are doing any word processing format is a bad choice.

Re:Sometimes the truth is astonishingly obvious

[lpp]

As an OS X user, my solution to this has always been to first determine whether the end user will need read only access to the document or rather will want to be able to edit. For example, a resume sent to a prospective employer (not a contracting agency) won't need to be edited.

If it can be read only, I just use the built in Print to PDF functionality and send the person a PDF. That's a near universally readable format and certainly in most business situations.

If it must be editable, then I will generally shoot for RTF, simply because it is, yet again, nearly universally readable.

If they refuse to accept those formats and I have to do business with them, then I will author the document in the editor of my choice and export to the appropriate format. Naturally this can cause problems when the export functionality isn't precise enough, but I can't honestly recall when the last time was that I had to do this anyway.

What TCO Refutation?

[4of12]

The article is mostly a narrative of a large IT shop that is bringing open source into doing different parts of its business, with databases and desktops still living in the proprietary world.

The guy in charge is no zealot, just evaluating his options and doing what makes sense.

The bottom line is:

"Talk to your peers about open source as there is not really a downside," he said. "You can use it without risk and it won't cost you anything other than a bit of time. You'd be mad if you didn't try it."

Does TCO include the cost of virus attack ??

[pirhana]

It was reported that the latest virus incurred a loss of about 30b dollar globally. At this backdrop, I am just wondering do these consultacny firms like Gartner and all include the cost of fighting virus and the loss incurred by them while calculating the TCO ?

Re:Does TCO include the cost of virus attack ??

[p2sam]

The propagation technique used by the latest so-called "virii" is primarily social engineering. Linux is not inheriently any safer than Windows in this regard.

So long as users see nothing wrong with executing arbitrary code attached with email from strangers, we'll never be safe.

Re:Does TCO include the cost of virus attack ??

[Permission Denied]

The propagation technique used by the latest so-called "virii" is primarily social engineering. Linux is not inheriently any safer than Windows in this regard.

First, the plural of virus always has been "viruses".

Secondly, if I get an ELF executable in an email, I have to save it to disk, open a terminal, chmod +x it and then type in its name. Double-clicking on a saved executable in a file manager will probably do something like open it with a text editor until you've made it executable.

It might be a little easier if you send an RPM file in email, but then the user opens the file and is asked "Are you sure you want to install package 'such-and-such'?" by the friendly rpm gui manager. Even then, unless the user provides an administrative password (assuming the machine is running some kind of backend gui authenticator like ksudo for KDE or the Security Services API in Mac OS X), there is no way any kind of software can install itself systemwide so it starts on boot, but only to start on login (granted, this makes little difference on a single-user machine).

With these things in mind, you can very easily lock down a system so even this rpm-on-login exploit is impossible if you mount home directories (and /tmp) no-exec. This flag has been standard in Unix variants for a long time and is often used for stuff like NFS-mounted mail spools. It even works in Mac OS X and I've successfully used it for this purpose on specialized kiosk-type applications. This prevents certain users from writing their own programs and scripts, but hopefully one would feel comfortable granting an exception for these more advanced users and giving them some space for programming.

Re:Does TCO include the cost of virus attack ??

[IamTheRealMike]

Secondly, if I get an ELF executable in an email, I have to save it to disk, open a terminal, chmod +x it and then type in its name.

Nah. It's easy. Just stick it into a .tar file, call it "runme", mark it +x (tar preserves permissions). All modern desktops include a visual archive viewer like File Roller or ark, which allow you to open/run files direct from it. I don't know if you can run an ELF binary direct from file-roller, but I expect it's not too hard. Certainly most users, once tricked into wanting to run the file, could do it, especially as Linux desktops get more straightforward.

This prevents certain users from writing their own programs and scripts, but hopefully one would feel comfortable granting an exception for these more advanced users and giving them some space for programming.

noexec provides no security at all, any script or ELF binary can be run by using the appropriate interpreter. For most ELF binaries the interpreter is /lib/ld-linux.so.2, and it takes as an argument the binary to run.

Experience tells...

[RGautier]

Total Cost of Ownership is a marketing buzzword that is supposed to mean 'measurement of how much it costs to maintain'. There are so many variables involved in that definition:

• Experience of personnel
• Age of the system and its knowledge base
• Number of inherent maintenance problems
• Cost of expertise
• Severity of maintenance issues
• Perceived impact of issues

and so on, and so on...

Too often, the people making decisions based on marketing numbers like TCO fail to realize just how many issues are involved in these measurements. The buzzword TCO becomes another name for just one of the measurable items (e.g. Number of inherent problems).

What's needed are top-level executives that weren't churned out by a college and hired because of thier good-old boy connections. CIOs, CTOs and other executives in power need to be from one school, the school of hard knocks, so that they can make INFORMED decisions instead of blindly relying on the marketing fodder that are handed.

Re:Experience tells...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you about a bunch of 'wonderful' products that people have bought over the years, and not gotten fired over. Windows certainly has no monopoly on bad software that gets used because someone soaked their Enterprise budget into it without looking ahead.

To be perfectly honest, I was all for converting from Banyan and Novell networks to the single vendor solution that Microsoft offered us, because the alternatives at the time sucked, and budgetary contraints meant we couldn't hire all the *ix gurus we really would need. I don't regret that move for a moment. At the same time, I'm not afraid to mix environments and I use Linux where it's appropriate and will save me money in the short or long run.

Last point: Remember that just because we don't fire people in the real world for making bad decisions doesn't mean that we don't deride them behind their backs or completely lose respect for them. Bad decisions cause lots of pain in the business arena, but it also provides plenty of jobs for people like you and me.

Re:Experience tells...

[salesgeek]

Total Cost of Ownership is a marketing buzzword that is supposed to mean 'measurement of how much it costs to maintain'. There are so many variables involved in that definition:

Having sold software and hardware for literally decades using TCO, I can tell you conclusively that it's worse than you think. TCO is MUCH MORE SWEEPING and includes:

* Cost of Acquisition (hard)
* Cost of Installation (soft)
* Cost of maintenance (soft)
* Cost of downtime (soft)
* Interest costs from loans (hard)
* Cost of consumables (soft)
* Utility costs (electric) (soft)
* Cost of anticipated moves, adds changes (soft)
* Cost of anticipated upgrades (soft)
* Cost of disposal (soft)

Most of which are highly subjective soft costs. TCO is basically useless unless it's your accountant telling you what your departmental expenses related to ____ are. If you here it from a sales person or marketing type, it is most likely bs. ROI is even worse and TCO comparisons are the worst of all. If you want reality have your CFO or controller do a ROAE (Return on Assets Employed) study.

MS Office -does- run on Linux

[rchf]

If you really want to run MS Office on Linux apparently CodeWeavers has polished up a version of WINE to run MS Office with great stability (http://www.codeweavers.com). There is a review here (http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT6509081484 .html).

Useful quote from the review '...it's now so easy (and reliable) to use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for reading doc, ppt, and xls files, that I'm beginning to fear that those programs -- which I was getting so good at doing without - - might no longer be relegated to the status of "options of last resort".'

Breaking the MS Office to Windows OS tie-in will seriously undermine the MS monopoly.

MS Office is on Linux already

[erturs]

Crossover Office (http://www.codeweavers.com) runs MS Office 2000 very well under Linux, and claims to run Office XP as well. I can't personally verify the latter claim, but can testify that Office 2000 works well.

(I have no affiliation with CodeWeavers, I'm just a happy customer.)

Re:MS Office is on Linux already

[Mysticalfruit]

I'm a happy customer with one exception... MS Project.

Though it's not my personal choice, my boss forces our unit to use project to orchestrate projects. It's the one reason I'm not running linux on this machine. Running a VMware session just so I can run project is just a waste of resources.

If CodeWeavers ever get Project to work properly under linux, they'll be one less windows box in the world...

Re:MS Office is on Linux already

[13Echo]

Have you tried Planner or Mr. Project?

http://mrproject.codefactory.se/
http://planner .imendio.org/

They do lack a lot of features of MS Project at the moment, but both are great tools, and should do most of what you need.

Re:MS Office is on Linux already

[jdray]

I thought I read something that said the latest MS Office license REQUIRED that you run it only on Windows, therefore making anyone running it through Crossover Office a license violator. That's not so big an issue for a home user, unless MS stoops to the depths of the RIAA, but for a corporate installation, with a public presence and possibly thousands of licenses, it's a huge issue.

Of course, I could be wrong about the license clause. We're still running Office97 for the time being.

Re:MS Office is on Linux already

[Just Some Guy]

That very much depends on the definition of "run it only on Windows". Are Wine's Windows-alike libraries sufficient to say it "runs on Windows"? What if the user takes DLLs from a legitimately licenced Windows installation and uses those instead of the Wine-native versions - is that "running on Windows"? How much of the running code has to originate from Microsoft before that restriction was met?

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy to buy a copy of Windows if Wine could use the files in it to make applications work properly (I have to run Quickbooks Pro 2002 and it doesn't currently run on Wine).

MS Office CAN run on Linux (1000000, Informative)

[MooKore 2004]

Im FED up of people claiming Microsoft Office cant run on Linux. It CAN! There is a program called Crossover Office that can run not only Microsoft Office, but other top commercial apps such as Internet Exploder, Photoshop, Lotus notes and more!
But with the latest versions of the GIMP (now with cmyk), OpenOffice.org, Firefox (see my sig) and the Kompany there is really is no excuse not to run Linux!

TCO...

[ValourX]

After reading several TCO reports and even writing one myself, I've come to the conclusion that TCO is not something that one can make a sweeping generalization about.

Cost is one thing and convenience and time are another thing. Windows costs more than GNU/Linux is most cases, but no doubt someone somewhere can twist the numbers to make it look otherwise. Windows is less secure than GNU/Linux, but again -- someone, somewhere will come up with bullshit numbers or statistics or outright lies (Steve Ballmer!) to "prove" differently.

Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that. If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows.

Everyone has their own take on TCO and TBO (Total Benefit of Ownership) and anyone can make either "side" look like it "wins." Licensing costs and rights are undeniable though; that's one area that is not up for debate. What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...

-Jem

Re:TCO...

[dtperik]

I think I know why Microsoft keeps coming up with these "TCO" studies showing Microsoft costs less to own.... YOU DON'T OWN IT!! As you said They own you

I'd like to see a "TCBO" study - Total Cost of Being Owned. I imagine the cost goes up with each virus... because you're owned by the virus writers then to

- Dan

They are migrating from UNIX

[blorg]

In fairness, they are migrating from UNIX. In such a situation, I'm not surprised that Linux is a better fit for them.

The truth is, what is better for you will depend on your situation, existing applications, existing in-house skills, etc. I don't believe Microsoft's funded propaganda, but there can be situations in which Windows is an appropriate choice. Look at what you are running and then make a decision. In this case it is obviously Linux.

Re:They are migrating from UNIX

[Otter]

With 50 +1 comments up already, I'm glad to see somebody else has bothered to read the article. Admittedly, it's a little incoherent and references to Windows periodically float through it, but on the whole it's about the replacement of a stew of commercial Unixes (Tru64, AIX, Solaris) with Linux.

One of the "Halloween documents" dealt with this -- the MS marketing people were struggling to keep up with the flood of "____ Switching From Windows To Linux!" driven primarily by the inability of Slashdot editors and other Linux media figures to read.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

En garde!

[glpierce]

I believe you quite handily defeat yourself there.

"Product W [...] is sold [...] by a single vendor who relies on [...] features to sell the product." (emphasis added)

Features are more important than stability to many people. Rebooting is annoying, but not being able to do certain things is unacceptable. In environments were stability is most important (always-on systems, such as internet, power, and telecom), Linux will do well. In other environments, it won't.

"Small note to evangelists: convert people to OpenOffice.org on Windows first."

You assume that OpenOffice is just as good as OfficeXP. For people who don't use any advanced features, this may be true, but not for many others. OpenOffice can never get a foothold in academea while its chart-making is so poor, for example. For individuals, there simply is no need for a different office suite. Why would someone who has a perfectly good copy of MS Office want to switch? People paying licensing fees for multiple machines are far more likely to need the features not found in OO.org than individuals, in my estimation.

Re:En garde!

[ysachlandil]

>OpenOffice can never get a foothold in academea
>while its chart-making is so poor, for example.

Uhm, OpenOffice can never get a foothold in academia because everybody uses LaTeX and GnuPlot

Which happens to be an open source product, and existed way before Linux.

--Blerik

Re:En garde!

[pjt33]

There are branches of academia other than CompSci, Maths and Physics.

Best quote

[Noryungi]

Best quote from the article (at least for me):

I wouldn't have a job if there was two minutes of downtime and I wouldn't trust Windows for that.

There you have it, in a nutshell... :-)

Alright so I am an idiot but where is the case stu

[SmallFurryCreature]

Alright so I am an idiot but where is the case study? All I see is a very short interview with a man in charge of the IT department where they already have a large amount of unix knowledge choosing to go with the new kid in the unix camp rather then going with windows.

This is in fact what MS is saying. That if your company does not have significant unix skills but instead is windows based then switching to linux will be more expensive. Sure they mess around with it but that claim is pretty valid. It is always more expensive in the short term, and tco is short term roi would be long term, to switch.

So yes he does say the lack of MS Office is keeping the linux desktop down. True or not this is hardly likely to ever change. Hell MS is even backing down on MS office of the apple.

Nice headline, pity it doesn't seem related to the story.

To those impatient to see when Linux will overthrow MS windows look back at history and ask how long it took MS to go from nobody to somebody. There was a time when owning a DOS machine was alternative and weird when everybody had an amiga on wich everything just worked. With PICTURES!!!!!

Re:well, duh

[pyropaul]

Shouldn't feed the trolls but ... when you make a statement like "... the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, ..." it's rather obvious you're just a Microsoft shill. No journaled filesystem indeed. From "man fs":

ext3 is a journaling version of the ext2 filesystem.

etc.

Re:Linux much cheaper!

[Lumpy]

Movie production tools

Really? I cant find ANYTHING for linux... even something I could buy that can do movie production..

kino and the other early alpha video editing software and tools cant even touch a 10 year old version of Premiere (Premiere version 4.x) I have tried Cinderella (sucks, cant use DV2 files and crashes alot!) I bought Main Actor... it also can't edit DV2 files or anything standard for movie production that is for anything but low quality web release and it also crashes like a madman..

Finally there is absolutely nothing available for linux that can do anything that After Effects can do. and there is nothing available for DVD creation that is even useable.. DVDlab is desperately needed to be ported to linux...

I desperately want to be able to do my video editing on linux, it can not be done right now. I tried, wasted 6 months trying my hardest. Main Actor has been all but abandoned on the linux side, Cinderella is not interested in performance/stability but is on a "ooooh Shiney! New features!" kick for the past 2 years and is still only early alpha quality.

I would be 100% microsoft free if I could do my video editing and full DVD creation under linux..

but it can not be done right now.

No big surprises here

[NixLuver]

Having been in the IT space for some time, administering both NT/2k/XP based networks and *Nix networks, this comes as no great shock to me. FUD from Redmond notwithstanding, *nix is a win for server applications, hands down.

'Objective Studies' aside, there is little comparison in performance, ease of maintenance, etc. The answer I've begun giving the Windows Admins here at work (who are fighting for server installs - a losing battle in this age of dropping budgets and 'increased efficiencies') is this: Go and administer an enterprise level *nix network for five years, then come back to me and we'll compare notes. (Yes, I did my time as an MS Admin, MCSE+I and all that crap, back when NT was going to save the world)

IMHO, the only reason M$ still has any of the server space at all is 'time to market' considerations, and the overall lower level of expertise. Back when I was a Windows admin, I used to say: "The biggest problem with Windows is that Microsoft designed it so that any idiot could set it up - and most of them do."

Any given network is only as stable/secure as its administrator, it's true, but remember that the ideal case stability of the platform represents a hard limit, no matter how competent the admin. Anybody wanna bet their job on 5 9s from NT?

TCO of recent Microsoft Updates

[servicepack158]

How much is it costing when M$ releases a patch for IE (last week) and it erases all of your IE passwords? Imagine the call centers and helpdesks getting slammed for password resets because people don't know what their account info is.

Re:TCO of recent Microsoft Updates

[poot_rootbeer]

How much is it costing when M$ releases a patch for IE (last week) and it erases all of your IE passwords?

It is a user's responsibility to remember their passwords, not the browser's. If this presents a problem for your organization, I would suggest that your computer users need more training on good security practice.

How about read my E-MAIL??

[Anonymous Coward]

It constantly confounds me WHY none of the open office alternatives leave out this VITAL piece of software. Instead, preferring to point users to some other project not integrated into the office applications.

Mark me up as troll if you must but I believe Outlook to be one of the best, if not exactly secure, pieces of software microsoft has ever made. The latest version fixes a lot of complaints and security problems of the past and adds some really nice features.


-The Anonymous Bastard

Features? No, function!

[heironymouscoward]

Features definitely do not equal value despite the propaganda that tries to convince people otherwise.

The essence of good design is simplicity and value comes from the elimination of unnecessary features, not their addition.

You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.

As for OpenOffice.org, it is easily, easily sufficient for 80-90% of all computer users. You can argue with this but the real reason MS Office is popular in academea may have more to do with cheap licenses than anything else.

Finally, people will switch to OOorg for several reasons. Firstly when the weight of yearly licenses starts to hurt. Secondly, to avoid yet one more cycle of upgrades that break large numbers of existing configurations for little obvious gain. Thirdly, when they are running old versions and do not want to pay once more for new ones. Lastly, and I believe significantly, many people use MS Office with no license at all. OOorg provides them a way to become "legitimate".

Now, the discussion is not about "why switch", it's about cost.

In a global market, any business that pays more than it needs to for a service (including software) is at a competitive disadvantage, and will eventually be beaten by leaner competitors.

Microsoft's offerings costs more, and for the majority of its users, this extra cost simply does not translate into extra value. You cannot debate this observation away. If you work for Microsoft, you would do better to consider how such an unbalanced business model can actually survive. Eventually your customers will be unable to pay for your products, however much they like them. What will you do then?

Re:Different tools for different people?

[Coward the Anonymous]

"I use *IX instead of *NIX since they seem to have had an IRIX or two in there" So what do you do when they have Solaris? *I*??

Open Source can be commercial

[latroM]

>...open source and commercial software work in peace together.

Commercial doesn't always mean non-free. MySQL and RedHat are both companies which produce commercial software which is open source/free software.

Printing Envelopes

[Walrus99]

Just sent out 2000 brochures using FileMaker and MacLabel on OS X.2. Had bar codes and everything. The fun part was getting the address database from a flat file into the FileMaker relational database. Was able to use Perl to do this from the command line in OS X. I doubt that it would be as easy to do this in Windows. Can you even get to a command line in the latest version of Windows? Is Perl included? Can you easily write your own scripts?

Remember: real-world results usually aren't

[bucknuggets]

How often do you see case studies in which management says that something they tried really stank? The only time you'll see that is when they intend to litigate - which is rare. Most of the time these "real world results" are produced by ambitious executives that want more publicity within their own company: they never want to take responsibility for a failure. Fortunately for the open source movement, it's gaining popularity - so you'll tend to see more of these in support of it. It'll be almost impossible to find one that opposes it (even though it is sometimes a failure).

The most important post you will ever read.

[Chess_the_cat]

I've got an excuse: There's no reason *not* to use Windows. It's called inertia. I've already got an OS. It works. There are millions of apps. Why should I spend my time, and energy to switch? Even 'free' isn't going to make me switch. Think about that. I've already paid for an OS so why should I care that Linux is free?

Why should I knock myself out with Crossover Office trying to get Photoshop to run on Linux when I can just doubleclick on a shortcut and get it to run now? I can go to Best Buy, pick up a game and just know it will work.

As for all the supposed problems with Windows, they're non-starters for me. I run a firewall and a pop-up blocker. I install the updates. XP hasn't crashed since I got it 2 years ago. I've never had a problem.

In short, what's in Linux for someone like me other than headaches?

I'm not saying I never would switch but this has to be addressed by the Linux community. You need to come up with something that is obviously better and not for reasons that only geeks are interested in. Something so good that I am compelled to switch. I'd even pay money for it. The free thing that Linux nuts love to harp on is not important to the average user.

I'm only trying to help.

Re:The most important post you will ever read.

[26199]

Hmm, you're missing the meaning of 'free'... that's free as in freedom. Linux won't try and hide what it's doing or why, and you're always welcome to change it...

Linux won't try and screw you over for the next dollar, ever.

It's good for peace of mind :-)

Re:The most important post you will ever read.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already paid for an OS so why should I care that Linux is free?

Perhaps because with MS, at some point, you're going to have to pay _again_ to use the same set of features ?
A lot of company are already in a renting software scheme with MS products : they receive everything MS produce, and pay each year for what they effectively used during the last year.

Re:The most important post you will ever read.

[LWATCDR]

"There's no reason *not* to use Windows."
For you there might not be but for Company IT people there are many.
1. You said, "I can go to Best Buy, pick up a game and just know it will work." This is a down side for many companies. You put a copy of Ultra Mega Super Pimp on your work computer and you company could be sued for sexual harasment, and or piracy.
2. You said, "As for all the supposed problems with Windows, they're non-starters for me." But they are not non issues for the rest of the world. Outlook is a security nightmare. It has allows millions if not billions of dollars in damages from exploits. Lets talk about trojans? How many have there been for Windows? You run firewall. That is nice but in a setup with even as few as a few dozen people all that has to happen to make your firewall usless is for on person to hook up there notebook at a hotel and then come back to the main office and plug into your network. You now have the worm on the inside of you network.
Windows is not secure. Just because you have not been hit does not mean they are non-starters. I know a few people that drank like a fish and smoked all the time that made it to 90. That does not prove that smoking is a non-issue.

In a corprate setting all you care about is will a computer run programs X,Y, Z and not cause me issues. The only reason I care about a game working on one of the systems in my office is that there should be no games running in my office.

My office is moving away from Microsoft products for a couple of reasons.
1. Away from Outlook to Thunderbird. Some of us already use Thunderbird all we are waiting for is VCard support. Calander would be nice as well. PS a Windows version of Evolution would be nice to help in migration.
2. Away from Office to OpenOffice. OpenOffice has worked well for us in tests and is a LOT cheaper then MSOffice.
3. Away from NT and Novell towards Linux for our severs. This is pretty much done. We have one Windows box running. The only reason we keep that is for our accounting system. All of the print, database, mail, DNS, and file servers are Linux

To answer your final question. "In short, what's in Linux for someone like me other than headaches?" Knowlege. If you just want to play games and surf for porn Windows is fine for you. This artical is not about people like you. It is about companies. It would be the same as if artical was about tractor trailer trucks and you said, "My Ford pick up is easier to park, and it works just fine when I need too haul some plants home from Home Depo, Semi trucks are usless!."

Re:The most important post you will ever read.

[Jagasian]

One thing that is far better on Linux is installing, removing, and updating software. With apt-get, a nice GUI frontend, and a good package repository... it is hands down better than on Windows. While apt-get will keep my entire system up to date, Windows, at best, will be able to keep a few core aspects of the OS up to date. Almost everything that you installed after you got your computer with Windows preinstalled will have to be manually maintained.

For Windows users with little software installed, this isn't a problem, but for those with many apps installed, it quickly becomes difficult to stay up to date on updates and security fixes.

With Linux, the amount of installed software installed does not effect the ease of maintaining the system. Of course, I assume you have a comprehensive package repository, but this is easily obtained on Debian, for example... or even Fedora.

Re:The most important post you will ever read.

[sgtrock]

You do realize that you don't actually own that copy of Windows XP, don't you? You do realize that if you bought that copy from a retailer 2 years ago, you have about a year to go before it just quits working because you only bought a 3 year license to USE it?

You purchased a rental agreement. Not a copy of the software.

BTW, go read your EULA some time. Then read what's posted on Microsoft's web site now. Nice how things have changed for the worse in the past couple of years, eh? Not that it was a customer friendly EULA to begin with.

Other posters have it right. You missed the point. It's free as in speech, not free as in beer.

Mod this up ... its hilarious

[Evil Pete]

we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool

When you start off thinking that Linux is shareware then you've just demonstrated that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Anything else that follows in your post can only be viewed as slapstick!

having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming

Oh man you're a scream. This has gotta be a troll. A very funny one at that.

kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem

Ok gotcha, this is for those who still don't realise its a joke post. Tell em something obviously false.

Yes a hilarious post, though unfortunately some people might think you actually mean what you said. If you did .... well um ... hate to say it but you're an idiot, just hope your clients don't find out.

Yawn....

[Hangtime]

Peters, Country Energy's information systems manager, wanted to leverage the large amount of inhouse Unix skills within the IT department by choosing Linux as the operating system platform for front end applications.

Of course it's going to be cheaper to run Linux in their environment; they have a large in-house staff that already knows Unix. This is not rocket science and I myself would tell them to go the Linux route. However, if your a Windows-only shop like our little cranny of the world then moving to Linux doesn't make a lot of sense because their is no internal knowledge base. Moral of the story: Use what's best for you because if you don't have the resources then the alternative most times will be more expensive.

Re:Interesting article!

[Yue]

NIS, LDAP, Kerberos, even samba. Pick the one that suits your environment.

Re:Interesting article!

[mu-sly]

Not only does Samba 3 support Active Directory (see "Major New Features" on that page), but it's also 2.5 times faster than Win2k3 Server in the same role, and scales up considerably better as well.

Kinda funny how Samba kicks the shit out of the thing it was designed to emulate, once again showing that Open Source is A Good Thing(tm).

Touche! :-)

[Advocadus Diaboli]

"Features are more important than stability to many people. Rebooting is annoying"

No, its not the fact that you have to do a small coffee break for rebooting your machine (a coffee break is always welcome) the real annoying thing is that you lose 4 hours of work because your PC crashed right 10 seconds before you wanted to save your work. Or, thanks to the latest security issues you're unable to use your PC because remote administration is enforcing a virus signature update that needs a reboot. That's especially big fun if you use a PC installed in a meeting room and only booted when you have a meeting... If a meeting of 12 people is postponed because a security patch has to be installed, than this adds 1 hour of worktime to the TCO! And if you need a person that applies those patches as a service that also adds to the TCO.

"but not being able to do certain things is unacceptable"

That is exactly why I switched from Windows to Linux. There are things I can't do with Windows as well, sometimes the problem is technical, sometimes its just that I'm not able or willing to pay a fortune for a software I just want to try out.

"For people who don't use any advanced features, this may be true, but not for many others."

Pardon me. Receiving a lot of MS-Office documents from people that always say that there is no better things than MS-Office I find out that not even 1% of them is really using one of the advanced feature. They could even go with notepad or Write, but it has to be office...

"...while its chart-making is so poor, ..."

So what? The good thing of Linux is that if I'm not satisfied with the features of one component I'm able to use another component as well. So if the chart functions of OO are too poor, why not exporting the data and generating something with GnuPlot?

"Why would someone who has a perfectly good copy of MS Office want to switch?"

One reason could be that some things won't work (like very big documents), the other could be that MS-Office files can give away information that you don't want to give away or just simple seurity issues. I wouldn't mind if Outlook and its "childs" would be deleted from every installation, that could make the net much more safe and hopefully less worms would spread around.

"People paying licensing fees for multiple machines are far more likely to need the features not found in OO.org than individuals."

I guess exactly the opposite. Big organisations that get the "discount licenses" because they order so much are usually forced to use a "common set of features", so that means that you put company communication to the lowest possible level. An individual that is working just for himself and his pleasure is maybe more able to use features than a company. Here you have to use what everybody understands... so using high level features would result in a higher TCO (we're back at the topic, wow) because you'll always find some idiots in the firm that don't know how to use that. So firms policy to avoid support costs for those idiots can only be to lower the standards.

Re: Let's Reconsider Everything Here.

[zacnboat]

Clearly you aren't working in a collegiate level academic environment. I support hundreds of users with a variety of PhD's and I'll be honest: I'll could switch them all tomorrow and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I don't doubt that some of the more computer savvy users might make comment about the switch; but the fact remains that on the whole the average computer user, in both an academic environment and a corporate one, are approximately equal.

You have to look at the baseline for age and experience when considering the average user. On the whole your looking at middle aged people who are still only moderately exposed to ANY computing system.

You said: "OpenOffice can never get a foothold in academea while its chart-making is so poor." I would argue counter to that--most academics don't rely on the Microsoft suite to do "chart-making" or statistical analysis based on data models; in my experience SPSS has been the benchmark for that kind of work. In all honesty most users, in an academic environment, just don't USE all the features offered in the MS-Office Suite; and when your operating budget is limited because you're functioning under state contract, or on a federally subsidized grant you are significantly more concerned with where the money is going every week, rather than on making a small portion of your users feel like they have "The best product on the market."

You must also realize that when you carefully explain Linux and OpenOffice to someone working in an environment that is designed to promote education and learning---they can't help but acknowledge its relative importance.

As far as the features argument is concerned, all I have to say in response is: Tell the user that because of the opensource nature of Linux it is constantly evolving at a much faster pace than any Microsoft product. That means, in theory, that Linux is much more "cutting edge" than Windows. Thus the same argument could be made for any opensource product versus one designed by MICRO$OFT.

Re:Linux much cheaper!

[JeffTL]

Do you want Linux video editing or just non-Windows video editing? Right now, Mac OS X is probably the best operating system for video editing, simply because of the software that works on it: iMovie (good for most purposes), Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, and Avid.

Re:Alright so I am an idiot but where is the case

[Kircle]

To those impatient to see when Linux will overthrow MS windows look back at history and ask how long it took MS to go from nobody to somebody. There was a time when owning a DOS machine was alternative and weird when everybody had an amiga on wich everything just worked. With PICTURES!!!!!

MS-DOS was release at around 1981, and 15 years later they had a monopoly with Windows 95. Linux is already about 10 years old. Should we expect great things from Linux in 5 years? I believe that is a reasonable expectation.

Microsoft as carreer consideration

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft as carreer consideration is an important factor.
Managers try to reduce teir personal risk to go with "mainstream vendor". Nobody gets fired becouse of Windows. You can get fired very quick if something goes wrong with the product of a lesser known vendor, becouse "how come you didn't choose Microsoft?
Senior managers who will fire the IT manager love Microsoft - as a corporation. They would love to be a Microsoft. If they have to reboot several times a day, well... they don't know anything else, so they assume that that's how computers work.

Just playing the other side for a moment...

[gosand]

Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that. If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows. ... ...What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...

OK, I feel this way too sometimes. But I have to look at it realistically too. Businesses - yeah, they have to consider TCO and licensing terms. Home users? No consideration whatsoever. I understand that *technically* Microsoft could audit everyone for license compliance, but it is not feasable that they would do so. Licensing of Windows sucks, if you care about it at all. Ask any home user of Windows what their major beef with it is, and I'll bet nobody says anything about Freedom. Hell, most people don't even like computers, let alone have a philosophy regarding them. That is why Microsoft has such a huge marketshare - they cater to the lowest common denominator. Not that the LCD is bad, just that the majority of people aren't tech-heads. People don't get it, nor do they WANT to get it. They don't care. Virus hits, they can't do email for a few days, they get over it. As Homer would shrug and say "Hmm, whadaya gonna do?"

If there is any kind of "Linux Revolution" it won't start in the U.S. All of a sudden, U.S. companies will look around and realize that the rest of the world has embraced this "new" technology and we'll have to play catch-up. Fine by me, maybe then I can get a job doing something I like - but I feel sorry for all the MCSEs. ..... Nah. :-)

What they're waiting for

[andih8u]

Reading through several newsgroups postings now and then, some newbie will post a question asking about which linux distro would be easiest to use and where would be the best place to go learn about it. And the answer typically is "stick with windows, you're too stupid to ever run linux" and "just do a google search for it dumbass," and assorted other flames. With someone's first introduction to the linux userbase being that, its a small wonder they won't use it. As Bruce Perens said, every linux user is an ambassador for linux. Some people are very nice and helpful about it, but you still have a large percentage of the users who are elitist and can't be bothered to help a newbie out (or they're just the most vocal.)

One more case study

[flyingace]

The first job that I worked for, in India, back in 1997-98, was a big M$ shop. We worked on C/C++/Win32SDK/VC++/MFC/COM. I used to be treated as the villain around the office, because I was the only Linux evangelist. I had to sneak in one 486 and run a seperate domain for the few linux lovers there.

Last week I had a chance to run into my previous project manager, and he was telling me that they went completely Linux. The organisation grew from a group of 40 programmers to 250 dudes. The only reason for this is, with the recent M$ licensing policy it was impossible to buy so many licenses. Now the whole organization is running RH 9.x and they use it to monitor home security systems and medical automation.

So please dont give us bull about TCO M$!!!

Re:Features? No, function!

[dubious9]

You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.

I don't know. Ask Larry Wall.

not a troll...

[gimpboy]

i dont know why this guy was marked troll. i've had the same expirence with oo. i've only used the versions which come with redhat, so that might be the problem. in my expirence it's really slow.

i just started oowriter on a dual athlon MP 2200+ running redhat 9. it took 10 seconds for the splashscreen to open up and 9 more seconds for the application to start. that's almost 20 seconds just for a word processor to start.

i'm not going to comment much on the interface design except to say that it's not very responsive.

Re:not a troll...

[Just Some Guy]

I just tried OpenOffice Writer 1.1.0 (Debian/unstable) on a P4/2.4 and it took 4 seconds from launch to accepting input. Recent versions load much faster than 1.0 and before.

Re:not a troll...

[Just Some Guy]

I hate to sound like this, but that must be a Mandrake thing (or maybe a low RAM thing - 256 isn't exactly a lot these days). These are the results of me launching OO Writer and hitting ^Q as soon as the window opens:

kirk@janus:~/projects$ time oowriter

Starting configuration import into user data ..

real 0m3.903s
user 0m2.586s
sys 0m0.135s
kirk@janus:~/projects$ time oowriter

Starting configuration import into user data ..

real 0m3.898s
user 0m2.573s
sys 0m0.145s
kirk@janus:~/projects$ time oowriter

Starting configuration import into user data ..

real 0m3.492s
user 0m2.577s
sys 0m0.136s

I'm using KDE 3.2 (which shouldn't matter) on an Dell Dimension 4600 with 1280MB of RAM (thanks to a mistake by the ordering department). I don't doubt your numbers, and they seem in line with others I've heard, but they're certainly far different than my local results.

-1, Hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't reply to Anonymous Cowards" :-P

Office interoptibility

[trezor]

• Office is by far the best productivity suite available and the most widely accepted.

No and yes. It's might be the best package when it comes to cooperation between the programs, when it comes to intuitivity, though it can be argued thats because everyone allready knows how MsOffice works. In fact Im pretty sure that any office-package not behaving exactly like MsOffice would be claimed to be less intuitive. Because everyone knows how MsOffice works.

But let's call these things technicalities. My beef is with another part of the package. A part which usually is unseen for most users, but nevertheless presents a problem.

Let's say we take a look at MsWord, for example. My first encounter must have been with version 2. The documents were labeled with the extension .doc. Take a look at the newest version, still suffixed with .doc.

Does anyone know what the actual diffferences in the file format is? Have you ever tried exchanging documents with people working with older version of MsOffice? If not, let me tell you right away that hell will arise.

The newest version of Office will recognise the documents, and open them without any indication that it is treating a depricated format.

In some cases (no deep research conducted here, on my part) if you edit the document, and save it, and return it to the sender, it will remain in the old format. However, sometimes (if you use some new features, or god knows why) it will save the document in the new Office format. All without any warning.

Now guess what will hapeen if you cooperate on some work between Office versions. The incompatabilities between the different versions of the fileformats risks rendering your work totally useless.

And Microsoft really haven't seemed that eager to document the formats at all or their differences.

So to my point. One version of Office works fine. Yes. To different versions hardly work at all.

And their is no telling what the differences is, or have you can avoid the trouble of encountering them.

And yes, I know you can choose "Save as... (Word 95,3,2,....-file) every time you need to communicate with other versions, but how can you know what version the recipient will have, and what design/flow-coontrol-features will be disabled when you save in an older format?

Office, kinda like Windows, like things very homegeneous.

hear hear

[zpok]

I'm glad someone acknowledges two facts in one statement: Office is an important application and Office keeps people on their platform.

If this is not acknowledged, it can't be properly addressed. Next time you say "it's just marketing" or whatever other BS on Office's success, realize you're not doing yourself and your favorite alternative Office program a favour.

Allow me to rant a bit on what's needed to get people (companies) to replace Windows and Office...

The big challenge is that apart from having to be every bit as good as Office, the working environment should also be better.

I think with KOffice and OpenOffice, Linux has two excellent candidates, KOffice for the more simplestupid crowd (me and most people although most won't admit it) and OpenOffice for the "power user". For obvious reasons though, they should be 100% interoperateble. Even if features are not fully supported, they should not result in document hell.

Right now, in a lot of environments you can't do away with MSOffice. Find out why (without resorting to arrogant BS) and fix it. Sometimes it's easy: a few people are seriously into Powerpoint, and the company distributes them to others. Well, that's enough reason not to switch.

But also, apart from having the clip art, dictionaries, etc etc etc all that stuff, there might be a lot of things that arguably are outside the scope of the software, but need to be looked into in order to fulfill the full productivity cycle people are running now with MSOffice.

Their Office runs on their OS and they don't really differentiate. So if you can map the whole experience and make that good, only then you can claim to be able to replace the desktop.

The same goes for the Gimp btw. If you already *have* Photoshop, there is not ONE single reason to go to Gimp.

Disclaimer: This mail not to make things seem easy or to in any way berate Linux developers (bless you) but in response to the many derogative remarks here on MSOffice.
Comparison: SCO is not being beaten up and undressed by "Fuck You" comments but by a bunch of highly skilled lawyers - and appropriately the Groklaw crowd.

If only

[jefu]

I much prefer LaTeX and Gnuplot myself. Faster, produces good looking output, handles bibliographies simply and easily and lots of conferences/journals have style definitions so all the papers can look about the same.

Best of all its EASY to author. (Well, once you've done one anyway.)

However, I'm finding more and more places that only want stuff in MS Word format. And in my university everything, and I mean everything, is in MS Word format. No other format is allowed. Not PDF, not PS, not even RTF in many cases. And sure as hell no text, sgml/xml/html or TeX. A while back I got a list of people, email, phone numbers etc that the department circulated. Not in csv format which would be the most sensible. Not in XML which would have been flexible and useful. Not in Excel format which could have been useful. In Word format. Completely useless.

And the CS department teaches computer literacy. Which translates to "Demonstrate that you can use MS Office".

Re:If only

[PantsWearer]

Here's a little secret that might help you. Just change the extension from rtf to doc and Word will open it and convert it transparently.

It works the same way with Excel and tab separated text files.

Re:well, duh

[wackysootroom]

Same old cut and paste troll from comp.os.linux.advocacy. See Here

Script support for the mainees

[trezor]

• Is Perl included? Can you easily write your own scripts?

Yeah, ofcourse man! I mean, who would release an Office package for the mainstream without perl and scripting support? That's the one feature that everyone needs.

After they learn about locating their own files on the harddisk, that is.

MS Office wont be repalces in my company/home!

[Monkey Overlord]

If all you use MS Office for is to type up a simple document/spreadsheet and then print/e-mail it ... then you can easily use any word processor/spreadsheet applications with a minimum of features. Hell, a glorified Notepad.exe with a spellchecker is more then enough for a lot of people.
Did you know that a lot of people bought MS Word (in the old days) because WordPad didn't have a spellchecker! Sad, but true.
Anyways, MS Office is an important obstacle to switching to Linix for a lot of companies. I don't see the company, I work for, switching anytime soon.
We use a groupware/e-mail/fax client at work (Message Manager 2000) that integrates closely with MS Office. While MM2000 is the most unintuitive, fugly PoS software package I have ever used ... but it works and no alternative on Linux and only much more expesive alternatives on Windows are available.
We also use a few applications that are written around MS Access. They may suck, but they work and since most of them are targeted towards a nieche it will be hard to replace/find alteratives for any of them.
I don't see myself switching either. On a regular basis I have to edit large contracts that go through several negotiation stages and a lot of the changes just can not be seen by reading the damn thing (50+ pages of 7pt print) ... this is where MS Word's tracking of changes (doc CVS basically) is superb.

Refutation?

[jayp00001]

In order for this to be a refutation of the TCO of opensource vs Windows, wouldn't there have to be some sort of cost savings mentioned in the article? The only numbers I find ain the article says

""I'm happy to pay for Linux support by moving to Red Hat Advanced Server which is about $1500," he said. "Choosing Linux is not about acquisition costs and I'd be prepared to pay $10,000 per server for it. I wouldn't have a job if there was two minutes of downtime and I wouldn't trust Windows for that."

Which says that costs weren't his concern. (windows is stability concerns are just flamebait and another topic)

Why isn't anyone discussing the article?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read through most of the comments and to be honest it sounds like most people came here to unload a spleen on Office. Did anyone actually read the article?

I did, and I find it amazing /. says the company refutes Windows TCO claims with a throwaway line or two. To whit:

"The PeopleSoft back end is moving to the AIX system and we would move the Windows front end to Linux if the application gave us the option," Peters said. "We have no interest in staying on Windows for those types of applications as there are just down sides. In our organisation Windows is not a threat as we get to see both sides and Windows is not cheaper at all."

My reading of the article is that large Australian energy company focused on UNIX / Linux / Sun / AIX technologies that happens to have some Windows boxes has come to the conclusion that if they were in a position to centralize even further (by ditching Windows) it wouldn't cost them any more money.

B F D

This is news?

A bit thin I thought

[Alan]

I was expecting something with more hard numbers. The MS TCO site is full of pretty graphs and charts showing how MS software is cheaper in the long run than "free" software. This article had none of that.

What I'd like to see is a linux biased company come out with a similar "get the real truth .com" site which has case studies that show linux is cheaper in the long run than Windows based solutions.

Windows platform strengths are missing

[dtjohnson]

The story makes it very clear that there are no real Windows platform strengths while Linux has many that were particularly important to the energy company including better performance and better reliability. Even on the desktop, the only real advantage given for Windows was that it ran MS Office. If Windows is going to survive in the long term, Microsoft will have to develop some compelling technical advantages for Windows. The MS Office support is not going to carry it forever.

TCO -- Total Cost of an Outage

[azpcox]

From the article "I wouldn't have a job if there was two minutes of downtime and I wouldn't trust Windows for that" pretty much sums it up.

Why don't we look at what an outage would cost, the expenses necessary to create a redundant infrastructure to minimize those potential outages, and then compare costs.

I wouldn't have my job either if I didn't plan for network failures and the recovery mechanisms in place. Although cost is a factor, uptime and reliability are much more important.

TCO is only part of the story

[BoneFlower]

Example:

My dads truck has a FAR higher TCO than my moms car. Cost twice as much, the systems are so much more complicated it breaks more often simply due to having more parts. It burns so much more fuel that even though deisel is cheaper these days its miles per dollar are lower.

On the other hand, if my dad tried using my moms car for what he uses his truck for, he wouldn't even get out of the driveway.

TCO is only part of the story, what you need the system for is another... so generalized TCO is not very useful. Its only useful when comparing narrowly defined usage scenarios- like with cars, it would be relevant to compare TCO of the Hyundai Elantra and the Honda Civic for the purposes of transporting passengers. But some of the TCO comparisons I've seen are more like comparing the Hyundai Elantra and a Dodge 350 truck for the purposes of doing everything automobiles are capable of doing. Completely irrelevant.